Rig Rundown - Animals as Leaders

[Music] hey what's up YouTube Perry here with premier guitar and Nashville Tennessee today at marathon music works hanging out with Animals As Leaders toastin what's up man how are you today it's great to see you again this is a pleasure we're over here in Guitar World I will start with guitars and then we'll get into some kind of a newer stuff with your with your gear yeah but first and foremost we got a ton of questions about your your Ibanez sig that everybody seen you play it's gorgeous nothing is so weird looking at me let me talk about that first yeah of course and then this is featuring your fluence pickups right yeah so this is a prototype I've been working on with Ibanez it's an original design it's inspired by a lot of the ergonomic guitars that I had custom-made for me for me I wanted to bring some of those design features into the Ibanez catalog so it's a lightweight super thin bodied guitar huge cutaway here so really cool input location and this cutaway allows for like if you do a classical seated position you can balance the guitar there if you do more of a traditional seating you've got this cutaway obviously hmm you have ton of fret access I mean literally we can touch this without much difficulty this is a bolt on construction because I like the sound of bolts on guitars and it also helps to keep the cost down just because what do you like about the sound of all time I said a different sustain I mean there's snappier I mean I haven't done an objective test on my own but that is good and so yeah what's cool is this this horn comes all the way up to the 12th fret which is allows us to sit the neck of the body so deep into the actual guitar that you have less of them of this wide arm sort of thing and you can play a little bit more tucked in with eight string guitars the scale lengths are longer so a lot of them you'll get on them and you feel like you're playing this big surfboard so this kind of looks pretty normal I mean even though the it's a lot more access but it doesn't feel like a huge yeah yeah what's cool is we did a fan fret thing which allows for a longer scale length in the bass and then you can have a traditional scale length in the trouble so basically it's twenty at five and a half inches which is your standard you know electric guitar I think most guitars are between 4.7 and 25 now and then this is 27 which allows for you know complimentary temperament and tension to that make sense and floppy it's not flopping sure so my whole thing with this design was to make an 8 string guitar it didn't feel like a surfboard and undo tar-like so that Cole's fan fret thing allows for your bends and your vibrato to feel the same tension wise and it allows you to get that like really clear low-end and then I actually narrowed the string spacing so it's more narrow and that you know once you subtract a little bit of space between the strings you do it eight times you've really kind of taken off quite a major self force around yeah yeah so the width of this neck is really um quite narrow compared to the average age string so I think if you're a six string player or a seven string player this would be the most comfortable 8 string you could find actually I do a ton of lead work and a lot of eight strings are really geared towards kind of metal sure and they don't necessarily like I think feel as great as they could so this is supposed to be like a really playable age string so it's a beautiful concept I thanks I love it so tell me more about the pickup so when you guys you know I first found out about these from ken CC you know over at Fishman yeah and he was like teach you gotta come in here and here this was that man like I was kind of blown away this sound great Thank You Lee really good sound yeah they're really cool I don't know if you can see but can you see that we're actually charging this one so it's an active pickup it's a power to pick up Howard pickup okay I prefer to save power because active pickups have their own sound and that doesn't yeah I think the active sound you're used to kind of has like a hard limit on it so they're known to be less dynamic and kind of compressed sure these are powered just because of the technology it's just not a passive but it feels like the middle ground between passive and then you get a lot of the cool dynamic features you get out of an active pickup for instance there is some welcome compression that you get out of these so for really detailed work you you're not really like losing information on the lower dynamic the pickup does have a bit of like compression to it but there's no ceiling on it you're not hitting this hard limit with preamp clipping these just behave differently so they're they're actually a coil it's just like 48 layers that are imprinted as opposed to mechanically wound so you get 100% consistency and you're not bound by the limitations of normally winding a pickup because that process is literally like you make a physical pickup and if you don't like a feature of it you've got to get out another pic of it all again yeah how many wines what type of magnet like and then if you change say that's too bright well that might affect the output of the pickup if you change that if you change the output of the pickup it might affect the low-end clarity or if you change the resonant peak you might be changing like beyond that the treble range it's like Ollie's a compromise with traditional pickups yeah everything's intrinsically tied and a lot of guys are passive pickups that they love I was one of them but this is literally like you know almost like 4k television it takes the sound that you're the image that you're used to and it just adds this like this sharpen sharper version of it that is just like remarkably cute you didn't even know until you heard it right yeah you almost like the a/b comparisons are where you really you're just like wow it's kind of like when I phone puts out a new iteration and you look at the old screen and you're like I never knew that I was missing something until I'm like looking at this new yeah sure yeah yeah interesting yeah so anyway that's that's this you know this is just another one off on this