The Friendship Trust started in 2005 as a whim, a side project for musicians in another band. Things came together, and they started producing music the group liked -- simple drum machine / piano arrangements to begin with, but they felt there was something there beyond the simplicity.

"It worked, really well in fact, so the flood gates opened. The MySpace page went up. Reaction was good. All of a sudden it made sense to rewrite a whole bunch of old acoustic songs into carefully orchestrated new versions," says Dan Gineer, guitarist for the band. "The template was simple: electric piano, guitar, bass, drums -- maybe some flourishes, but that was it. Most of the songs on the EP were written in maybe 1996 through 1998."

Gineer's live set up consists of a a Krank Krankenstein 100-Watt head run through a Krank Revolution Series One cabinet.

"The Revolution rolls off the high end, like a Marshall, but unlike a Marshall it can really handle the low end. That makes it great for down-tuning," he says. "We hit up the Krank factory when we were in Arizona to demo their gear, and went through all head and amp combinations with both the Krankensteins and Revolution gear, and the Krankenstein head plus Revolution cab definitely sounded the best."

Into this Krank-tastic rig he runs a Gibson Les Paul Studio with the bridge humbucker's casing removed.

"I was recording an album and the engineer wasn't used to working with low-gain pickups; he hated the sound," he says. "We had limited time, and we were out in a lake-side studio out in the bush, so we didn't have access to any other left-handed guitars, so the humbucker casing came off. It improved the sound quite a bit."

So the pick up stayed as is. Gineer also uses a Boss NS-1 noise suppression pedal to get a more "percussive" sound out of the rig.

"That's one of the fundamental components of my signature sound; I play low-gain but run the power amp really high to get a faster response on transients & a more percussive sound," says Gineer. "To top it off, I use Dunlop Jazz-II picks for the same reason. I also make sure whoever else is playing guitar has a good stock of the Jazz-II's as well."

Before he purchased the Les Paul Gineer used a Yamaha RG copy.

"The Floyd Rose was unreliable and the screws on the trem stripped out from poor design. Regardless, that gear had a sick tone when it was fitted with a .56 in B-Standard and Drop-A tuning," ays Gineer. "Once I got the Gibson Les Paul Studio, the Yamaha got fitted with strap locks and ended up being used as a backup guitar that I'd use when I needed to do guitar throws (loop the loop), but it ended up being (ahem) smashed at the end of a set."

To begin with he used a 120 watt Peavey JSX head to go with the Revolution cabinet--but the JSX had some issues.

"The line outs on the back act as antennae for feedback, and when you turn the line outs down, you lose power on the power amp. I ended up burning out that head on a tour where our guitar player left after three days, and I was forced to run the head through two cabs," he says. "It just couldn't handle that much output, and I couldn't put up with having to make excuses and constant re-tubing, so I got rid of it for the Krankenstein. The last tour I did we lost a drummer, so this time we split my signal into a half-cab setup on both sides of the stage. Noisy, but that way you're driving only one cab off each head."

It was very careless of The Friendship Trust to lose a drummer. He is probably still waiting at a bus station someplace, looking forlornly at his watch.

More with Gineer on the studio set up, gear wants and plans for the future.