Some words about the players I've encountered over the years: First of all I must say that I am extremely happy to have been associated with so many outstanding players.

I've had the fortune to play with (listed in no specific order of merit) Yngwie, John Norum, Pontus Norgren, Freddie Åkesson, Tommy Denander, Magnus Ericsson (Eclipse), Jason Bieler (Saigon Kick), Brian Young. All world class.
And the drummers. I've worked with ke Ericsson, Hempo Hilldén, and Anders Johansson who are all excellent. My absolute favourite players behind the kit are Jamie Borger and Tomas Broman.
I just can't hold one over the other, they're both just great. And the utterly amazing thing is that they come from the same area of Sweden, the are about the same height, almost the same sort of body structure, interest in hockey, drumkit "design", age, speaks almost the same dialect.

Superficially the apparent differences is that one is darkhaired and more on top of the beat, and one is (mostly) blond and with a little more backbeat going.

Jeff Scott Soto is of course my favourite singer and also my brother for life.
Over the years I've worked with some excellent guys: Tomas Vikström, Matt Alfonzetti, Göran Edman, Mats Léven , and for my tribute band we sometimes get Jake Samuel to entertain the crowd (which he certainly does). You all have impressed me.

My sound: The idea is to have a clean super compressed sound with the right lows and highs, and blend it with an equally compressed heavily distorted sound with the lows and some of the "dangerous" hi's and mid hi's cut (you do not want problems with too much fret sounds or too much of the "hard" mid qualities that makes it difficult to shape notes properly), and the right mids hjda. The sound I'm looking for is raw and soft at the same time, with just as much sustain as a guitar player needs. The notes should come out even across the fretboard, pretty much like bricks in a brick factory. And they should be "visible" through the din of distorted guitars and powerful rock drums. The distortion, sustain/compression, and the notes I try to find all need to work together to accomplish this.

Gear: The very best sounding amp I ever used is the Bass Rockman. It's basically a cheap piece of plastic crap, I've busted a few, but there is nothing that even compares to it. The compression is just perfect, the tone, the sustain, the feel...I've kept it as the foundation of my sound since 1985. Nowadays I keep it rackmounted in order to help keep it whole. For distortion I found that a Zoom 9030 was just perfect, with great compression, distortion with EQ, and amp/speaker simulation that wasn't perfect but had some good settings. Unfortunately sometimes you can't get electronic things "fit", and I always had problems with hiss and weird feedback when I hooked them up. Now I use a Boss ME5 that's allright. Both signals go through EQ's (a Boss 24 band and a Rane parametric) and then to a Rane mixer, from which I go direct to a board either live or studio.

The picks are Jazz III's, ever since Pontus showed them to me I can't use anything else. Before that I used Fender 1.21's. And the strings...they have to be stainless steel, free of nickel, or I lose the skin on my finger tips when I sweat. There have been great brands over time, Rotosound, Yamaha, Bill Lawrence. Today the only brand of strings I can use are EBS Nordic Steel strings, but they are too damn expensive. The gauges are standard .045, 0.65, 0.85, 1.05.

And finally. The best new piece of equipment I've found is the Line 6 Bass POD PRO. It was a shock for me to hear the settings for the Ampeg SVT rig, it sounded exactly like the rig I used on tour with YJM in -85. This little box had the same sound as three heads and six 8"X10" cabinets...it just gave me the chills! We use it to good effect in the studio (hard disc recording) where the digital format works perfectly. The compression, the filters - it's beautiful! Unfortunately the distortion just plain sucks, and so far I'm dissatisfied with how I get it to perform live.