CREEM SHOWCASE

CREEM SHOWCASE

RATT’S ROBBIN CROSBY CUTS METAL CLASS

Bill Stephen

Ratt shot out of the Los Angeles heavy metal scene with a burst of power guitar that blew a hole in the music charts and pulled in a legion of fans. They were young and hot, but they had chops, guitar chops that cut a clean slice of musical pie with adept, blistering solos racing over a layer of power chords supported by a heavy, driving rhythm section.

Ratt, though, was attempting to carry on and add to a heavy metal legacy, and it was not an easy row to hoe; it was made partially easier, however, with a long stint as the house band at the Whiskey A Go Go. It was there that the band tightened its act. For Warren DeMartini and Robbin Crosby it was the stage for polishing their dueling guitar lines and their manic approach to firework performances. The result is a band that has, in all the cliches of heavy metal, managed to forge an individuality that would have seemed dubious at best. The core of this brash and boisterous rock ’n’ roll are its lead guitarists, in particular, Robbin Crosby.

Crosby’s trademark is dexterity enhanced by speed, and in this he excells through a myriad of guitar licks that can twist and dip— turning a standard musical phrase into a flourish of accented and dynamic licks, giving greater definition to a song. And, like most musicians who ply their trade behind the heavy metal banner, he’s a guitarist first and foremost.

Since Charvel/Jackson shouldered its way onto the scene a while back with a line of slick rock ’n’ roll guitars that delivered style, power and playability (all heavily endorsed by the legendary Jeff Beck) they’ve pulled in a far-ranging group of believers, Robbin Crosby being one of the devoted followers.

“My main axe,” explains the guitarist, “is a red Jackson Flying V. I designed it along with Grover Jackson, so it’s exclusive to me.” There are a variety of reasons noted guitarists have been turning to Jacksons and one of these—for Crosby—is the neck and fretboard, which he feels gives him the ideal string separation for the type of soloing he’s known for. “I like the guitars so much I have three identical models I use on stage. They’re supposed to be identical and the black model is nearly the same. If I close my eyes I can’t tell the difference. The white model is slightly different in feel, so I use it for the few numbers that are tuned in normal fashion, the few songs we do in D.”

This spacing and the right camber of the neck may aid Crosby’s dexterity, but to pump out the sound and create the musical dynamics he’s after he relies on the depth of Duncan pickups. “Each of the three guitars are loaded with a Seymour Duncan Allan Holdsworth pickup (unfortunately, no longer available) in the treble position and a Duncan Jazz pickup in the fret position.” Crosby’s sound is testament to the pickup combination, which allows him the response to jump to the peaks of piercing ambience or dip into the rumbling, full-bodied tones of a melodic, moody line.

Such a punishing guitarist as Crosby depends on the tremolo, not only as an accent to solos but as a textural device used to lay in a foundation. And the tremolo of note seems to be a rose. “All of my instruments are equipped with fine tuning Floyd Rose Tremolos,” he says. Crosby feels such dependability is hard to come by and when ripping out a solo from his Jackson, the last thing he needs is a tremolo that neither delivers nor keeps his guitar in tune. Of course, good strings help here and, although Crosby admits that his roadie probably knows more readily what his string makeup is, he’s sure that Guild stainless steel strings cut the grade.

In this day and age of the special effects and the processed sound, it’s good to note that Ratt keeps (within reason, of course) their sound as uncluttered and clean as possible; read “a minimum of effects.” Many heavy metal rockers look to reverb and the echo as a major source of inspiration for the sound they’re after, and Crosby concurs. “For effects I keep it fairly simple, and use a Furman Parametric EQ and Lexicon PZM 42 as well as a Deltalab 1021. I control the effects from a pedal board custom-made by Wingate Pedals. And something that I’m just beginning to get my teeth into is an Eventide Harmonizer.”

If Crosby gets to the point quickly with his effects layout, he doesn’t waste too much time in the power department either, relying heavily on the rock ’n’ roll standards of his genre. He uses two 100-watt Marshall heads for the foundation of his careening guitar sound. Robbin breaks with tradition here, however, to turn to a series of matched cabinets, which he often mixes and matches until he hears what he wants to hear. Primarily, though, his stage set up depends on two Laney cabinets: one loaded with Electro-Voice speakers and the other Celestion speakers. “I’ve also got two Roland Jazz Chorus 120’s I run through the EV bottoms. I can AB the system this way or have totally clean or totally dirty sounds, or I can have it all. It gets pretty nuts on stage that way because I run all my amps at full bore on 10 and it gets real loud; you can get away with it through a solo, but not for long.”

Robbin Crosby’s love of volume is also carried over to the studio where, once again, nothing is recorded under plus five. The Marshall heads come into play again and, at times, the same cabinet makeup, although he does a series of tests until he finds what the right recorded sound is off the setup. He always runs two tracks, one direct through the board coming off the Celestions and one miked. In this way, during the mix, they can create a blend of sounds that give the right definition to the song — whether it’s dirty or clean, it’s always defined.

In the vein of the successful guitarist, Robbin Crosby has fallen under the spell of collecting guitars...some through necessity, others no doubt just to have them. His collection is based around his Jacksons but he will turn to his Gibson Les Paul on occasion or his older Strats (one pink, one white). Add to this Guild sixand 12-strings and a Hamer Firebird and you start to round out the field, until you get to the Gibson Firebirds (he has two) that are as valuable as they are hard to find in mint condition. Because of his fear of being on the road with them, Crosby managed to talk Gibson’s Randy Cullers into making two new ones for him as substitutes for the road.

Robbin Crosby will undoubtedly be ripping up the arenas with their next tour and album, Invasion Of Your Privacy.