This is Francesco Artusato, here again for the second part of my column about the gear I use.
We talked about guitars last week, and this time we’ll talk about everything else.
I’ve been using exclusively Seymour Duncan pickups for a very long time. I really love both their passive and active ones. Some of my favorites are: Blackouts 7 string and 8 string (great for really heavy type of tones), ’59 and JB combination for a more rock type of tone, Duncan Distortion SH-6, TB-6 and the Duncan Custom SH-5 and TB-5 (great for heavy tones keeping a very organic sound and full of articulation), probably my favorite passive pickups.
There is something about the richness and fullness of Seymour Duncan pickups that really makes them stand out.
I’ve been using Ernie Ball strings for as long as I can remember. I use .10-.46 for standard E tuning, .10-.56 for 7 string standard, .09-.52 for ASP 7 string tuning (the guitars are basically tuned up a whole step with a drop B: 1F# - 2C# - 3A - 4E - 5B - 6F# - 7B) and we add a .70 for the 8th string tuned to F#.
I’ve been using Jazz III guitar picks since I started playing.
Get The Pick Newsletter
All the latest guitar news, interviews, lessons, reviews, deals and more, direct to your inbox!
And now let’s talk a little bit about amps. I had the chance to play many different brands of amps throughout the years: mostly Mesa Boogie, Marshall, Fender, Peavey, Engl, Soldano, Bogner, Diezel and, believe it or not, I love each one of them because they are all amazing amps, great sounding and they all offer something very unique.
I’m a big fan of warm, full of character and thick tones, and that is something tube amps are really good at. The problem, of course, is to carry all of them around, or even finding space for them, it’s not very practical and for sure it’s a very expensive solution, not to talk about reliability while traveling on tour. A bunch of different companies tried to solve this problem by creating devices to simulate all these different amps using only one small piece of gear.
It’s been a growing trend for years and now we finally have a product that, in my opinion, for the first time does a great job at it. I’m talking about the Axe Fx, of course. I’m completely satisfied with this device; it has the incredible potential of simulating amps with great accuracy and it makes life on tour and in the studio way easier.
It’s also very easy to use; it allows you to get a good tone without spending hours working on it, but if that’s what you want, it also lets you go deeply into modifying every single parameter you could think of … definitely a piece of gear I highly suggest!
This is it for now. I hope this description of the gear I use was satisfying and as in-detail as the fans wanted it.
Thank you for reading this and make sure to check out the next column next week.
The first album from the Francesco Artusato project, Chaos and the Primordial, will be released on June 28 via Sumerian Records. The new All Shall Perish album, This Is Where It Ends, will be released on July 27 through Nuclear Blast.
