Zebulon Pike

Zebulon Pike - The Deafening Twilight

Zebulon Pike - And Blood Was Passion

Instrumental Doom-Metal band Zebulon Pike mixes 70's Prog with neo-classical rock and doom metal. Basically they sound like Black Sabbath went on without Ozzy, never bothered to get a new singer, and then started listening to 20th Century-era classical music.

Steve writes, "In July of 2004 I was looking to change the equipment I was using. At the time I used a two amp system that combined both Ampeg SVT Pro 4 1200-watt bass head and a Pearce 100-watt guitar head with a dual compressor and two BBE D.I.'s all in one 8-space rack. For speakers I was using an Ampeg Pro 410-HLF cab and a Sonic 412 cab with Celestion speakers. The rack weighed about 90 lbs and that 410 cab was 112 lbs. I was getting real sick of lugging all that around and I was also looking for an amp that was better suited for the sound of my band, Zebulon Pike."

"Zebulon Pike has more of a 70's progressive / metal vibe going on and my guitar players both use some vintage Marshall, Sunn, and Orange gear. I was looking to make things a little simpler by using only one good tube amp with one or two cabs. I originally was going to look for either an old all tube SVT and a 810 "fridge" cab, or one of those Mesa all tube setups. Then I was at my favorite Guitar shop, Twin Town Guitars, and the amp tech there was playing this bass out of this huge new Marshall bass stack when I walked in the store. He said to me ‘Hey, Postman! Play this thing!’ So I did and immediately melded myself to the amp, I couldn't turn the thing off, I dug it so much!"

"It's a Marshall VBA 400 bass amp. 400 watts with 8x6550 power tubes and 3xECC83 and 1 ECC82 preamp tubes. For cabs I'm using two Marshall VBC412 400-watt bass cabs with custom Celestion speakers made specifically for these cabs."

"The sound is really very full and musical, lots of bass without a lot of the overtones I'd get with my old Ampegs, and I get so much sustain out of the Marshall, I've stopped using a compressor full time. When I play my Hamer Standard 12 or even my Carlo Robelli 12-string bass I hear a really good balance of the lows and highs with just a touch of breakup due to the preamp tubes, and I don¹t need a 2nd amp to pump the lows up more."

"I also use a variety of Boss, Tech 21, Keeley, Marshall, Morley, and Ernie Ball pedals on a Pedaltrain Pedal Board. I mainly use the Marshall Guv'Nor Plus pedal for bass distortion, it's got a great vintage tone without losing any low end. Then, I have two different Tech 21 overdrive pedals for more options in distortion. The Keeley Compressor pedal I use as a kind of cello like effect in one of our songs "Aztec Parallels". Then I have a Morley bass wah, a Boss Bass Chorus, EQ, Tuner, and an Ernie Ball Volume Pedal."