OUTSIDE of Eddie... Who's the most Full of it when it comes to their rigs?

James Hetfield.

Dude is super secretive about what he uses and guards the particulars of what he does very closely. At first glance, hearing his general cadence about this kind of thing almost makes it seem like he avoids gear talk because he's not a gearhead and doesn't care, like he just wants "some good high gain shit" and that's as deep as he goes while letting his techs do everything else, but I think he knows exactly what he's doing and what he wants out of his tone, but refuses to talk about how he actually gets it. Almost every detail we actually know about his sound comes from other people who have worked with him, and most of them usually avoid going into any real detail "out of respect for James."

Even in the several rig rundowns that guitar magazines have done with Metallica, the techs never paint the full picture. For example, James nor his techs have ever discussed the details about how he runs his famous and long standing Triaxis rig. They've never talked about the hidden pair of outboard 5-band Mesa GEQs, and they've never talked about the real reason there are 4 Triaxis units in there. They've said that one is for high gain, one is for clean, and two are for backups, but there's no reason to do that when you have a preamp with full MIDI control over every parameter. The only reason to have that many preamps in a rig is if you were blending them, etc.
 
Yngwie and his "I use all of my amps", "my guitars have 4-7mm action" horse****

It's mainly the 80s guys because they feel like they need to have a secret weapon or an edge against the competitors

Honestly I'm not sure I believe John Sykes "two Mk IIIs slaved together" story for 1987 either.

But Ed was on a whole 'nother level

That story of how he borrowed an Ibanez Destroyer, then returning it with a jacked up action and a bridge that's completely reverse-intonated was hilarious.
 
I think it’s all a gimmick. I realized years ago when I seriously got into the amp game that it didn’t matter what I did, I would not sound like zakk or whoever. But it is still fun to fuck around with and play. That’s after I spent thousands on the zakk halfstack. These guys that can emulate evh or zw…I think it’s awesome. I can never do it.
 
Most of the cool shit i have come up was accidentally hooking weird shit together or using an EQ for feel rather than tone, then another EQ to bring the tone back.
Most of it was from having a shitty amp to start with that i wasnt happy with.

The most important thing is that trying to recreate those setups is fucking hard if you dont have all the parts. Like a spitter/buffer that was adding a tone and/or a specific parametric eq you were using first in line to quiet the.pickup hiss before you boosted.

All this to say even if these guys said what they were doing, it would be hard to recreate it without the same pedals with same settings, same rack EQ with same exact settings, etc. some of these guys have complicated as fuck setups without adding more amps in WDW or thickness applications.
 
TheGreatGreen said:
James Hetfield.

Dude is super secretive about what he uses and guards the particulars of what he does very closely. At first glance, hearing his general cadence about this kind of thing almost makes it seem like he avoids gear talk because he's not a gearhead and doesn't care, like he just wants "some good high gain shit" and that's as deep as he goes while letting his techs do everything else, but I think he knows exactly what he's doing and what he wants out of his tone, but refuses to talk about how he actually gets it. Almost every detail we actually know about his sound comes from other people who have worked with him, and most of them usually avoid going into any real detail "out of respect for James."

Even in the several rig rundowns that guitar magazines have done with Metallica, the techs never paint the full picture. For example, James nor his techs have ever discussed the details about how he runs his famous and long standing Triaxis rig. They've never talked about the hidden pair of outboard 5-band Mesa GEQs, and they've never talked about the real reason there are 4 Triaxis units in there. They've said that one is for high gain, one is for clean, and two are for backups, but there's no reason to do that when you have a preamp with full MIDI control over every parameter. The only reason to have that many preamps in a rig is if you were blending them, etc.
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That’s actually how big tours work. They literally have a backup for everything. It’s not Willy Wonka back there. I’m not sure who would want to chase his tone that he’s been doing since the late 90’s. People who are inclined, chase his tone before the Triaxis was released.
 
The classic line for me is when someone says I don’t know anything about this stuff. Like guys who say they don’t know anything about what they’re playing.
 
BlueParfait said:
Yngwie and his "I use all of my amps", "my guitars have 4-7mm action" horse****

It's mainly the 80s guys because they feel like they need to have a secret weapon or an edge against the competitors

Honestly I'm not sure I believe John Sykes "two Mk IIIs slaved together" story for 1987 either.

But Ed was on a whole 'nother level

That story of how he borrowed an Ibanez Destroyer, then returning it with a jacked up action and a bridge that's completely reverse-intonated was hilarious.
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Ol’ Sykes…I’ve heard several guys say he was another one hiding the “Jose Secret”…

LOVES that dudes tone, phrasing, rythyms.. man alive that dude just got it.

He tried to buy an amp of Reverb from someone I know and apparently has like 20 Jose’s…. That’s his story anyway.
 
Probably Billy Gibbons. He puts whatever amp he's endorsing on stage but most of time he's actually using his JMP-1s with the Digitech eq and Valvestate power amps.
And nearly all his stage guitars are made by Bolin guitars, even the ones that say "Gibson" in the headstock.
 
reignman454 said:
Ol’ Sykes…I’ve heard several guys say he was another one hiding the “Jose Secret”…

LOVES that dudes tone, phrasing, rythyms.. man alive that dude just got it.

He tried to buy an amp of Reverb from someone I know and apparently has like 20 Jose’s…. That’s his story anyway.
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Shame he didn’t use all that stuff to actually make and release music. What a waste of a talent. Just seems to be too caught up in his own crippling mental hopscotch.
 
Rayneman said:
Not as well-known, but Ty Tabor from King's X didnd't reveal how he got his early tone for quite some time after he had changed up. He says he used a Lab Series SS amp with an early 80s Fender Elite Strat. After buying one of those boat anchor Fenders years ago, I can confirm that is certainly one key element.
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He was the MOST secretive
 
skoora said:
That’s actually how big tours work. They literally have a backup for everything. It’s not Willy Wonka back there. I’m not sure who would want to chase his tone that he’s been doing since the late 90’s. People who are inclined, chase his tone before the Triaxis was released.
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I think you misunderstand. I'm not questioning that James has backup gear in a touring rig. That's absolutely how most touring rigs are built. I'm questioning the reason for him having two main Triaxis pres and two backup Triaxis pres.

The story is that he uses Triaxis 1 for crunch, Triaxis 2 for cleans, Triaxis 3 for backup crunch and Triaxis 4 for backup cleans. But I don't buy it.

The Triaxis is a MIDI preamp that allows you to save every setting you can adjust to a patch. It's not like other preamps where some settings are controlled via relays and other settings are dialed with hard wired knobs. Because of the way the Triaxis lets you save and recall every parameter you can adjust in a patch, there's no reason to have two separate Triaxis preamps where one is for clean and the other is for crunch, because you could just use one Triaxis and program two patches in it, one patch for clean and one patch for crunch. This would mean you'd only need two Triaxis units total, one main and one backup.

I think he was doing something else entirely. I think James used two different Triaxis preamps at the same time to get his high gain tone (not sure if stereo spread or blended though), and the other two units were for backup. There's really no other reason to have four of them. But neither James or any of his techs have ever said a thing about it.
 
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