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On this episode of DTB’s “Gear Masters”, Jeremy Cohen, bassist/guitarist of the indie rock band, The Rare Occasions, shows off the gear that he uses onstage, while on the “Why Not? 2026 Tour” with Girl Tones and Nova One.
PLAY THE SAME GEAR:
Fender Made in Japan International Color Jazz Bass (California Blue) - https://guitar-center.pxf.io/2RYMQg
Fender Player Stratocaster HSS (Made in Mexico, Black) - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/YVoBqm
Yamaha Trombone - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/MKjyD3
Line 6 Helix LT - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/7XxoGr
Orange Crush 60C Combo Amplifier - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/L0r4xL
Fender Rumble 500 Combo Amplifier - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/xJbQ2d
Ultimate Ears Custom In-Ear Monitors - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/dO1jMk
Ernie Ball Super Slinky Bass Strings (.050 to .105) - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/DW1nbo
Ernie Ball Super Slinky Guitar Strings (.010 to .046) - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/QYe4NM
Dunlop Max-Grip Nylon .88 mm Guitar Picks - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/9VQOM0
VIDEO INFO:
Film Date - May 31, 2026
Location - Cobra Lounge in Chicago, IL
KEEP UP WITH THE RARE OCCASIONS:
Facebook - https://facebook.com/TheRareOccasions
Instagram - https://instagram.com/therareoccasions
TikTok - https://tiktok.com/@therareoccasions
Twitter - https://twitter.com/rareoccasions
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
00:35 Skip Intro
00:50 Guitars
06:18 Trombone
07:42 Amp Modeler & Effects
10:39 Cabinets
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, MGK, Papa Roach, AJR, Pierce The Veil, Simple Plan, A Day to Remember, 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, "Gear Masters" unveils the equipment musicians use on stage, and "Stage Threads" dives into the meaning and inspiration behind the clothing artists wear during their performances.
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!
Buy official DTB merch at http://digtb.us/merch
On this episode of DTB’s “Gear Masters”, Jeremy Cohen, bassist/guitarist of the indie rock band, The Rare Occasions, shows off the gear that he uses onstage, while on the “Why Not? 2026 Tour” with Girl Tones and Nova One.
PLAY THE SAME GEAR:
Fender Made in Japan International Color Jazz Bass (California Blue) - https://guitar-center.pxf.io/2RYMQg
Fender Player Stratocaster HSS (Made in Mexico, Black) - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/YVoBqm
Yamaha Trombone - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/MKjyD3
Line 6 Helix LT - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/7XxoGr
Orange Crush 60C Combo Amplifier - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/L0r4xL
Fender Rumble 500 Combo Amplifier - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/xJbQ2d
Ultimate Ears Custom In-Ear Monitors - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/dO1jMk
Ernie Ball Super Slinky Bass Strings (.050 to .105) - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/DW1nbo
Ernie Ball Super Slinky Guitar Strings (.010 to .046) - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/QYe4NM
Dunlop Max-Grip Nylon .88 mm Guitar Picks - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/9VQOM0
VIDEO INFO:
Film Date - May 31, 2026
Location - Cobra Lounge in Chicago, IL
KEEP UP WITH THE RARE OCCASIONS:
Facebook - https://facebook.com/TheRareOccasions
Instagram - https://instagram.com/therareoccasions
TikTok - https://tiktok.com/@therareoccasions
Twitter - https://twitter.com/rareoccasions
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
00:35 Skip Intro
00:50 Guitars
06:18 Trombone
07:42 Amp Modeler & Effects
10:39 Cabinets
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, MGK, Papa Roach, AJR, Pierce The Veil, Simple Plan, A Day to Remember, 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, "Gear Masters" unveils the equipment musicians use on stage, and "Stage Threads" dives into the meaning and inspiration behind the clothing artists wear during their performances.
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!
Category
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FunTranscript
00:00I probably could go to Levin's one day, but that kind of scares me.
00:03I'm not quite Stevie Ray Vaughan.
00:05Like all important choices, I made mine sheerly on aesthetics.
00:36Hey, what's up?
00:37This is Jeremy from The Rare Occasions, and we're going to check out some of my gear.
00:42So this is a, I think this is Japanese, got to be specific about where it came from when
00:50you're talking Fender.
00:51This is a Japanese, this is a premium jazz bass in California blue.
01:00I fell in love with this.
01:02No pickguard might be controversial for some, but it helps me get some extra fingerprints
01:11on it.
01:11So I guess that's cool.
01:13But yeah, I fell in love with the color and the maple, that was awesome.
01:18I think the thing that really caught me was the white pickups.
01:20I'm used to just like classic staggered P-Bass black pickups, but this was just like the
01:26perfect touch.
01:27So like all important choices, I made mine sheerly on aesthetics and the pickups just
01:35also happened to rip.
01:38It does everything.