one's really cool it's when the consumer model comes out will also be fan fretted yeah it'll be virtually identical to both yeah I like to spec my signatures exactly the way I planned her another thing I noticed immediately is that with the extended range guitars you're gonna have a totally different neck shape than a traditional guitar when you couldn't call that a V or a C or anything like that it definitely does its own yeah did you notice this one this was actually a teardrop shape yeah it's like graded it's yeah it's asymmetrical sure um it was an experiment basically on a six string guitar kind of like a fat neck but on a extended-range guitar like a flat and thin neck because when you're borrowing across that many strings you don't want a baseball bat totally but I think the baseball bat feel is good when you're doing a lot of legato stuff and you need that pivot point for your design yeah so I try to combine both it's kind of hard to see but yeah it's kind of a teardrop shape that is flat and fan at the top and then kind of thick and round at the bottom yeah that makes sense man what an innovative cool piece of gear man thanks has it inspired any of the new stuff like since you've had that particular yeah guitar yeah and I've been playing on it and yeah you know it's kind of like my main guitar and I've written a lot of stuff on it so so here's here's actually another guitar that I got probably in 2013 this is made by oldest Strandberg this is actually number eight and the eighth guitar he's ever made this one he emailed me it was just like hey I got this idea for like a baritone eighth string so you can see the fret board extends beyond but for the two strings yeah so this is in a 440 but when you get here you have an a below standard an octave below standard a and then you have C sharp here but if I was the capo decide complete the nut and have a normal friend guitar so this goes as low as five string bass sharp yeah it's pretty cool that is fun yeah and then um the neck here is actually asymmetrical as well it's in the other direction this is a p1 n1 concept by Rick tune intersecting planes instead of a round surface for your thumb he kind of imagined flat surfaces flat planes that um were supposed to provide more stable you know more stable surface for your thumb so you're not rolling around you're kind of planted like so this has facets it's three different planes so it's interesting because depending on where you're playing when your hand naturally makes this shape you know so when it's in your hand make sense that you would be able to yeah if you're doing a bend maybe your thumb comes up the top well you've got this sort of plane here but if you're you know pushing from the bottom it gives you kind of like this slanted surface to push upward on and then on the back it's also flat so the idea is that it's more stable because you're not on like a curved surface you're on a flat surface it's pretty it's pretty it's a mold very variable guitar is this thing chambered it looks like it almost yeah it's a semi-hollow guitar this has lace pickups in it this was like a you know early thing that I got from Strandberg I think he's evolved a bit but this is pretty true to his current designs and it's a personal favorite for sure yeah that's beautiful and that toggle what is that just a three-way yeah it's his three-way switch there's no coil tap or anything and then I'm actually playing a nine string guitar on this this could land a jet on a thing oh yeah this is an Ibanez prestige nine string it has bare knuckle pickups in it and I think they did a really good job with it um it has two truss rods in it you can see them Wow yeah yeah I don't know if you can see that so Wow yeah this goes down to H at C sharp so it's similar to the Strandberg but instead of nine strings this is an eight string with an extended like a baritone scale and this is just a whole another string so there's a song I play this on and then now is the double truss rod because there are so many strings and the tension is so tight look it's for the tension and the width of the neck yeah Mac for sure I'm also playing this Kiesel nylon string guitar this design is cool because it doesn't actually have much acoustic quality to it and I'm playing with a metal drummer and I like loud wedges so on a coup stick wood feedback and proved itself pretty difficult to use in this context but this is it's it's Paizo direct and it allows me to play at loud volume but get that nylon string sound so and if it kind of feels like an electric it's interesting like the neck that is like closer to a you know a standard yeah it's our so it's a really cool hybridized sort of feel you're not you know fighting the string tension and height of like a classical guitar but you get that sound right like a lot of time on cut string guitars that action is just kind of out of control yeah the lower this is low I mean you literally feel like you were playing a telly or something that's cool yeah what's come I've seen you play this I guess for like yeah brain dance drain dance yeah yeah and what's funny about that song is um there's a ton of legato in it and it's really hard to do on a normal classical but because this feels like an electric this neck you're able to actually play almost like lead style phrases yeah so very very cool and that is interesting yeah so those are the guitars that booze that all you got with you that's all my guitars are some Javier's but and then your signature over here are you on that pretty much all-nighter yeah yeah I play essentially one guitar on my side some songs I have to play because the the the neck you know the extending or a nine string or a classical but for the most part everything I play is in standard tuning online signature guitar also last I read I think you were really into the NY excels are you still playing those yeah they're dope the DAO NY excels are I don't really know the Mojo behind them but they they feel great they sound they seem to read ten retain that new strings to sound a little longer I've never broken one and they're just kind of like are they coded for people that haven't played them I don't feel a textural difference I don't think