Jan Akkerman Quotes

I got a little piano when I was 2, but you couldn't play anything on it because the black keys were out, so it was all tonal. It was just a few years later that I saw this little guitar in a shop window by my home, and on Christmas day I had it. It cost ten bucks, and since that time I've played day-in day-out, year-in year-out. My father said I should know more about the guitar, so he arranged it so that I got a scholarship from the state, and I had to do an exam for this guy. I did that for five years, and then I was getting questioned on the theoretical side so they said, "Out!" But I can read very well now. I also read tablature, the 15th and 16th Century notation of the music for the lute.
Jan Akkerman

I'm still developing. Leslies are my thing. I forgot about the Leslie sound when I left the Brainbox because I thought it wasn't original, and when I left they got two other guys who used them so I just said forget it. I've just started using them again, and they're so lovely, so beautiful; that sound, that rotating sound, you can't get it with no phaser, with nothing. It's so alive, it just spreads it around.
Jan Akkerman

I'm developing now a new kind of approach in using amps. I'm using the Crowns as slave amps and a pre-amp - totally studio equipment. I also use six Leslies and two big Fender solid-state amps; the old transistor things. They don't build them anymore. Now I'm using JBL speakers and Fender cabinets. The Crowns are really powerful. I use two, stereo, so that's four times 600 watts, and I've put very high- powered speakers in the Leslies: JBLs. They're just regular Leslies, but I've done something to the motor: I've switched systems. I've taken the amps out and driven them directly into the speakers and drivers - better sound quality - and I'm using the JBLs in the Fender cabinets. I have four ten-inch JBLs in each cabinet. I like having that much power, always.
Jan Akkerman