Friday Pilots Club’s Drew Polovick - GEAR MASTERS Ep. 575 - video Dailymotion

Digital Tour Bus

Become a member (it's FREE) at https://digtb.us/signup Buy official DTB merch at http://digtb.us/merch  On this episode of DTB’s “Gear Masters”, Drew Polovick, bassist of the pop rock band, Friday Pilots Club, shows off the gear that he uses onstage, while on tour with Circa Waves. Friday Pilots Club is currently supporting their debut album, Nowhere.  PLAY THE SAME GEAR: Fender Player Plus Precision Bass Guitar - https://guitar-center.pxf.io/9LQg7E Ernie Ball Hybrid Slinky Bass Strings (.045–.105) - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/POkyMR Ernie Ball .73mm Orange Picks - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/55Lgv1 Neural DSP Quad Cortex - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/APaWva Oak Tone MIDI Controller - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/19Orvz  VIDEO INFO: Film Date - April 28, 2025 Location - House of Blues in Chicago, IL  KEEP UP WITH FRIDAY PILOTS CLUB: Facebook - https://facebook.com/FridayPilotsClub Instagram - https://instagram.com/fridaypilotsclub Twitter - https://twitter.com/fridaypilots  FOLLOW US: Website/Email List - https://www.digitaltourbus.com/#/portal/signup YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/digitaltourbus Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/digitaltourbus/ TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@digitaltourbus Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/digitaltourbus/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/digitaltourbus Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/digitaltourbus/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/digital-tour-bus-llc Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/user/digitaltourbus  VIDEO SUMMARY: 00:00 Introduction 00:32 Bass Guitars 03:57 Quad Cortex  ABOUT DIGITAL TOUR BUS: Digital Tour Bus is your backstage pass to your favorite touring artists! With daily video releases, we cover all genres, and have had the pleasure of featuring the likes of Matchbox Twenty, Twenty One Pilots, Megadeth, Machine Gun Kelly, Papa Roach, and thousands of others, over the past 15 years. "Bus Invaders" takes you inside an artist's home on the road, "Cooking at 65mph" showcases the culinary skills of artists on tour, and "Gear Masters" unveils the equipment musicians use on stage.  Affiliate Disclosure: Some of the links in this description are affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you if you make a purchase. Your support helps me continue to create content like this. Thank you!

Transcript

00:00What's up? I'm Drew from Friday Pilots Club. I play bass. We're at the wonderful House of Blues

00:16Chicago on tour with Circa Waves, playing a bunch of songs off of our new album, Nowhere.

00:20You should check it out. And yeah, I'm going to show you guys what I do. First off, I play this

00:26pretty dope Fender Player Plus green P-Bass, which is dope. It's got a lot of cool extra

00:35features like 3-band EQ, active-passive switch, and like a pickup blend. Two batteries, but

00:43I honestly rock it. Super simple, in-passive. 90% of the set is just the P-Pickup. A few

00:50songs that are a little more gnarly, I do a 50-50 blend between the two. But yeah, this

00:55thing is honestly fucking incredible. I even bought, I have a second one that's

01:01like white and red, that's back there in that inky case. But for some reason this

01:05one is just like so magical. And I don't know what it is, like literally when we

01:11were doing Europe last year I was like, oh I should get the exact same bass for the

01:15most part, so I can just like have all my tones transfer if for any reason this

01:19thing goes down. So bought another one, and for some reason it just doesn't sound

01:24like this one. Like there's just special mojo in this specific green P-Bass. And on

01:31top of it it's like the most beautiful like green sparkle. You can probably see my

01:36like seven shows of grime starting to really cake on here, but it's awesome. And I

01:42I fucking love it. And I rock Ernie Ball strings. It's like the hybrid slinky set so

01:48it's almost like the base version of a skinny top heavy bottom, which I love. Ooh, I

01:53want to say it's like a 45 to 105, almost positive. But yeah, I love it. I fucking

02:01love it. And Ernie Ball and Fender have both been so fucking kind to us. Shout out

02:05Billy, shout out Tim, Tim at Ernie Ball. And yeah, it's just been incredible. And honestly,

02:12kind of foolproof. Tuning, yeah. So it's probably confusing from a fan perspective

02:18for people who try to learn our songs, but I actually play the entire set in standard

02:23tuning and use the pitch transpose function on the quad to basically do the

02:30rest of the heavy lifting, which is really convenient and nice when we play in

02:35like E, D, B, B-flat, and E-flat. So it's nice to not have to rip new tuning for all of

02:46those and they kind of just, the quad does what the quad does best, you know? So that's

02:51very cool. Most of the set, I play pick, but we have a few slower songs that are more like

02:57finger style, just tone wise. So like we have a song called Would You Mind. That one's finger

03:03style. And then a few others that we're not playing this run, like coffin. Um, maybe

03:09favorite part that I also play finger, but for the most part it's pick. Uh, 73's Ernie

03:16Ball, honestly sick. It's like, I wish I have some somewhere, but they're like the, the

03:22orange Ernie Ball ones. You would think they're the same as the Dunlop ones, but the Ernie Ball

