By Bobby Tanzilo Senior Editor/Writer Published Oct 02, 2006 at 8:37 AM
We were dismayed to receive this email over the weekend. Sadly, this is an all-too-common occurance. Hopefully, Milwaukee's music community can help one of its own find the gear.

Chris Vos' (Freshwater Collins) touring rig was stolen outside of his home earlier this week in Milwaukee. All three of the guitars listed below are totally unique and easy to indentify. Please contact us if have any information that could help lead to recovering these instruments and effects:

contact@freshwatercollins.com

The Milwaukee Police have been notified and many regional music and pawn stores have been contacted.

STOLEN GEAR LIST

1-Black Tokai Hummingbird electric guitar, with Bigsby tremolo system, black and white striped humbucking pickups. Very unique, only guitar that will look like it in existence, including a custom Bigsby put on it and zebra striped humbuckers.

1-Light blue American-made, Fender Stratocaster with matching blue headstock… Very unique, with the blue headstock that matches the body color.

1-Light blue Fender lap steel slide guitar from the '60s. White tuning pegs, serial number is “PAT Pending” Very unique.

The following pedals were all on two homemade pedal boards. They may either be together or separate.

1-Moog Murf MF105 and Expression pedal with Tap Tempo pedal attachment

1-Moog 12 Stage Phaser MF 103, and Expression pedal

1-Electro Harmonix Deluxe Memory Man

1-Electro Harmonix Octave Multiplexer

1-Electro Harmonix Small Stone Phaser

2- Green RPG Overdrives, same color green as an old Tube Screamer

1- Boss DS 1 Distortion, orange

1- Boss Chromatic Tuner Pedal, white

2- Morley A/B passive foot changer pedals
Bobby Tanzilo Senior Editor/Writer

Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.

He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.

With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.

He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.

In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.

He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.