that they're coded but they must be doing something different in the manufacturing that's a different core or something yeah yeah but they're dope um how hard is it for you to find obviously you're on tour and you you know have a tech and you're doing this but like for example you're nine string can you just go buy a set of the strings for that or is that something you're piecing together with a they have to build them I mean I work with dear Dario and they send me individual strings and that's how I build my packs but normally you buy like a six string set and you buy individual seven and eight or nine if you hit your doing that cool just wondered about that alright well let's talk about some amps cool alright toasting this this setup looks a little different previous setups typically and you know you were a very very early champion of modeling amplifiers and fractal and stuff like that which I see yeah but I'm also looking at a Morgan which is something I would never have naturally associated you with considering they're pretty known for like being you know low wattage really loud lots of headroom amps yeah so tell me about this change I stumbled upon Morgan's amps when I was working with Seymour Duncan they had one in there you know in their studio that they used just for listening to new pickups and I plugged into it I was like supposed to be listening to my pickups but I was actually like you know what answers yes we stuck at the store we stuck there palladium pedal in front of it and it just sounded huge I was like you gotta be kidding me what is this thing so they were kind enough to hit up Joe Morgan and then he and I started talking you know I started playing this SW 50 R which is kind of like I think it's like loosely based off of a dumb ball okay yeah kind of like I think he might have been working on one for a client and he kind of like was able to kind of one-up the design that he saw I mean this thing sounds great it's like incredibly transparent but it it takes pedals really well so I've been actually using it as my clean tone but also the pet of the platform for all of my drives so my high gain distortions my crazy slap stuff all the leads are just various Drive pedals going into the Morgan so yes it's so you can't do that with every clean hand some of them their way to where you stick a distortion pole in front of like a fender twin or something and it's like it sounds buzz saw a lot of yeah well it sounds that great but yeah how as opposed to getting like you know distortion from an amp I don't know how long it's been since you've played like a standard you know amp this is what the amp distortion like how what's the difference is it like more responsive with pedals or like do you notice the difference in the gain I tend to feel like wide open tube amps sound awesome for distortion but then you can't really that's the one trick you're going to get out of it well the type of distortion we go for is extremely focused very tight low-end precision yeah yeah so I think a good high gain pedal like a well made you know pedal will do the trick and then you just basically have all the power amp compression out of a quality tube head I mean the output transformers that he's using these things they're like I mean they're really they're really expensive and it's almost like driving a car with a really like like a like a v12 engine naturally aspirated super like throttle response is just there it's got tons of power it's like we'll keep going yeah I feel like as a platform that's what this is but then the strange thing is is I'm talking about all this you know output in power but it sounds incredibly clean you can get it to break up if you want like if you dimed that white knob but I'll I've got tons of headroom so when I put that distortion pill in front of it you hear this huge tome but there's a ceiling it's not like it's like anywhere close to like clipping you know there's kind of this like open Headroom to it which is it's just great I really like the feel and sound of it it's an interesting evolution and how you get go about your tone I noticed that the axe-fx is on so I'm guessing you're using it for something still right maybe yeah I'm using the fractal here just as a glorified like delay and reverb for my nylon string Wow so okay that's totally different yeah there is no frack like my tone that you hear live is all the pedals in the Morgan so basically the pedals go into the front of the Morgan not even there's no effects loop on this amp so it's all into the front of it and then that goes the output of that goes to this two notes torpedo live which is basically a load box and I are four cabs and the reason I do that is um mic placement can change and mics can get knocked that allows you to go direct yeah but what's cool because it's a load box it's getting all the like impedance and load from the head so all the dynamics of the head are hard speaking to the to the for the two notes so it we've done like you know a be comparisons and I actually like it's fine to just go direct with this but on stage I do have this bogner 4:12 this is front loaded it's got um I think V 30 s and T 75 s and um is there X pattern yeah I've just been talking to Rhino Bogner recently and like he was kind enough to get us these for the store it sounds great it's essentially for stage volume and then behind you I have the Morgan 212 open back cab interesting yeah I use this as a side fill just cuz like to monitor yourself yes I'll be downstage I've got this cab that you know if I come back here if I want to rock it's a it's a 4-12 it's close back and then this guy I can always hear from the side in case the stage doesn't have side fills or if I want another reference point I'm just surrounded by myself nice open back thing is great because it it definitely has a radius that's different than a closed back cab and I think for the Queen's is just like a breathing that you know I've noticed with the open back cabs like the cleans just it's a totally different sound at all it's it's mind-blowing it really is and a lot of metal guys I don't think would have ever even tried an open that cab because it's so foreign to having music almost yeah I mean