Killswitch Engage's Joel Stroetzel: me and my guitar

With Killswitch Engage's new album, Atonement, out now via Metal Blade, we caught up with axeman Joel Stroetzel to talk about his signature guitar, the Caparison Dellinger-JSM.

Stroetzel's Dellinger-JSM is based on Caparison's formidable Dellinger II FX-WM S-style, and features an unusual walnut and mahogany body that the Japanese company says compensates for the loss of any low-end when applying a pickguard to the guitar. 

Here Stroetzel walks us through some of the Dellinger-JSM's key features...

The body
Stroetzel: "The body is mahogany and the top is walnut, which gives it a unique sound. I find it to be little bit darker than a lot of typical bolt-on-neck guitars."

The neck
"The neck is maple with walnut reinforcement, which is something we fought for over the years, and it’s a really cool feature to have on any guitar. If you’re touring it’s much more impervious to the elements than say a two-piece neck or something like that. So we’ve had really good luck with these.”

Signature appointments
“This is the first edition Caparison did with a pickguard, which is kind of neat, and also the first guitar they did with black clock inlays and black binding. So visually it’s quite different from the other Caparisons.”

Pickups and electronics
"The pickups are Killswitch Engage signature series Fishman Fluence. The bridge pickup is a little bit quieter and has a slightly different EQ curve than a standard Fluence. And the neck [pickup] is pretty much a standard Modern. 

"The controls are slightly different too; you still have your push/pull to get your two different modes, passive and active sounds, but on the tone knob, instead of doing a high-frequency tilt, we ended up doing a coil-tap sound on these. So it’s a pretty versatile guitar, given its simplicity.”

• The Caparison Dellinger-JSM retails for £3,229/$3,499 and is available in White Gloss [pictured] and Black Gloss. See Caparison for more details.