With the year in music winding down, we reached out to some of your favorite guitarists to find out what music and gear rocked their worlds in 2012. Below,Periphery's Misha Mansoor fills us in on his five favorite pieces of gear in 2012.

From an impending apocalypse to the promise of a new Van Halen album with David Lee Roth, the bar was set high for 2012. Everyone from the Mayans to Nostradamus prophesied 2012 as being the end of the world, but who could have predicted Green Day's epic trilogy of new albums, or Rush churning out their heaviest record this side of 2012, or Joe Walsh's first solo effort in two decades?

Animals as Leaders' latest release, Weightless, was a bit of a stylistic departure from the band's self-titled debut, thanks in big part to a full-band dynamic that wasn't present with Tosin Abasi and Periphery guitarist Misha Mansoor hammered together the first album.