but it's cool to see you experimenting with stuff that you wouldn't normally associate with like you know your style of music good good tone lurks everywhere it does it's cool to see what the country guys are doing and what the fusion guys are using for drives and you know various things like are you that guy that's like always chasing the dragon but just constantly yeah but I'm also the guy who's like now a professional touring musician and I'm like you definitely want things to be kind of a well-oiled machine you want to eliminate variables and you want to have consistency and so I try not to just arbitrarily I'll try stuff just yeah but I still just slot stuff in all the doctor well speaking of that let's say let's take a look at this board yeah all right choice and this is always my favorite part of a rundown is when I get to hear the fun stuff you're making all the noise with but before that I have a technique question because you have a guitar on now but I see you playing with picks and without picks and how do you you know dictate what's gonna get a pick what's not yeah it's just such an interesting style yeah certain techniques um like I do a lot a lot of this flap stuff it's kind of like a like alternate picking with your thumb unless you get those cool triplets and stuff so yeah it's like a victor wooten Reggie wouldn't sort of thing that I start applying to guitar and when you have this many strings it's really it's really cool to be able to utilize an open right hand because then you can get a lot of [Music] [Music] so interesting Wow man I love it I just had to ask about that real quick yeah and then as far as pics collect are you really picky about your pic I am picky about my phone all right let's talk about how to hit fun intended these are prime tone it's a signature pic I'm doing with Dunlop oh wow Prine tone is a material that they've come up with and it's like the size of a jazz 3 but I mean these things never wear down and they they have a different feel it's like that really beveled almost like you remember like Red Bear pick so yeah like it's I think it's like kind of targeting that feel which is really dope I really like them and as far as density is it like a Prius 1.4 millimeters okay well it's thick but not oh yeah it's pretty thick that's pretty thick yeah I mean that's a pretty dank little picky cool alright well now on to pedals so walk me through the chain obviously you're going through the octave switch which must make your life a little bit easier yeah so the Carlmont an octave switch is a you know loop switcher that allows you to individually input pedals they all have a location and then you build presets essentially by flipping up little dip switch little dip switch is that you know relate to which position the pedals and so I have this you know it's kind of like a linear signal where I go in there the tuner and then I hit this KH DK clean boost which is a really nice clean boost basically um I use it just to get the Morgan to be like louder because we'll have clean guitar but it's got to cut through another eight string guitar and drums so I want that signal to be clean without breaking up but I needed to be louder right so huge difference yeah is that like an always-on kind of pedal it used to be now I'm like I don't want it to drive my distortion pedals too much so I've started using it specifically when I have clean parts like say I need to so I need that stuff to cut above the mix I'll kick it out sure and then another clean boost I have is this harlow pedal this is a collaboration between Rupert Neve and Reinhold Bogner which is like insane that is crazy so does it is it like a like a Neve pre or something like that or does yeah I think it's kind of got that discrete Neve pre circuitry sound like and then it also has like a transform right like a mini transformer inside battle yeah and so it's a really cool I think they describe it as a compressor for people who don't like compression sure so like I have it pretty moderately sad already conservative so if I was to do something like I mean it's like pretty crazy so like a huge difference yeah I really really dig it and it's it's great for clean parts that I need to cut too as well if I'm doing something even as simple as like [Music] so much more alive yeah it's just excites the signal it gives a little bit of like almost like power and compression and I was gonna say it almost sounds like a type of compression almost like I said like piece of outboard gear really yeah it's it's it's a great pedal cuz it feels like you got your ant louder that's the type of compression you get as opposed to this squashing now only thing you feel like you've turned up your amp it's it's it's like a genius it almost does counterintuitive because when you hear it kicked on it doesn't sound when it's slightly compressed but it almost sounds the image expands yeah it's really really dope so then I have various Drive pedals I have more Drive pedals in game stages than anything else on this board so incrementally if I go from preset 1 to 2 we get to my slap tone which I'm using the freedom in B e OD pedal this is basically I mean Freedman does great stuff it's almost like a Marshall from heaven with like a modern like tight low-end and gain structure so so that's what this guy so I use that there's a trim pod inside the pedal you can gain it down so I've got it internally gain down and then I keep the game like really quite low on it just because for that sound you don't really need a ton of distortion the strings kind of do the [Music] so that's what I use for my slap sounds and even do some [Music] supera tacky like zippy yeah so I love that and um if we go to the next pre-set it's another Friedman pedal that I have eq'd and gained differently haha and this is just my straight rhythm [Music] right crazy yeah and then um the next preset is Miley Tony this is a guy in Tokyo named shoonoo kena who builds these really cool handmade pedals the brand's called letit so this is one of his petals that he sent me and it's a really cool really warm mid-range II sort of sound so let's see you know so actually we're on tour with periphery and uh Misha Mansoor started a company