He rocked the suburbs, produced albums for the likes of William Shatner, and was a judge on primetime television. Now, Ben Folds is coming to Reverb with 250 pieces of gear ranging from his early days up through his tenure at Nashville's legendary RCA Studio A.
Folds worked out of Studio A for 14 years and led an effort to save the historic location from destruction, before handing off operations to Dave Cobb in 2016. Yet Folds still has a motherlode of gear—and more than 250 pieces will be available for purchase in The Official Ben Folds Reverb Shop on November 12.
As you can hear in our video with Folds above, for him, this shop is both something special for the fans and a testament to his time in Nashville. "Well, I hope it goes to people that love it... I consider it a curation, 20 years of my life put into the studio," he says.
Contained in the curation is a treasure trove of studio goodies, ranging from handmade maple drum kits to coveted vintage microphones to a Suzuki Melodion used on the Ben Folds Five classic Whatever and Ever Amen.
There's a mountain of gear, equipment, and memorabilia on its way. Here are just a few highlights and why Folds loves them:
- A vintage Neumann U 47 mic. "I mean, that’s my baby for sure. That’s the mic I used for, god, every vocal in the century that I did, unless I was in someone’s studio as a guest or something. That’s my favorite mic. I love that one," he says.
- A John Juzek 3/4-scale upright bass. "Someone left it at the studio. Probably, they’ll be shopping on Reverb and they’ll be like, 'Ben sold my bass.' Mostly it just sat up in the corner, was sort of the symbol of old Nashville music somehow."
- A Pearl Masterworks 5-piece kit in green sparkle finish. "I recorded that in a church in Adelaide, Australia. And actually I’d bought that kit in order to play drums on the record. And then I had this dream about playing a garden of drums—I swear it was in my head. So I went around and bought as many toms as I could."
- A Hohner Wurlitzer Organ Model 300. "At one point I think we’d lined up 15 grand pianos [in the studio] for a video shoot. So there’s all these beautiful pianos all over the place and everyone always would go straight to that Wurlitzer fun machine. It’s just badass."
- A Kustom Kombo-II organ/synthesizer. "I bought that from Sheryl Crow. First of all, I love, love that pleather. I guess that’s pleather. Is that pleather? You think it’s like leather? I’d say it’s probably pleather."
- A Polyvoks Russian analog synth. "I don’t speak or read Russian so I have no idea what I’m doing, which is actually really, really helpful, because you have preconceived notions of the things that you do and you don’t like on a synthesizer. But with this thing, you just start turning them off, because it’s all in Russian and you get some pretty great sounds."
- A Suzuki Melodion MX-32. "The thing about playing Japan would be if you order something, then moments later it’s waiting on the stage. I believe that’s what happened here when I was playing a Japanese tour, probably about '97 or '98."
In addition to telling us all about the gear that will be for sale in The Official Ben Folds Reverb Shop, we took the opportunity to ask Ben some pressing questions we had about his life and career: Like, how many pianos he's broken in his life and what he'd rather have back—the money or the black t-shirt?
Hear all of his answers in our feature video. Then, be sure to sign up above with your email address to be notified as soon as The Official Ben Folds Reverb Shop goes live November 12.