Kasim Sulton in Studio2Stage Magazine

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Kasim Sulton appears in an advertising / article in the Autumn 2000 edition of Studio 2 Stage magazine. There is a quote from him about the Bass POD by Line 6. Click here to see the full article. As it's a large file, I have reproduced it below (complete with their spelling!)

KASIM SULTON In addition to playing bass with Todd Rundgren and Utopia, Kasim Sultan has recorded with Meat Loaf, Celine Dion and The Indigo Girls. "I've been through every foot pedal known to bass players, looking for a compliment to my stage and studio sound. The bass POD offers everything from amp modeling to effects in one box. Clean, quiet, and most important - useable. Finally, something that's everything it claims to be - for stage and studio."

We know you use Amp Farm - now we hear you've added a Spider and an AX2 to your Line 6 gear: How did that come about?
I went looking for an amp last summer after I got complaints from my own band that they couldn't hear me on stage. (I use to go direct into the monitor system.) I don't know how many amps I listened to when I went to Guitar Center to pick one out, but the spider sounded immediately great, so I bought that. I think the thing about the Spider is that I can get a good sound without having to crank it up too loud. Because I'm also a record producer, I can't afford to blow my ear out with incredibly loud guitar amplification on stage. I also like the stereo built in. That just make it sound much nicer.
So, if the Spider was working out for you, what made you get an AX2??
For the last few years, I've played with at least two other guitar players. But, when we were preparing for this tour, it turned out that both of them had other gigs and couldn't come with me, so I wound up with a power trio - me, a bass player and a drummer. When I realized I was going to be the only guitar player, I wanted more programming capabilities, so I got the AX2 - on the very last day of rehearsal! I whipped through it in a couple of hours, so we could get a least a day's rehearsal with the amp before I had to go out and play. I don't think it would have been possible for me to accomplish what I did in one day with any other setup. We play for an hour-and-a-half to two hours, and I have to cover all the sounds. There's your power pop, and your more heavy metal type stuff and your progressive stuff, so I am using maybe a dozen different sounds. There's a high level of discipline because I've got to keep that sound going all the time. It's required me to really get back to where I was in the Utopia days, but without even a keyboard player. We do a couple of songs with some recorded backup, but only two or three during the set. The rest of it's all trio.

With the AX2, I have a much higher degree of control than I had with other things - and it gives me the tools I need to keep the sounds from becoming boring during the course of the show. No matter what you're playing, if people hear the same guitar sound for an hour, it starts to lose it's excitement. It's the contrasts that people enjoy. The Ax2 has a good variety of sounds - a little Jimi Hendrix, a little straight ahead, some Foreigner rock guitar sounds. The ones I like the best are the one's that are on the clean side. I use a lot of compressor on the front end and a little bit of overdrive. I try not to get the guitar real dirty, but it has this nice, fat sound that you can usually only reproduce in a recording studio. I'm interested to see what will happen when I record with it. It's always appealed to me to just put up and go, and not have to plug in endless pedals, tweak them all, change the batteries and all the other stuff. And I've barely scratched the surface on the AX2 - since I was just trying to get the sounds I knew I needed.

Todd Rundgren's Power Trio at a soundcheck

Many thanks to Dorren Brennan for finding the article originally, to Frank Ciapanna for providing the magazine and to Tim Godwin of Studio 2 Stage Magazine for allowing it to be reproduced here. Copies are available at Line 6.