03:27ones are seven threes and orange, but the Ernie, the Dunlop ones are sixes and orange, but love

03:32their Ernie Ball picks. They're so awesome. And, uh, yeah, I tend to go through a lot

03:37of them because I pick really aggressively and really hard. So every show I might go

03:42through like two or three, um, just to like keep the sharp edge and whatnot. But yeah,

03:47so, uh, last year we, uh, James and I made the jump to quad cortexes, which also, yeah,

03:54shout out, uh, Max at neural DSP, the absolute goat who, uh, really helped us out here. And it

04:01has been an absolute game changer. Cause I've done pedals and a real amp. I've done pedals

04:07with an amp sim and like a sans amp and I've done Kemper and I've done helix and getting

04:13to the quad was just like, Oh, that's it. Like that is for ease of use, how simple it is to

04:20like make tones and the flexibility you have inside it. There's really nothing that beats

04:25it. And I feel like I can say that confidently. Um, but yeah, like in terms of the actual tones,

04:30I've kind of got a crazy situation here. I pretty much rock a very similar setup across

04:39all the tones I use throughout the show. And I pretty much have it grouped by tuning. So

04:45for example, here's FPC bass. That's just my standard tuning. Oh, big boy. That is not one I use,

04:52but it's a great tone. I'll tell you what, here's FPC bass and D, B, B flat and E flat for the most

05:02part. They're pretty much all the same. Some of the lower tuning stuff. I crank the drive a little

05:08bit more cause all the lower tuning songs that tend to play just needs to be a little heavier and

05:13stuff. But, uh, let me go back to my main one and you can kind of see what we're rocking. So I've

05:21mainly for my bass, like the core of the bass sound, it's just like classic Ampeg SVT into a, uh,

05:29Ampeg 8x10. Um, and I'm pretty sure, yeah, I like slightly tweaked some of the mics than what

05:37they normally have. Um, but that's like kind of the core of it. And honestly, for those that are

05:44familiar with the, uh, quad platform, I'm just rocking so many EQs for so many different types

05:50of shaping along the way. But then it starts to get a little more complicated where I also include

05:59this split to a Vox AC30, which kind of gives me a little bit more of the grit and mid-range I'm

06:08looking for. Um, very inspired by like Royal Blood, um, and the way that they rock their bass tones,

06:14which I think are just so incredible. So you can see, I have all these different scenes, right?

06:22Fuzz, octave, normal fuzz, something that is completely unknown. And I don't know what that is.

06:27Um, and then yeah, just like really four stages of just gain. Um, and within that, I'm automating

06:36some of these parameters on some of these pedals, which some are from my collection at home. Um,

06:42and some are things I've downloaded. So like one of these is like a Noble Overdrive. This is a,

06:50um, who is it? It's a, uh, they're like the other sister company. Oh, it's like a dark glass,

06:57basically. Microtubes. Uh, this is what I downloaded. Also another dark glass vintage.

07:03And then I use a fat rat, uh, that is like my favorite bass distortion. So basically throughout

07:10the set, depending on what scene I'm on, you'll see some of these things click on, click off,

07:17some things mute, what have you. But, uh, but yeah, it's kind of just that it looks a little

07:24more complicated. And then, you know, on, for example, this is my fuzz octave patch. That's when

07:30this octave blend kicks on for only my guitar amp chain. And, uh, you know, what have I got here?

07:39Yeah. Tube screamer just absolutely fucking dimed. And, uh, yeah, that's kind of the gist of it.

07:45There's not nothing too crazy every now and then for like, you know, my songs that I play in D,

07:52like there's a chorus, but I don't need it on the standard tuning or the drop B stuff. So

07:58it's kind of it. And it's all MIDI switched, which is awesome. And love to not tap dance and not

08:06fiddle with anything. Cause sometimes the parts and singing simultaneously are hard enough.

08:11Yes, this is, uh, this is just an oak tone, uh, basically controller. So I do all the

08:19MDing and playback control for Friday Pilots Club. And yeah, throughout the set,

08:25I use this to just navigate through the songs and everything, um, which is great. And this has been

08:31the biggest game changer for us because we used to rock it where you just have a foot switch with no

08:38screen. So you're hoping you didn't double click a button and go to the next song. And then you

08:43announce it's one song and hit play the tracks are playing something else. So having this with, uh,

08:49an actual digital readout where you can see the song names is so huge and like absolute game changer

08:55for us. So this is the backup literally same exact model, just a different color, different fingerboard.

09:02But, uh, yeah, also a fucking incredible base, but somehow lacking the magic of the green one,

09:10the green monster, Lizzy, as I call her short for lizard, you know? So yeah, that's it.

09:16Thank you guys so much for watching. Once again, I am drew from Friday Pilots Club.

09:20Go stream our record nowhere. You can find all of our tour dates online at fridaypilots.com.

09:25You can follow us on all platforms at Friday Pilots Club, except Twitter. We are just Friday

09:30Pilots. But yeah, come check it out. Come see a show and, uh, look forward to meeting you.

Friday Pilots Club’s Drew Polovick - GEAR MASTERS Ep. 575

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