01:39I can do burpee, Jocko, flip the, flip the neck, do like a really deep Pino type of thing
01:47or just dime everything and get a rare occasion sound because that's what I'm doing on this
01:52tour for hum reasons, which helps a lot.
01:55So yeah, I love this thing.
01:57And I got it because it's tone wood.
02:00I believe the body was tone wood, which from what I was checking out is a light wood.
02:04But I kind of screwed up because it is tone wood mostly with the exception of the neck.
02:09The tuners are really hefty in comparison to the weight of the body.
02:16So the neck dive can be a little intense sometimes, but it's good because I get to work on my
02:23biceps
02:24while we play live.
02:25So I get to exercise while we play.
02:27I'm using Ernie Ball Super Slinkies, so I think that's 105 to 50.
02:33I really want the extra beef out of the top strings.
02:37I've gotten some, seen some comments online, which is not really conscious, but some people
02:43say that some of my bass lines will have people playing all over the neck, which when I read
02:48that I was like, I got to make sure that no matter where I'm playing, there's some beef
02:54coming out of this thing no matter what.
02:56So that's why I went with the thicker gauge.
02:58Staying standard pretty much the whole time with the exception of a couple songs, we'll
03:02go to drop E flat or drop D.
03:04But yeah, standard all the way.
03:07I'll use like an octave pedal, octave up and octave down and octave up in case I want some
03:13extra range.
03:14So this is a very fingerprinty Strat as well.
03:19Yeah, zoom in, get those fingerprints.
03:20This is a Mexican Strat, but I mean it absolutely kills HSS.
03:27So I primarily use this as like a clean boost, the humbucker.
03:33I know some people might say, oh, it just kind of makes it thin, but when I'm playing lead
03:38stuff most of the time, it actually is appropriate.
03:40So, and it helps for like stage performance as well.
03:43Instead of having to tap dance, I can just go from fifth to first and then I automatically
03:50get a nice boost for like a lead line or a solo or something like that.
03:54So, and I'll usually have volume dimed, volume dimed on the neck to get it nice and bright,
04:01which is, it's still single coil and Brian's single coil tellies.
04:06But I go for like super bright to kind of like overreach him.
04:11He's usually playing with like an overdrive.
04:12Even his clean tone is still pretty hairy.
04:15So it gives me some space up top to get sparkly, which I think a Strat is perfect for.
04:22Volume dimed, there is one song, an unreleased song that we've been playing live where I
04:27will rock the volume knob and use like a really cavernous reverb to get like a ambient thing
04:34and I'll roll a tone off for that one song.
04:37But most of the time I'm just getting Strat, you know, that's nice and juicy up top.
04:43So, and yeah, I started as the bass player.
04:46I think most people would probably associate me as the bassist of the Rare Occasions.
04:50But we had a membership change some years ago and we were like, well, we recorded our
05:00songs with 50,000 guitars.
05:04It was multiple walls of guitars on some tracks.
05:08So we were like, I think I gotta learn how to play guitar.
05:12So I'm more or less self-taught minus the 20 years of experience I have on bass.
05:19And yeah, so filling out some stuff with lead, which has been fun.
05:24It keeps it fresh for me.
05:26And it's weird because sometimes depending like if we'll play like an acoustic show, I have
05:31to go back to playing bass on some of our tracks like backwards.
05:35I played bass on originally, but for live I'll play guitar.
05:40When we go to acoustic for like a small show, I go back to bass and I have to remember
05:46how
05:46to play my own parts that I recorded almost 10 years ago.
05:49So that's always fun.
05:50Keeps it fresh.
05:51These are Ernie Ball Super Slinkies as well, 10s, enough tension.
05:58I think I'm used to the tension of bass.
06:00So I probably could go to 11s one day, but that kind of scares me.
06:04I'm not quite Stevie Ray Vaughan.
06:08And yeah, just do standard mostly and yeah, just throw a lot of hair and reverb and chorus
06:13on stuff when I need to.
06:15Yeah.
06:17Yeah.
06:17That's it.
06:17Workhorse.
06:18Once upon a time, there was a boy from a land who was the citywide section leader of the
06:26middle school jazz bands and I may or may not have been that boy playing this very old
06:34Yamaha trombone, which has seen better days, but has traveled with me all over the country
06:43and if I need to try something different or if we want to add some extra textures, we've
06:50like on some of the most punk and hard heavy stuff that we've recorded has actually included
06:58trombone in the recordings.
06:59It's pretty tucked, but it's in there.
07:01So keep it all alive.
07:03Don't have the embouchure that I used to, but that's okay.
07:06I gotta, I gotta get a screw for this.
07:09The, the weight.
07:11If, uh, anyone has seen a missing trombone screw, let me know.
07:15And, uh, yeah, on this tour, Brian can go into it a little bit more, but we decided,
07:19hey, let's do a cover of our own songs and I should call them covers because they don't
07:25sound anything like the original.
