Erik's Live Rig

Hey all, Erik here. Seeing as Tim threw up his rig, thought I'd let you guys see what's happening on the other side of the stage. Hope you gear hounds are still paying attention...

Warrior "Fully Armed Knight" Guitars These guitars are unbelievable. Excellent build quality and superb tone from these guys. The guitars have a unique neck shape that make them almost effortless to play. The quilt top is loaded with Seymour Duncan Alternative 8 in the bridge position and Jazz bridge in the neck, while the natural mahogany has a Suhr SSH+ bridge and SSV+ neck set. Both sets have tons of output and are coil tapped to allow single coil tones. I like to get silly with my pickups to get different sounds throughout the set. These guys run through my board into...

Splawn Quickrod (early 3 pre version) I've had a lot of great amps, but this guy beats them all (for now). A 'roid raging Marshall. This thing can do Plexi to hot-rodded JCM800 with ease. Get the right pickup combo and the clean is pretty decent too. What's this pumping into?

Port City WaveOS 2x12 "The best sounding 4x12 that just happens to have 2 speakers." I found this beauty in my local guitar super store Dave's Guitar Shop (where I found most of my rig really) and I don't think it'll be going anywhere. This cab blows me away every time I plug into it. The front port design adds the low end and thickness of a 4x12 without the extra speakers or weight. This beat out a Mesa OS 4x12 in my book. And then there's.....

THE BOARD! This guy is ever changing for me, but it's loaded with some awesome effects to bring out the layers Tim talked about earlier in Avoh. Starting in the upper left, a TC Electronic Hall of Fame Reverb. Awesome reverbs from old school spring 'verbs to haunting cavernous echos. Modtone Analog Delay, cool little short analog delay for some leads. ISP Decimator G String pedal to keep things quiet. Eventide Pitchfactor, TONS of cool sounds in this guy, great harmonies and synths in this. When I get bored I start going thru this thing to see what other sounds I can find in it. Korg Pitchblack Plus tuner, great reliable tuner with two inputs programmable for different tunings. From bottom left, Line6 DL4 Delay Modeler, fantastic delays in this thing with an easy to use looper, MXR EVH Phase 90, the coolest phaser I think, the EVH model has the old school "script" version and the newer "block" phase. T.C. Jeaurnig Gristle KING pedal. Great tube screamer on the left, gain boost on the right. Many cool tones from this guy. You can even switch the gain boost to be pre or post tube screamer to act as a volume boost or gain boost. Everything is connected from board to amp with a cool cable called the Pedalsnake. It has four different cables in one, each with Midi connectors on the ends that accept different adaptors to run audio or power signals, so I can keep my power supplies back behind my amp and run audio to the front of the amp and to/from the effects loop. Cool thing is that as my rig changes, I can change the ends of the cables as needed without buying different cables altogether, plus it's just one calbe running to the board instead of 4 or 5. So there it is! You can see all this and us on tour in just a few days!

Creating Layers Live: Tim's Rig

So, for the gear nerds out there I thought I'd give you a run-down of what I use live to recreate all the righteous sounds we have on AVOHFASIH. I'll go through it in list form to make it nice and easy!

- AMP -
• ENGL PowerBall - Best head I've ever owned. Reliable, tough, and loud as fuck. Plus the focused mid option gives my tone some extra fat.

• Marshall 4x12 - To be honest, I'm not sure exactly what this cab is, but it's loaded with 4 25 watt BlackBack speakers. Insanely gnarly.

*Dahlia to fat-awnry cat not included*

- PedalBoard -
• Homemade board

• Line 6 MM4 - I basically picked this up because I couldn't fine a Phase 90 locally. Dave's guitar in La Crosse had this thing laying around. It has phase, flange, tremolo, chorus, etc etc. Fun to mess with, and I use it for some auto-wah and flange type stuff live here and there.

• ISP Decimater - Noise gate, I try not to use this unless we have a part in a song that requires real silence, otherwise, I just like to let the amp hum and hiss all she wants.

• T. Juernig Gristle King - The king of versatile overdrives, hand-built right here in Wausau by a rad dude named Tim Juernig. We used this for most of the overdrive/distorted tones on AVOH in some way, and I have it on live for various parts to add thickness. Also, I use the second channel of it for a solo boost. It's not the cleanest of boosts, but who the hell cares, it sounds fucking awesome.

• Korg Blackout Tuner - nice and simple, registers low tunings well. Can't beat it.

• Channel switch - lets me access all 4 channels of my amp with just 2 little buttons.

• Line 6 DL4 - I use this pedal for tons of stuff. It has a bunch of great delay, and a 16 second loop, which we use live for "From Depths, I Rise" to get multiple guitar lines layered for the intro.

• Eventide SPACE - You can't find a cooler pedal than this. Honestly the only thing I've found that rivals it is the Eventide Pitchfactor, which Erik has on his board! haha. In all honesty though, If you need reverb, delay, or just some crazy sounding stuff, this pedal can do it. You could ask my wife how many times we've been listening to music only for me to turn it down and say "I bet I could make that sound with the SPACE" and you'll probably get and angry look and a answer something like "too god damned much" lol. If you ever have a chance to play


   

And that's it! Other than a couple LTD guitars and some monster cables!
Thanks for looking and feel free to ask questions if you have any!

mind-numbing detail.