called horizon yeah and I was using this pedal with a different boost so here's here's the pedal without the boost you know [Music] [Music] [Applause] almost focuses it a little more it totally focuses it it kind of we got it trimming off a lot of low-end and you get that sly see sort of [Applause] you know so you get all that pick attack and my hands are freezing yeah yeah yeah I'm seeing this happen with my eyes and my brain cannot process everything that is coming out of the speaker down it as low not and it is freezing in here obviously you guys can't tell that so I'm my mind is blown that you can even play this right now I'm attempting to so that's my lead tone and you can hear some delays right so basically I just got this timeline pedal from Strymon which is really cool I just have it set on like 500 milliseconds [Music] right and I'm using a big sky as well so this is probably my favorite part of having these petals is the Strymon stuff is just gorgeous beautiful and you can do really [Music] sounds like a like a beautiful nightmare it was so and that's the big sky and the timeline together yeah but most of that was the big sky yeah that that crazy I call it like whale sex sounds yeah so I have a basic reverb that's kind of just like and then I have the crazy and then I have something in between that's kind of like [Music] yeah yeah definitely little more subtle but still sounds like David Attenborough should be talking over it you know the guy from like planet Earth and all oh yeah another drive pedal I have is the car Mountain plexi town so Carl Martin they make this loop switcher but they also make a really great sounding Drive so I use this for like when I need that sort of mid gain [Music] [Music] and what's cool about this pedal is that it has three functions like so there's that sort of crunch setting that I was just using you can actually kick in a higher gain setting if you want so [Music] then you can boost it it's like having three channels and a single say that's a lot of time it dynamic overdrive for one petal that's kind of handy yeah they killed it with this design because it's it's literally kind of like three channels you know it's great and then I've recently incorporated this Bogner it's a the red channel I think from the ecstasy and it's a really warm mid-range II so if I did something like [Music] so I use that when I want to lead that doesn't have a ton of top-end to it it's kind of more of a I guess it reminds me of something like a Holdsworth sound you know just Superboy [Music] yeah so okay those are all the drives and then I guess I'm forgetting this pedal here it's an empress parametric EQ and basically it allows me to kind of dial in frequencies that are missing like specifically the mid range because the Friedmann dry pedals don't have a mid Nam yeah I got everything else with no mids and mids are huge so let me see if I just play with it off you get [Music] need to get that clawing low-mid you know fills it right out yeah so that's a great pedal to Paul Reed Smith actually was like check out this battle that send it to me what about ya know the stuff yeah this pedal really came together as a happy accident but yeah I think that's basically it other than I'm obviously am using this phrase sampler it's a boomerang pedal is that just for some atmosphere no I use it for functional stuff too like I might do like [Music] [Music] you know I mean just loop yourself totally yeah that's fine it was clipping my pedals I mean the levels weren't quite set but yeah I use that it's always been a part of my setup and I've written with it I was gonna say that must it has to go into your writing yeah there's a ton you can do it's really cool and then um I think all we have left is the ISP decimator which is just a really cool and obtrusive noise suppressor and it like I noticed during sound check that that thing is really working out you know like you want to hear how well it's working yeah let's see holy so I got a lot of gained ground how much are you sacrificing in terms of like finger response and sustain virtually nothing Wow I mean it's just like it's really it's cool I mean it the way it actually like cuts the noise is like some suppressors feel like a door like the threshold is really hard and you've either got a signal you can hate it or something yeah yeah this is softer but it works extremely well I just think they've somehow figured it out so awesome and then I got a polytune Pro tuner sure well damn dude I guess that about covers it yeah that's everything hey man I can't tell you how much I appreciate this is very very cool I'm excited for the show tonight and we're gonna go talk to Javier about some more guitars and stuff sounds good all right now we're back in Guitar World with Javier Javier thank you so much for doing this so I appreciate it man you've got some cool signature stuff going on I'd love to talk about it one thing that really kind of sticks out to me is look don't you have a eight or nine string strap yeah this guy right here so it's a SP vintage Plus strat essentially it's an eight-string stomach oil I wanted to stay true to the strat you know idea and it's I think one of the first few eight strings with this little bridge over here yeah I think Stefan Harbor has the first wow yeah I love it because it's like such a traditional look for such a non-traditional guitar yeah the older that I get I ended up you know kind of falling into this more traditional sort of vibe I never thought I would have like a strat type of guitar but you know I eventually got a vintage Plus from ESP and I fell in love with a guitar and I was like well alright let me see if I can get a eight string version of it and I just told them to do that I was like you know just build it up for an eight-string the profile of the neck is for my signature guitar I was like alright I already have that I'm used to that why start again sure maple fretboard it has the inlays from my signature guitar as well a little abalone up in there and then the you know a tandro headstock which i think looks awesome sure that's so rad I mean it was it was a strat like your first guitar or was this just not even man I had one of my first