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I am taking a guess here in thinking that "Stunt Vocals" means the strange vocals during songs like Devil's Advocate and Nosferatu.  How do you get those weird voices during your performances?

Good guess.  I have a variety of tricks up my sleeve for that.  One method for really changing the way I sound is the Digitech Studio Vocalist.  I use that a lot, for back-up vocals and also for the "Stunt" stuff.   Actually, we try to keep the three part harmony stuff of Hal, Brian and myself pretty un-modified, but sometimes I use the harmonizer just to thicken the harmonies up a bit.  I also use a vocoder, provided by this pretty cool little Boss unit, the SE-70, in conjunction with Brian's guitar synth or Hal's sampler and synth cornucopia.  You take the audio out from any synth module and plug it into the left input on the Boss, take my vocal and plug that into the right input, and voila, you have talking synthesizers.  Technology is one of my best friends.

Tell me about your bass rig.

Well, when we are performing, I always play the doubleneck, and at least a fretless and a fretted 7-string. Depending on what songs we are playing, I might bring the 8-strings, or my other 7-strings (tuned differently), or maybe all of them, if the stage is big enough. (laughs). Depending on whether we will be playing any of the songs that utilise the bass synth, that will also influence my decision as to which basses I bring to the gig.

As for gear, I have a Korg DTR-1 tuner, which tracks pretty well, even on the low F#. I plug all the basses that i will be using into a Furman patch bay. This is connected directly into a Switchblade GL from Sound Sculpture, which is a 16 in x 16 out digital/midi-controlled router. Not only can I route all of my basses to any of the preamps I am using, I can also route preamps into other preamps, re-route effects, and send synthesizer, bass synth, and other signals to any number of outputs. It's a really cool unit. Quite a few of my basses are equipped with RMC synth/piezo pickups, like the 8 strings and the hollowbody 7, and soon to be joined by the doubleneck. The output from the synth pickups on these basses goes to an Axon AX100-sb, which is a midi converter as well as a synth sound source - with this unit, I can play synth sounds with my basses - both internal to the unit and external sounds via midi. I use a roland JV-1010 and a Kawai k-5000 as sound sources for the bass synth and the foot pedal synth, driven by my 18 note Elka footpedal controller.

My main bass amp is an Aguillar DB-680 tube pre-amp for clean sounds and a Marshall JMP-1 midi guitar pre-amp that I use for distortion. My backup rig is my Trace Elliot AH600SMX amp as Pre/Power amp and the Marshall set up for distortion. I have a switch set up so that I can route my bass signal into either pre-amp, or both at the same time.  I use the Switchblade GL to handle my vocals, the Vocalist's harmony outputs, the Vocoder, and all of my synthesizer and the bass synth outputs from the Axon AX-100sb. The outputs of the mixer then go to the house, stereo synth and stereo vocals as well as the bass outputs going to my BGW power amp.

As for my cabinets, I was lucky to find 3 Hartke guitar cabinets from the 80's, which they don't make anymore, loaded with four 12" aluminum cone speakers, that I am using with a Yamaha SW118iv Pa Subwoofer, that really handles the low F# on my basses pretty well.

John Turner on Bass
Amplification Rig and Vocal Processing