Stage Esentials
Synyster and Zacky walk us through the rig for their current world tour…
Synyster Gates 1 Schecter Synyster Custom/Standard
“I’m still using the Schecter signatures with some Sustainiacs and Seymour Duncan Invaders – though I’ll be switching over to my new signature pickups, which just came out and I’m really excited about. They took a while to develop, the incredible people at Schecter helped make it all happen. There are little things here and there that they bring. We designed our guitars to supplement all the different sounds we might need. Whenever it calls for something old-school, these can do it.”
2 Schecter Hellwin Amplifier
“I don’t even know if the amps are even for sale anymore or what’s going on with that, but I know I still love them! I’m really not at a loss with the Schecter around. We worked extensively on those cleans so if I dial back the tone and stick it on the neck or split it, I can do a number of things. I play all sorts of weird styles, we listen to so much weird stuff and have done since we were kids. I sent Schecter an old Polytone amp to emulate for my cleans, I wanna play jazz on that motherfucker, and you can! As well as that Fender Princeton sparkly clean, that all came from what I was listening to – things like Jeff Buckley’s Grace. Dude, the rhythms on that… are you kidding me? I designed my gear to get those sparkly, tones. We love classic sounds, so it does future, past and present in one.”
3 Fractal Audio Axe-Fx II
“I use a Fractal in the loop just for effects, like backwards reverbs and delays on Angels. I really like the harmonizer – you can do a lot of intelligent harmonising, like jumping from a sixth above to a sixth below. We’re going to play a new song called GodDamn tonight, which goes from minor back and forth, so we had to program it all in, which was fucking brutal and took forever. I might need a major third or a minor third over certain chords. We’re using 16 different intelligent harmonizers to pitch-shift. For the standard harmonies, Zacky and I cruise up and just do our thing. But for the harmonies on a song like GodDamn or CityOf
Evil, which is full to the brim of harmonies doing everything, now we can have solid rhythms behind it all, instead of sacrificing anything. We couldn’t really do that before.”
4 Godin Multiac
“I use the Godin at the end of
TheStage. It was actually recommended to me by my friends at Sweetwater. I’m in the middle of converting one of my acoustics to nylon and as soon as it’s ready, I will be using that.”
ZackyVengeance 5 Schecter Zacky Vengeance Custom
“My Schecter signature is tried and true, it’s the one I’ve been playing since I stage-dived at our first London headline show and broke my other guitar. I needed one for the Unholy
Confessions video and I didn’t have enough money to buy one, so Schecter gave me it for free. I’ve been playing that – different colours and hardware – but same fuckin’ guitar since day one.”
6 Jet City Amplification 100HDMHead
“I play Jet City amps, they’re small, Soldano-made amps. They only cost about 500 or 600 bucks, I’ve never fucked around with boutique, you don’t need them to go out and rule the world. I could never afford them, either! So I play one of the cheapest amps on the market, and it sounds killer. They sent one out, my guitar tech thought it sounded great and so did I. I’ve been loyal to Schecter, and I feel the same way about Jet City. The affordability plays a big part, I don’t want fans to need to save for a lifetime to get one.”