guitars I've played something like that I've bought from the local music store whatever yeah big bag and cheap cables but like I said you know I never thought I would get one and being indoors I was like hey let me just try that yeah yeah absolutely hey man that rules and I fell in love with it so you know it had the opportunity to get a custom guitar I was like let's go hard let's do it yeah all right obvious question if you're on the hired register strings does it respond or even sound at all like a strap absolutely really cool absolutely sounds it sounds phenomenal so the pickups all sorrow are DiMarzio what I had them do was take their standard strat set up and just put it exactly yes you know there'll be some differences with wound you know it being wound long you know more copper rather but it sounds great yeah it sounds like you know a strat you know I compared to my the vintage plus that I have the sixth ring in it's on par that's it's kind of the best of both worlds for you guys because you're obviously playing some heavy stuff but your cleans are really clean yeah and that spanky fender ii kind of thing it really helps it does it does and it's awesome with this floyd as well i mean i think when it first started everybody was like okay having a floyd on there it's gonna be too much you're gonna have too much flopping got my first lap same but it works great you know detection is good great I don't have any tuning issues you know if I go ham on it sure but I think that happens on a normal 16 anyway sure so I'm not encountering any extra problems that people were you know expecting so I don't know maybe you'll start seeing these a little bit more that's gorgeous yeah it looks like it's got a kind of a little more severe of a break angle or the neck than a normal guitar yeah to stop it from breaking that's nice yeah I mean I can only imagine I mean this is a dual truss rod object as well absolutely oh it's got to be some serious tension on that absolutely I think for any any extended range guitars you needed to have some reinforcements forced it for sure yeah either carbon fiber do truss rod no is this a bolt on neck it is cool and is it before yeah Wow okay yep very cool maybe a little plate but um they kind of give you a little roundness back here to get up there into the hair mm-hmm frets yeah that's a great guitar man I have it's as soon as I got I was like wow this is plays amazing too cool yeah it's a little slick it is it is it looks super cool I need to get mouth to me gold teeth yeah just match this bring it over there cool what else you got so we have this then my signature eight string is this guy over here seeing you play this quite a bit yeah gorgeous man that maple is awesome yeah it's my this is my workhorse so this quote maple top ash body walnut put Paducah and maple was this a neck through design it is yeah yeah all the way all the way things it looks pretty it's gnarly yeah pretty awesome I think for it being a you know manufactured guitar I think it's probably one of the sickest guitars that you saw I would give if I were to go to the store right now and buy one it would be thirteen hundred just like this just like this just awesome yeah we updated it too but the first version was how to paint it back so you can hardly see the the wood yes yeah I like the natural finishes better me too yeah and I took I had a high-gloss neck and everything so we got rid of that everything has a satin finish now it's so much faster on the neck yeah a lot smoother it feels great you know painted next I've noticed or lacquered necks or whatever man really slow me down because your finger will catch if you're sweaty exactly exactly and it tends to and anything's on your hand it can get stuck to it as well we switched up um they used to have a Hannes bridge and now we switched it to just normal hip shot and we got a little creative with the using some gold little saddles and then but a man who liked matches every liked it this is great yeah you know I already had the gold features if I switch it up to just black I was like it's gonna be a little yes exactly now or these pick up something that already existed or is this something um yes and no I mean it's been a few years now with these are DiMarzio Eclipse eights were essentially my signature pickups spent some time with Steve Luger at a at the Marzio of designing them like nine or I have a kind of a single coil tone to it so a lot of highs is there like a toilet there is there is a coil tap here I rarely rarely use it is that because it's already doing its kind to the second or fourth earth yeah fourth position it already has that quality it tends in my you know someone might find a use for it I haven't yet we it we put it there just because we could we were talking about maybe getting rid of it but it was like why not yes yeah maybe for recording you might find that it does something different yeah you know I haven't used it but someone will so cold might be maple top Avenue fretboard pearloid inlays that's beautiful yeah pretty how the gold makes a pop to you man that's really great yeah and it also looks like them I don't know it doesn't look as severe the break angle on the neck but I love that it also has a ballute cuz with that much tension on the string yeah a lot less likely to snap that oh absolutely this guy so crazy looking headstock to you awesome awesome yeah and you know it's essentially like the mystique body sure hope ESP and 8/1 why went over to them is that the exact same size oh it's a little bit bigger I was gonna say it looks a lot more substantial it's a little bit bigger when he when I see a six rings like whoa but yeah you know when I went over to them I was like look I want something new but I also want us to still keep it ESP and they didn't have anything with that body in the extended range so I was like hey let's do an eighth string and they're more than willing so those guys are grad was awesome super cool um and then I have this little weird guy Strandberg yeah so this is number 63 made by hola himself Wow it's pretty awesome at this point I was kind of already starting to be into that fender world so kind of wanted the pickguard kind of yeah if it's