The Wong Gear…

For his 2019 UK tour Cory eschewed his preferred amps and pedals in favour of a simpler rig

GUITARS

1Fender

Highway One Stratocaster

“My main Strat is just a simple Highway One Stratocaster – the guitar that I’ve had since high school. I have a Seymour Duncan Classic Stack pickup in the neck, a Duckbucker in the middle, which I don’t love – it’s just fine. I had some guy at a store recommend it. He put it in. Whatever… It’s fine! And in the bridge it’s a JB Junior. It sounds cool. It’s a mini-humbucker. It’s a little bit thicker than your average Strat bridge pickup.”

2Kithara

Guitars

Custom

“The other [guitar] I have is one that somebody built for me. There’s a builder in Ireland –

Kithara Guitars. This guy just hit me up and was like, ‘Hey, I want to show you this guitar that I’ve built.’ This guitar is amazing. It’s really, really well made, feels great and what’s cool is that I don’t know what pickups he used but they sound a lot like my Antiquities [Seymour Duncan Antiquities installed on another of Cory’s Strats].”

PEDALBOARD

3Line

6 HX Eff ects

“I’m trying something out now. I’m checking out the [Line 6] HX Effects. It’s cool. It’s harder to navigate than the M9 – I used to use the M9. This one’s fine. It’s cool. I dialled in the drives to sound good with the amps that I’m using. The HX Effects is cool

because it’s got it all in one simple [pedal].”

4Wampler

Ego Co mpresso r

“The Ego Compressor adds a warmness and kind of smoothes out the top end of things a little bit and it makes me feel like I have a thicker tone. With that pedal I just use all the knobs at noon, pretty much. It’s not a drastic difference in sound, but, if I had to pick one pedal to use the rest of my life, it would be a compressor! Which isn’t a lot of fun, but it’s just like, well, I don’t know, I can get a lot of songs just out of my guitar itself!”

5Laney

Lionheart 212

“I use different amps in different settings. For this

tour I’m using the Laney Lionheart 212 which is just a nice really clean amp. It’s got a lot of clean headroom.”

6DV

Mark Raw Dawg

“I also use the DV Mark Raw Dawg, which is a solid state amp. Actually it has been one of my favourite sounds that I’ve ever had – this combination. The DV Mark is solid state but I love it. Typically what I backline is a Fender Twin or a Fender Super Reverb, but sometimes, those, depending on the one, even on three they start to get tube saturation and breakup – which a lot of people like but I don’t because I want clean! I almost want it to sound DI!”