“That’ll still smoke most rigs these days too, by the way”: Aaron Marshall of Intervals says the rig he played Blink-182 and Slipknot on as a teenager could more than hold its own today

The quest for whatever the ultimate electric guitar tone is in your head is a never-ending process for most guitar players. It’s that whole thing of ‘the destiny is the journey,’ or whatever quasi-Zen bromide you can think of to quieten the demons at the back of your head, forcing your hand to open up the Reverb app and start looking for the next thing.

But it isn’t always that way. It’s not everyone’s story, and it is not Aaron Marshall’s.

Okay, the Intervals guitarist has acquired a taste for the finer things in the guitar store – Quad Cortex, fancy schmancy Aristides S-styles, and he has his own signature guitars with Schecter. And yet, speaking with D’Addario for a YouTube segment, he says the rig that still blows his mind – and will still blow most people’s rigs away – is the one he had when he was cutting his teeth playing Blink-182 and Slipknot covers.

Marshall takes us back. He was like many a young kid. His first love was drums, the ultimate test to see just how cool your parents really were. The electric guitar came later. The drums did not. A DVD player did, however, and it was watching Carlos Santana that gave Marshall the idea of switching codes, moving to strings.

“Watching that at home in the living room was like kind of a crazy experience,” says Marshall. “I was probably blown away by how enamored my parents were with it.”

This made him want to explore music, and while his parents were still under Santana’s Supernatural spell, Marshall badgered his father for a guitar. “That was probably the catalyst for my dad taking me to a pawn shop and we got my first acoustic guitar,” says Marshall. “‘Okay, well, we’ll start with that. See if you like it. See if you commit.’”

intervals | mnemonic (live music video) - YouTube

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Like many a young kid’s first acoustic, the big body was a beast to wrap an arm around. The struggle was real. But it wasn’t long before a (relatively) cheap electric guitar entered his life, and, well, changed it. Enter, the Stratocaster. “I learned everything from blink-182 to Slipknot on that thing, he says.

This was back when he was in ninth grade. He was made an offer he couldn’t refuse.

“I remember a friend who was a drummer, who was a couple grades ahead of me. I guess there weren’t a lot of options… and they wanted someone to come play guitar in their band,” says Marshall. “And was like the first time anyone had given me a shot. It was like your quintessential first emo band.”

Aaron Marshall on Songwriting, Technique, and Intervals | D'Addario Interview - YouTube

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And for the record, the guitar tone was hot, hot hot...

“The rig was the Midnight Blue made in Mexico Stratocaster into a [Fender] Hot Rod Deluxe with a [Boss MT-2] Metal Zone,” he says. “That’ll still smoke most rigs these days too, by the way!”

He’s not wrong. That’s a legit setup. But we can’t help wondering what Intervals would sound like if he were to perform a set on that rig, from “quintessential emo” to quintessential instrumental prog rock/metal.

It’s food for thought for anyone looking to put together an affordable but serious rig – to buy that today you would get some change out of $2,000. And those Mexican Stratocasters (and Telecasters) just keep getting better and better.