Queens of the Stone Age ringleader Josh Homme is no stranger to obscure gear, and his unusual approach to assembling his guitar rig has led him to some serious bargains – and oddball choices.
In stoner rock giants Kyuss, Homme was notable for pairing an Ampeg VT-40 bass amplifier with the neck pickups of his electric guitars. In QOTSA, his secret weapon was revealed to be a very unassuming practice amp.
He doesn’t go for the tried-and-tested gear combos, and he believes his “dumb system” has served him well over the years.
“There's a lot of unsupply, undemand,” Homme tells Rick Beato in a discussion of his gear choices. “If I see a lot of something – I've seen a lot of Marshalls and Les Pauls in my life, and a lot of Strats – I just won’t do that. We have plenty of that.
“That’s largely been quite good to me,” he adds of his approach. “Especially in the early days of eBay and when I was an avid pawn shop guy on tour, because things which I did not normally see turned out, six times out of 10, to be fucking amazing.
“And they were like 50 bucks, right? So the experiment to find yourself in what you do not see became this obsession that was really rewarding.”
Homme did not need validation for his approach, but when he learned the Rolling Stones also played Ampegs, he knew he’d found a winning – albeit spontaneous – formula.
He notes, “It made me feel very proud. It was almost like confirming my own ridiculous metric for making choices. You know what I mean? I didn’t need that confirmation, but I was like, ‘See? If you use my dumb system it’ll work out this way.’
It’s something he mentioned in his bumper interview with Guitar World earlier this year. In particular, it drew him towards Japanese guitars, as the country, in the Post-World War II economy, was pumping out “really well-made shit” that most players overlooked.
A lot of these guitars, as Homme points out, often had extra buttons on them, such as bass or distortion boosts, and nowadays he can be found slinging guitars from lesser known brands like Motor Ave and Maton. He prefers to swim upstream.
“That is how I got into Japanese guitars,” Homme extends. “It’s like, ‘Wow, this one has buttons on it.’ And the Univox stuff, which is made in Japan and has a switch that adds distortion. Like, ‘Holy fuck, this is amazing.’”
Elsewhere, his QOTSA bandmate Troy Van Leeuwen has become the first player to get a signature Squier Paranormal, and has revealed how his love of 12-strings and Robert Fripp have impacted the sound of the new Queens of the Stone Age record, Perfecth.