a throwback but man this thing looks so foreign it's not even and it feels so different I mean it's like it's like when I first got it was it took me a while to get used to because my other aides are sure a little bit more substantial in weight and this even have a head stock on it like the centrifugal force feels different when you're moving you know because it's yeah and then these necks also what in the world are pretty different so that is definitely different yeah it's a bit of a trap trapezoidal neck yeah but compensated for per location occasion that's so weird so the idea is that you have this plane that your thumb sure you know slides along it's great it's great design and then in addition we have these two extra frets which we're realizing is kind of hard to figure out how to tab how do I'm sorry tab it oh because technically this is the zero fret you know I mean that would be way below 0 negative 1 or negative 2 or something I don't know we'll figure it out but yeah and these also are the same pickups that I have in my signature guitar it sounds drastically different in this guitar for multiple reasons you know less wood it's also chambered oh is it yeah it is a chamber guitar and they also look offset as compared to your other correct correct but they sound pretty beefy in this guitar so kind of awesome it's an oddball but it's cool for sure yeah yeah it's pretty great guitar all these little features are like functional they're all functional like for playing yeah oh you sound like a Flying V that looks cool but what are you gonna do with it like unless you're playing live you're not gonna practice it's gonna slide yeah yeah this is great you know I love this guy cool and that's about it with guitars well right on man let's uh let's go take a look at some pedals and some amps let's do it alright Xavier here we are at the fun part you were an ass Fox guy I am okay so what you know when you first started diving into that especially for this record are you going after a specific amp sound or is that or it was it just um I think we generally both dozen and I tend to go for almost Marshall II you know super Marshall II type of tones we would always mess with Friedman's in the axe-fx that kind of became the bulk of our tones you know through experiment experimenting I eventually just you know figured out the few amps that I that I typically used and I kind of stick to that and I try to treat it like a real amp were just you know EQ here and there gain maybe some presence and I don't really dive in to crazy crazy sure yeah I hung out with Matt the cone from fractal you know he was like look if you don't know what it is don't mess with it and that advice yeah that kind of just worked yeah you know but yeah I love the axe-fx I mean I it's pretty versatile it's crazy and consistent which is and consistent yeah and from sound judging from sound check sounds great I mean it really does its if I were to AP it at a quiet room blindfolded I mean I don't know that I would be able to immediately identify the difference yeah you know when we were doing this last album we actually spent two whole days in the studio tracking real amps and they sound amazing you know it did take a long time to make all the little adjustments when I went home after I was like alright let me compare it to the axe-fx and we ended up just using the axe-fx before the for the rest of the album because it was extremely extremely close sometimes if not better or cleaner which makes sense it's directs ago that's clean yeah there's no there's no noise there's it's it was it was amazing I remember texting Matt the cone being like you guys really did something special man like that we went in in the studio trying to get trying to disprove surtax effects in some some regards and and couldn't do it mind-blowing yeah very very cool so when you're switching sounds like fundamental sounds between clean and dirty are you switching amps within the axe-fx absolutely cool so I have a variety of things happening I have generally I have a high gain mid gain which I use for my slapping and then cleans my high gain will be I'm using two amps left and right one is a freedman one is a the FAS 6160 I believe which is like the peavey 5150 two different cabs as well in the Freedman I'm using this basket Wave TV makes set is in the fractal and then I have an uber shawl cab which I'm actually what that is in real life sure so kind of have you I mean the cab them impulses is something I've never even gotten a chance to dive into like have you ever a be the difference yeah it's pretty amazing pretty yeah yeah it's it's impressive what they did with the with all their ions it's it's they nailed it you know and you can hear the difference like between different cabs and sure so I guess when I first started diving into the axe-fx I guess yeah I mean my go-to I mean I think like my native tongue musically is metal so obviously I went right for the 5150 because that was my first real amp as a kid and that's like you know an amp I know really really really well for your game tones are using that plus other stuff or is that no no is that yeah I rarely like to use such you know a drive block inside the axe-fx I feel like it tends to take away at my low-end so I just used the amp gain you know crank it up as as much as I need to and that's kind of the tone especially using a combination of amps sure you can you can get a lot done it's crazy yeah and this controller makes life easy because you're not tap-dancing it's not a huge board and if you've got it mapped out like clean crunch exactly that's what I do it's like it's my my gain mid gain clean this is my lead and then this is like a quieter lead for like wet subtly yeah wet you know reverb sort of so it doesn't wash out I'm yeah exactly gotcha that's interesting and then I still have instant accesses so I know that you have you know I clean I kind of dirt and like a real legitimate game yeah and i'm yeah i think we talked to 5150 is kind of like the base for the really high gain stuff yeah things out of the axe-fx obvious combination of 5150 in the Friedmann or the HP cool yeah those things but um would it be possible to hear the difference between