So let's start things off with a description of your current rig.
My current rig consists of an older Mesa Boogie rack mount dual rectifier head pushing two Jackson 4X12 red cone cabinets. The cabs are 16 ohm so I'm daisy chaining them to stay at 16. My pedal board right now consists of running into a CFH wah at the start and from there I go into an Ibanez TS808. It's the best overdrive pedal you can get in my opinion. Nothing even comes close. From there I'm going into an MXR EVH phase 90, and the last pedal before my amp is a boss NS2 noise suppressor.
I've been thinking of adding a nice delay to my board as well. From time to time I'll alternate my chorus and flanger pedals in the chain to but those four I'm running now are always my mainstays. That's what I run for recording and practice but when I'm playing live I also go through a sennheiser wireless. It's the only wireless I've yet to have a problem losing signal. Most other ones I've used are pretty good but I would always have one venue on a tour where the signal was just shot.
As for guitars I always play Ibanez. Both of mine are custom spec'd and built at the Ibanez shop in LA and they're almost done with the new one I spec'd out. All my guitars are always loaded with EMG pickups. 81 at the bridge and an 85 at the neck.
One of the biggest mainstays in my rig has been an overdrive that's been modeled after an 808. Have you tried different pedals out?
Yeah I've tried other overdrive pedals and none have come close to my TS808.. It's my favorite pedal I've ever had and I might go as far as chopping Someones arm off for even looking at it too long. Haha in all seriousness though, I have the mxr overdrive with the line boost channel and though it's a great pedal it's not a tube screamer. I've also tried the zakk wylde overdrive and didn't care for that either. Maxon makes a pretty cool overdrive that's comparable. Like I said... The TS808 is the best.
I am very jealous over the Ibanez Custom Shop access. How did that relationship start?
The relationship with ibanez started when I was still in bleeding through. Both Brian and I jumped ship from ESP because we were being treated like shit by the new A&R guy who didn't take us seriously. He's still at ESP and I don't want to go into details but we just were over his lack of interest in us. Brian met the ibanez rep and immediately signed on while I was going to try and get in with B.C. Rich. After talking to the guy at ibanez I learned about several artists jumping ship with B.C. Rich over the same complaints I had with ESP. Ibanez obviously make very high quality instruments and I decided to give them a try. I instantly loved the production models they sent me and soon after they were building me custom built models that I spec'd out. Their artist rep is still my same dude after 6 years and I won't play anything else. They make the best guitars period. And the fact that I've remained close friends with my rep since then and I'm treated well my loyalty is set in stone with them. Play one of their high end models and I dare you to tell me it's not better than any of their competitors instruments.. I'm still very proud to be playing the best there is.
I know that you have been recording for Falling to Pieces off/on for the past couple of months. What have you been using for this and how does it differ from your live setup?
With falling to pieces I run all the aforementioned gear live and I've used all of it for the recording process. I recently scored a deal with peavey again however that didn't go through til after the recording. I'll be running the Mesa head still but swapping out the Jackson cabs with peavey 6505 cabs. I'll also be powering one cab with the Mesa and the other cab with a 6505 head splitting the two with an a/b box. I've done this in the past and gotten the most amazing tone. It would have been nice if I'd gotten the gear in time for the recording but what can ya do? For all the leads and solos we lined everything direct and reamped since we wrote the leads as we were recording. I wish we'd done the same when I laid down the rhythm tracks but the guy recording them insisted we didn't need to. I suppose he was right but I think if we had reamped the rhythms in the studio we're taking it to the pinch harmonics would have been brighter and the tone would be thicker. All in all I'm happy with the sound I got out of it and if it were too perfect it might have taken some of that "something special" away. Live it all going to be what I've mentioned except I'll be running my wireless.
How do you approach recording? Do you have a general idea of what you're going to use?
My approach with recording is to use what I'm playing live to replicate the tone on the record. That's why I stick with my main rig for most of the tracking but I do like to get some different tones to mix in. That's where the peavey gear and another head or two as well as maybe a different cab could have been useful. I also like tracking with different guitars in the studio. I mainly stay with my Ibanez guitars bit tend to use some of my gibsons too when in the studio. I have this 81 explorer I bought from Andy Williams about 5 years ago that plays and sounds like a fucking dream! The neck and fret scale are smaller than most so you can fly up and down the neck on that thing. But yeah, I'm usually in the "zone" with what I'm going to use when recording.
If you could point to one specific album or band, what would you say that ultimately shapes the tone that you are going for?
As for one specific album I could pinpoint... That's a tough one. Especially when I'm hearing new records come out that just keep getting better guitar tones. Lately I'm really liking the tone on the most recent acacia strain record. I also really like the tone on all shall perish's awaken the dreamers. Sometimes I hear a record that has terrible production and the guitar tone may sound fuzzy but it just has this certain sound that makes it brutal so it's too hard to pinpoint a specific record. I will say that my favorite tone I've gotten on a record was when I recorded "the truth" with bleeding through years back. It may not be my favorite record I did with them but the tone was so pissed off and in your face. It's funny too because I should have gotten a similar or possibly better tone from the portrait of a goddess record with the gear I used. On portrait I ran a Mesa Boogie power amp with a tri axis preamp. That shit was so brutal but the idiot that produced it had me retracking so much and ended up using 8 tracks for a thicker sound. That ended up being a terrible idea as it sounded like a giant wall made of diarrhea that was recorded on a boombox in Someones toilet. For the truth it was a combination of a 5150, triple rectifier, and a VHT pitbull with a Marshall cab and a VHT cab. A couple songs we used my Jackson cab with the white cones. I will say this though... One record that constantly sticks out in my mind as having awesome tone is carcass's heartwork. That was almost twenty years ago and still sounds amazing! I guess I already have the tone I'm looking for even though I'm always checking out new things to improve on it.
To me the Carcass Heartwork album is perfect. The tones, riffs, and solos are incredible. I would love to know how that was recorded.
The carcass record just slays in every aspect. To think that after all these years it still makes most records sound terrible! The riffing and soloing is also incredible. I would love to hear how this was produced and engineered. Just goes to show how much talent went in to it and resulted in a timeless classic!
Is there anything out there that's on your "Bucket List" when it comes to equipment?
Wow. There's a million things I can think of but to shorten it up I'd say for a guitar... A 1957 les paul custom would be my list topper. For pedals... Too many to list so again my list topper would be an original TS808 modded by Wes Keely. As for amps... I already have my head but I'd love to have some vintage jcm 800 Marshall cabs from the late 60's era. I'll stop now as this could go on and on and possibly bore/annoy the shit out of your readers.
