Give a listen to funky stylings of Boston fusion band FRIT, and you'll be instantly impressed with the way the guitar and keys are balanced in their sound. How does one begin to assemble the toys for creating a guitar tone that can get along so nicely with keys without taking over the mix? BoyBand 625 asked FRIT guitarist Rob and keyboardist Noah to be our guides.

It's not anything incredibly special, so there's no sense in keeping it secret....

Firstly, my main (and only) guitar is a Paul Reed Smith Hollowbody II, which is simply fantastic. It's my baby. The pickups are pretty low output & really clear-sounding, which is nice because then I get to crank my amp a little more, thusly letting the tubes do what they do best: distort.

I use pedals as well, starting with an unmodded TS-9. It's unmodded on purpose, because I want the fat, mushy, compressed OD to contrast my other OD, which is an Analogman King of Tone. That pedal is really, really nice, and sounds nothing like the TS-9. It basically sounds like a Fender turned all the way up, with no compression or anything. Just really clear with not a lot of gain. I also use an Electro-Harmonix POG, a T-REX Replica delay, and an Electro-Harmonix Small Stone Phaser. Sometimes I use a Line 6 DL-4 delay, too, if I want to make wierd noises.

My amp is probably the most crucial part. It's a 1978 Silverface Fender Vibrolux. It's had the shit modded out of it though. All the circuitry has been redone and gutted to be the same as a blackface. And It's got two 10-inch Kendrick speakers instead of the stock ones. I didn't do any of the mods. I bought it already modded. It's a great amp, and I especially like that it breaks up beautifully at reasonably low volumes. Occasionally, I will even do gigs with no pedals and just plug directly into the amp and crank it to get my gain.

There ya go!

My main keyboard is a Nord Electro 2. I use this mainly for organ but I also use it for Rhodes, Wurlitzer, and a clean clavinet. It really is the best at what it does - not only because the patches sound incredibly real, but because of the manipulability of the all the sounds. Everything on the Nord had adjustable parameters that really let you tweak it to find your own sound. Due to the fact that the Nord has many pedal-like effects built-in, I just plug it straight into my Roland 500 key amp. The amp is a standard solid-state keyboard amp with a large speaker that has a great flat respone for keyboards.

I also have Yamaha Motiv 8 that I plug straight into the amp and use mainly for piano. My last alternate keyboard is a Yamaha DX-7. The DX-7 is a classic 80's synth that uses a very hard-to-program form of synthesis called Frequency Moduladion (FM). The DX-7 has been used by many, many famous keyboardists including but not limited to Stevie Wonder, Brian Eno, Chick Corea, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Donald Fagen and Herbie Hancock. I originally bought this synth to use as a talkbox synth but once I got it I realized it had much more potential. After really exploring around I found a sound that I use all the time. I use the DX-7's pre-programmed 'clav ensemble' patch to start. I run that through a standard Cry Baby Wah and a Pro Co RAT distortion pedal. It happened to be an amazing dirty clavinet sound that I could pitch bend and vibrato which can be quite difficult on a regular clavinet. This guy also goes straight into my Roland 500.