This diagram has always been pretty funny to me. They got their info from Zakk himself, and it shows how an artist can be useless for these kinds of things. For starters, the CH-1 wasn't launched until May 1989.
But now I'm going down the rabbit hole of Zakk's live rig from the era, and it's kind of insane both how inaccurate this diagram is and how different Zakk's rig was.
The first thing I did was look at live footage. In footage from the Moscow Peace Festival I noticed Zakk had a trio of Boss pedals on his board: the SD-1, a chorus and, in-between them, a phaser! There was also a large foot control, which caught my interest.
The search led me to a Japanese blog, which finally had the info:
So Zakk's pedal chain was a Dunlop Crybaby -> Boss SD-1 -> Boss PH-2 -> Boss CE-3. The foot controller on the board is a Yamaha MFC-1.
Then you get to the rack. He had three GP1000s, two Metaltronix heads and the SPX90 we all know about. But he also used the Roland DEP-5, the BBE Model 401 Sonic Maximizer and Ashly Audio FTX-2001 power amps, as well as a Rocktron Hush suppressor and some other shit I can't make out, with a Furman PL8, Samson DA-4 wireless received and Simmons SPM8:2 MIDI mixer tying it together.
Based on the setlist the photos were taken backstage on Feb 27, 1989.
This is the first I have ever heard of Zakk using a CE-3. And he appeared to be using it in mono. My guess is that he used it (and the phaser) for moments, with the SPX90 providing his chorus. Two of the GP1000s are set for clean and dirty (the third is likely a backup), so this is the only period where Zakk was channel switching.
When Ozzy went back out on the road in 1991 his rig was much more elegant, I think. Using the chorus pedal to split into two heads is just a more efficient way of doing things.
What's funny is for all the talk about Zakk using a CH-1 (and Boss releasing an extremely limited signature version of it), I can't find a single photo of one on his board.