07:26Uh, so I am playing trombone on that and Brian is playing an undisclosed instrument that he
07:32can reveal later.
07:33Uh, and, uh, luckily we haven't had anyone request a refund when we do that, but it's,
07:40it keeps it fresh for us, so.
07:41So we got a Helix LT, um, uh, good, good enough.
07:46Same DSP as the, the full floor.
07:49I gotta check out the stadium one day, the new, the new models, but this has been killing
07:53it for years now.
07:54Um, I got, uh, some overdrives.
07:58This is like kind of just a top boost, some beef, uh, in the low end.
08:02This is a sub octave and this is a little trick that I do, some different snapshots that I
08:08do just for some like octave spreads.
08:11So this is, this is normal tuning.
08:13And then this goes, uh, splits up an octave and a half, which goes into my guitar amp.
08:19And then this one pushes the bass signal down an octave.
08:22So at one given time I can play one note and it has a two and a half octave spread,
08:27which
08:28is pretty unnecessary and fun.
08:31So that's why I do it.
08:32Um, and then when, so this is my bass split, which is spelled incorrectly.
08:39Uh, I use the, the SVT model.
08:41And then I think this is, uh, I think it's like the Led Zeppelin model that I have on
08:47the amp for the guitar split.
08:48So this is, uh, this is the bass line.
08:51And then this is the guitar line with some slap back and, uh, some reverb just for extra
08:56juice.
08:57And then when I play guitar, I go to the aptly named guitar patch.
09:03Uh, and I primarily use, uh, just like dirty, like hairy, clean, dirty, clean.
09:10And then this is my lead, which pushes the delay into like more stadium territory.
09:15And then for some extra sauce, I'll throw on some chorus.
09:18And then I have a reverb on a momentary switch.
09:21And I do that cause it kind of just, I could make all snapshots, but it just makes it funner,
09:28uh, to kind of choose when I want to add some extra like feedback or whatever.
09:32So it gets nice and cavernous really quick.
09:35Uh, let's see.
09:35Yeah.
09:36What am I doing for this?
09:37You know, I think I, I think I turned off modeling for this cause I'm, I'm just mostly
09:41getting a mic signal.
09:42So yeah, I think I use a Led Zeppelin or maybe Queens of the Stone Age model if I do
09:46go direct,
09:47but I have a disengage, uh, most of the time.
09:50And then another trick with this one is, uh, because I'm playing guitar, but we have bass
09:55in some of our tracks.
09:56We have a whole system with logic that sends audio through a cable, goes into a snake and
10:03then comes into my pedal board here.
10:05And then out of the pedal board back into my bass amp, which is probably a grounding nightmare.
10:11Um, but that allows bass signal from a track to still come out of my bass amp, which is pretty
10:17fun.
10:17Doesn't feel less, uh, beefy on stage.
10:21Um, and just bass track coming out of the mains.
10:23Uh, it helps me feel like it's still real life.
10:26So, uh, yeah, maybe one day we'll, we'll be Tame Impala or, you know, some other band
10:31that can hire our Arctic Monkeys that can hire, you know, 10 musicians and we'll keep it all
10:36alive.
10:36But for now it works.
10:37And, uh, this is, uh, orange, uh, Crush 60 C, I want to say, all solid state.
10:47Um, it's great.
10:48Uh, really nice sparkly clean tones, but I use it on like mid, mid gain settings on the dirty
10:54channel.
10:55And, um, just pretty much up the middle tone wise.
10:58I really don't feel the need to push it in any direction.
11:02And then this is the, uh, Fender Rumble 500 Watts, which is stupid how light it is.
11:10Uh, this whole, this whole line is just absurdly light.
11:13I can't believe that it's 500 Watts.
11:15Um, and yeah, more or less, you know, pretty centered tone.
11:19I try to control as much up here and keep the amps basic so that I'm not like sending
11:24extra gain or fuzz down the line at all.
11:28Um, so yeah, that's pretty much it for the house.
11:30We just go direct out, uh, for the base amp.
11:34So any years, uh, we went to ultimate ears.
11:37I got the Spider-Man colors for right and left ear.
11:41And, uh, and I'm using Dunlop, uh, I think 88 millimeter picks, a little extra grip
11:47because I like to move, I get nice and sweaty.
11:50So a little extra grip goes a long way.
11:52If you want to know more about our setup, want to listen to our music.
11:55Uh, you want to join, uh, uh, a rising fan base that is just storming the world at this
12:01very moment.
12:02Uh, you can get in now by joining the rare occasions.com, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter,
12:08maybe Tumblr everywhere on the internet.
12:10You can just check out the rare occasions and, uh, stay posted for some new tunes.
12:18Bye.
12:20Bye.
12:36Bye.
12:47Bye.
12:48Bye.
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