you know the clean mid and then your heavy distortion absolutely absolutely so my clean tones [Music] yeah that's about as clean as you'd ever want to be yeah yeah yeah my high gain [Music] [Music] nasty pretty nasty and then more of a slap that we use for you know all the typing stuff that we do crazy you guys literally every single time I hear any record of yours or see one of you guys play a live it makes me want to take all of my gear and throw it right out it hurts my brain almost why do we write it so hard cool and then um the the the the submachine you mentioned there wasn't anything dead on in the axe-fx but this thing kind of has its own sound could I hear it yeah absolutely so this is the tongue I'll have like a somewhat clean ish tone that I run it through [Music] it almost has like an octave fuzz kind of vibe like it's anything a little something boy it is it's sorts of fuzz and October okay and then I have up to two [Music] and so it's giving me a low and a high yeah it's pretty awesome that you have as much there's a fuzz knob so you can add or take away the sub as well and makes a little really fatty you know your tone and volume pretty simple so cool yeah and then the harlow again [Music] I gotta say I'm so impressed with that Harlow it's us it is very cool so here in this clean patch I can bring it there's a part of in the set where I need to loop something I don't want to have to create a whole other patch so what I just did is put it EQ that brings the volume down so it's exact same tone just a little bit just quieter there's nothing happening to the actual tone it's like you perceive difference in tone because of the volume yeah it'll be during a solo section I don't need that patch to be that loud and I'm gonna be looping so I'm gonna be stacking up my parts which it's just gonna be loud is it gonna be loud sure I have fairies in there yeah I want to add a little bit more so much to delay some compression so cool yeah the axe-fx has like a octave er sure it works great but this sub machine also works great and it has a very particular tone we were experimenting when we were doing the album and we were like hey that sounds sounds great I sort of can replicate it in the axe-fx but it just behaves differently the response is different yeah absolutely so keeping it through the album it feeling a little bit more comfortable I kept that pedal I get that and then the same thing with this harlow it's a bit of a compression pedal reinhold inator said there's a compression for people who don't like compression doesn't just told me yeah typically you know you find like um you know a metal guy yeah I feel like compression is very much associated with clean spanky ass Telly's and stuff like that but there's absolutely a place for it metal although it took everyone a while to figure that out I mean it sounds like that kind of is for Louise as well it's great it's it's an awesome pedal you know super sensitive but it looks like you have it's a relatively conservative Lee as well yeah I don't go it can go a little too far you know but push it over the top but yeah I mean want to hear it yeah so this is the tone without it [Music] [Applause] [Music] even a huge difference in volume it's more of a yeah just gives it more more bright yeah we're roundness to the bottom that attack on the top is a little bit more present as well so especially for the finger picture yeah [Music] [Music] not hearing it off it almost feels like it's essential for the quiet and the tapping parts and stuff you know yeah very much so yeah it's a great pedal yeah well it's a real clean easy setup I mean I notice in the background you have a port city but you're not that's just a backup right it's my backup that was my main power amp if you will I was using it essentially as a power amp to power the axe-fx to power my cabs okay everything that I hear in my ears in front of house is all acts effects and then I have a dual signal going out to the cabs that have that doesn't have any captions so that way I can get a little bit of both worlds sure that'sa both yeah yeah we we used to just do you know the direct signals and bring full range speakers and wedges and like powered yeah and it just didn't it never really had that rock vibe you know so I think well at least this way you can feel yourself onstage totally foreign if you guys have ever played an axe FX with with no cab just direct it's it's almost like being in studio it's like as I'm trying through like an iRig on an iPad um so yeah this way we get best of both worlds you know we get to a stage where it feels weird or I can't hear this I can't hear myself take my ear out crank up my cab and it's like a real it's like gosh it yeah normal shot and then it's Burton you know if you're playing smaller venues and you're still going direct with an axe effects it's gonna be beneficial I'll have that cab because anybody in front of you needs to hear that you know pas are usually the first four rows are not gonna hear exactly sure that clean well man I really appreciate you taking the time having right on thank you shape that man your band is incredible you know if you guys are out and about and happen to see Animals As Leaders on tour you should definitely check it out go have your mind blown as my mind has been blown this whole new record is you know I feel like almost a huge departure from your later you know earlier stuff because it's the songs are shorter they feel almost a little more musical man it's it's own thing I love where you guys were taking frog and how its evolving into its own thing it's progressing it is progressing cool min oh thank you thank you don't forget to sign up for PG perks your all-access pass to exclusive gear giveaways and discounts on from your guitar calm

Channel: Premier Guitar

Views: 679,896

Keywords: Animals as Leaders, Tosin Abasi, Ibanez, Ibanez Guitars, 8-string Guitar, 7-string Guitar, 9-string Guitar, The Madness of Many, Weightless, The Joy of Motion, Javier Reyes, ESP, ESP Guitars, Fishman, Fishman Fluence, Guitar, Guitars, Prog, Prog Metal, Progressive, Prog Rock

Id: F4RzdtEt-ak

Length: 60min 46sec (3646 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 26 2017