Just for the record: I upgraded my Jackson JS32Q Dinky. I always wanted to change the original Jackson high output humbuckers that originally came with the instrument and give Seymour Duncan’s Black Winter pickups a try – and now I did it.
They sound killer.
I just realized that I never posted a decent summary on my guitar rig. Here and there I uploaded some information, but the whole stuff has never been collected so far. Well, it’s probably because I don’t use a proper guitar rig: I have five guitars, but my small amp (actually a Line6 Spider V20 guitar combo) is used only for practicing purposes, while everything you hear on the records is purely digital.
First of all, I use two guitars most of the time: for riffs I prefer my modified ESP LTD EC-256 (FM See-Thru Black Cherry Sunburst) with two high output Seymour Duncan pickups (Pegasus and Sentient). This small singlecut, fixed bridge guitar equipped with Elixir Optiweb (010″/046″) strings is capable to produce the fattest and most brutal sounds when needed. However, for guitar solos and experimentation I use my Jackson JS32Q Dinky DKA (AH Transparent Green Burst) superstrat with a Jackson-licenced Floyd Rose tremolo (to be honest, I’m not a frequent tremolo user, but sometimes it can be quite useful if you have one on your guitar). Also, I’m in love with the neck profile of this instrument (it’s actually the Speed Neck from the Jackson’s Soloist series with a shape somewhere between the “C” and the “D” neck profiles: a fast and comfortable one!) – that’s why I use it pretty often, despite the constant struggle of correctly tuning a Floyd Rose-equipped guitar. For the acoustic parts I play my Fender Redondo Player dreadnought electroacoustic guitar with a comfy “C”-shaped neck profile and a built-in Fender-exclusive CD-1 Fishman pickup/preamp system, while for the bass parts I use a budget-friendly, but solid LTD B-10 bass. And as a bonus, I have a very old friend in the family too: my old Harley Benton S-620 TR Rock Series is still with me, although I don’t use it too often anymore. I keep it mainly out of nostalgic reasons: when I moved abroad and back I had to sell my instruments and stop playing the guitar for a couple of years – and this old Harley Benton was my first guitar, when I came back and had the chance to play again.
And now comes the boring part. Everything that comes out of my guitars is routed into a Focusrite Scarlett Solo 3rd Generation audio interface, which directly sends signals into a Mac computer equpped with a Steinberg Cubase Digital Audio Workstation (I still use Elements 12.0 but in the long run I think I’ll have to invest into an upgrade to the Artist version, due to its higher versatility and premium features). The guitar sounds are produced in one of my two virtual amp-and-effects processors that turn the computer into a fully customizable guitar/bass rig. Until now I mainly used Positive Grid’s Bias FX2, but recently I started to quite heavily use the Archetype Nolly plugin from Neural DSP – both are great plugins and I plan to use them in a parallel way, according to my current needs.
This is something I really wanted to share with you guys!
The amazing Sicksense invited guitar players from all over the world to recreate Billy Grey’s excellent guitar solo from their “Fools Tomorrow” single. Well, just for the record: this is my attempt for this amazing challenge!
For the original version of the song, check out the band’s new single “Fools tomorrow“! Or, you can find my version below! I hope you guys will like it!
Well, to cut a long story short, I have a new Jackson (a fast, and modern metal axe) in the Darkwave family. Buying a Jackson finally put an end to a decade-long yearning: the fact that I had to sell my old PS2 Performer approximately 20 years ago always made me somewhat sad. Since then, I’ve been constantly eyeing Jacksons from the corner of my eye, until now… Look at this beauty:
The new Jackson actually put me into a somewhat nostalgic mode: it made me remember not only my old PS2 Performer but also my very first electric guitar, a Jolana Strat. For those who are not familiar with this gem of the former Czechoslovakian music industry, let me show you a couple of pictures of this highly uncomfortable and suboptimal guitar. Still, I’m grateful for this very simple musical instrument, because this gave me the first impetus to become a guitar fanatic.
Recently I performed a couple of major updates on my gear. To cut a long story short, significant changes were made both on the hardware and software side.
Firstly, I was constantly struggling with the suboptimal output sound of the VST instrument I used to simulate drum sounds in Cubase (the DAW I’ve been using since the beginning) with. No matter how hard I was trying, I couldn’t improve the final drum tone beyond a certain point – and despite all the improvements, I found this particular point still somewhat suboptimal and artificial. Then someone (actually a professional musician, whose opinion I value very much) suggested me to switch to Get Good Drums. I, therefore, started to use “One Kit Wonder – Metal” from this company, and the result was immediately (without any further mixing and/or mastering) amazing. Secondly, I changed the original pickups in my LTD EC-256 guitar to Seymour Duncan’s Pegasus and Sentient passive humbuckers, which resulted in a dramatic and immediate improvement in the quality of the rough guitar sound. And thirdly – following years of using pre-programmed guitar presets – I started to experiment with setting up my own virtual guitar rig using the Bias FX2 amp-and-effects processor.
I already posted something about it on my Instagram page, but for the record, let me show you guys a photo of my new family member: an LTD B-10 bass guitar.
I must admit that during the years I seriously got fed up with the constant experimentation on how to mimic a decent bass sound by MIDI-programmed bass lines (what I did on the original Hexapla) or pitch shifting/filtering the sound of my guitar (this is what I experimented with on the remastered Hexapla and Missa Innominata). I, however, was never 100% happy with the result, so finally I decided to buy a bass guitar and quit experimenting. Still, as I’m primarily not a bass player, I didn’t want to buy a highly sophisticated and expensive instrument: what I needed was a simple, handy and comfortable bass guitar to play all the future bass lines with. It’s not a secret that I’ve been an ESP/LTD fan since I bought my main instrument, an LTD EC-256 electric guitar. My new LTD B-10 didn’t disappoint me either: it has a thin U-shaped neck, clearly-sounding ESP Designed pickups and an active Tone Boost Control: it’s precise and comfortable, easy to play, sounds great and looks killer.
I already recorded more than one hour raw material for a future album, and a huge part of it is finally supported by “normal”, traditionally recorded bass tracks. Naturally 90 percent of these riffs and solos will never get into the final songs, but right now I enjoy fooling around bass lines and optimizing a thick, heavy and brutal sound.
