In this video from Moshcam, we talk with guitar tech Ace Bergman who takes us through Slash’s guitars and set up.
Video Text:
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hi I’m ace I’m Slash’s guitar tech and I’m here to take you through all the gear we use when we do our show here first we’ll start with the beginning of our signal chain which would be slash who’s not here right now that’s where all the tone comes from all this [ __ ] is just to capture it and try and get it out of the speaker so everyone can hear all the beautiful stuff going in his head pretty much our main guitars right now are these slash AFD guitars they’re replicas of a Les Paul that he used on the Appetite for Destruction album and every album since then he actually used the original guitar on the last album but we keep it safely put away we use copies Gibson makes for us that are awesome guitars in their own right the main guitar I changed strings on every day and then the slide guitar
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he’ll play one song on so I’ll wipe it down really well because his sweat will corrode through the strings and maybe I can get three shows out of that so three songs three times they’ll go through that one we usually keep around 160 170 guitars which is a lot but not a world record I mean he’s not really a collector we don’t go looking for guitars I go looking for guitars when we’re on tour I’m more of a collector than he is this is called my be rig we have two rigs Abby Reagan and a rig the a rig is waiting for me in California right now I’ll be going back pretty soon and then we start a US tour with that one the a rig and B rig are functionally identical there’s a few small minuscule differences but by and large they have the exact same thing this is one of the older signature guitars this one as you can see has had a neck repair however
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this particular guitar just sounds great plays grade is great so still part of the working arsenal then we have more of the AFD guitars we have a new prototype we’re working on I can’t show you or maybe I can I don’t know but we got two of those and then we have some guitars with floyd roses for a song that we don’t have in the set right now so I can show you one of them so this one it’s the same as the AFD the first guitar except for we had Gibson make some with Floyd roses for us for one particular song so is it kind of illegal to have a Floyd Rose on a Les Paul maybe do we care about the law No after that the next thing that comes into our signal chain goes through a cable into our wah I have another one taped down to the stage out there this is my spare and this is our new signature wah done lip just came out with these this last spring works great sounds great and has
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the sweep slashes looking for and it’s just a good all-around basic wah you know it’s got the tonality that we’re looking for and they’re reliable and really well made and it’s a big part of this sound is this wah pedal after the wah pedal the signal comes back around comes back to me here at the pedal board I do all the pedal switching I take care of everything besides the wah first thing I have here is a tuner which I use as a mute so we can do guitar changes sometimes I use a tuner sometimes I use an a/b box I’m having some custom pedals made up that’ll do the same job so you know that part changes next in the single chain we’ve got here is my boost we use this a lot anytime we hit a solo in a couple different parts in the song I’ll hit that what that does is it gives them 12 decibels of boost which brings a signal up puts them forward in the mix and gives them a little bit more gain out of the amplifiers to get a little more sustain and a little bit a little bit
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more grit out of them next we have the phase 90 this is made popular by Van Halen like that Panama sound that we use it a little bit here and there actually only in one part of the set right now so that’s an effect that I hit very rarely and you know it’s got it kind of an interesting color to it next we have this is another one of our signature pedals this one this is the octave fuzz I have a piece of tape with my settings over it this is a new Dunlop pedal they just came out with us before with us in addition to this the wah they both came out this spring this one is a fuzz and an octave pedal and when you have it on it has the your basic signal and then an octave below and then it fuzz’s them both and then when you hit this up button it gives you a third octave which would be the octave up which gives you that jimi hendrix kind of sound so it’s a really good you know really fattens sound up between the octave pedal and the fuzz it really goes crazy you can hear it most prominently in Paradise City in the middle solo where
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he goes Brown I’m not going to do it in my mouth but you can hear he goes between the octave pedal to the boost back to the octave pedal and then back out and you know it really makes for a fat colorful sound then we have a tremolo pedal this one makes the guitar signal come in and out like what won’t like that that’s for the song beautiful dangerous we did with Fergie she ever comes out the pedals here if not it’s just a boat anchor it’s holding down my pedal board so it doesn’t fly away in the wind next we have our delay we use them he’s had the same style delay not the same delay box but the same style since pretty much appetite so for a long time it’s been this boss DD 3 they work you know they sound the way we’re looking for real simple got about two places I use it in the set right now and you know good delay you know we
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don’t use a lot of effects it’s just to add a little bit of color here and there perfect for that finally we have our mxr analog chorus that gives that shimmery sound that’s also in Paradise City that’s the only place we’re using it right now at the very beginning or the guitars kind of got that shimmery open kind of cowboy iconic chords but like 80s cowboy after the chorus pedal it runs back out I have a little custom audio electronics splitter underneath the board which you can’t see real boring one in two outs simple as that with a little bit of line buffer in there just to add a little bit more signal in because all these things kind of you know you run your guitar through that much stuff you got to put a little bit back in this because you’re running through so many circuits and then that splits it sends it out into my two heads we’re running to marshal heads
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this top one is the Marshall a FD 100 this is our signature slash head this one came out a few years ago this is a limited edition usually we start with all the settings at around 6 and then dial in for the room this is where it sort of ended up for now sometimes we’ll die a little bit in and out here and there but not not too much really this is a brand new well almost brand new we’ve had it a few months which puts years on any piece of gear so this is a 22 of the 3 jcm800 reissue also from marshall we changed out the tubes in this 465 50s other than that to stock like you’d buy one out of the box you know if you were to put the 65 50s in it you’d have to rebuy Asit but that’s not that much work just gives it a little bit it makes it a lot louder really what it does and gives it a little bit more round sound and then I have a spare set right here identical on ready to rock if those two ever die on me these two are right there
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got my back then we have my work box pull all kinds of [ __ ] weaponry tools you name it I was working on a few pedals today changing a few batteries putting a little bit of nut sauce on stuff changing strings you know basic day-to-day maintenance you know he’s really hard on this gear and we have to have two or three of everything especially [ __ ] the brakes so got to be ready to roll with it god of your for anything that happen up here and you know it’s a real easy rig real nice rig I like how simple it is I like that there’s not a lot of bells and whistles keeping all this stuff up and running for that guy with the top hats a full time gig but I love it you know love the gig love the guy love the sound it’s a great place to be for me
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