Last updated 15/05/2024.
Personally, I’m a bit of a gear nut and I love reading about the equipment fellow guitar players use to achieve their sounds. In the interest of sharing, I thought I’d put this page together for anyone interested about the equipment I use with vexmantra. Think of it as a guitar gear brain dump!
Most of these pictures are old, I will try to update them when I can!
Tone
I’m aiming for a good rock guitar sound which I can layer other colours and effects onto. I use the guitar volume and tone controls all the time and it’s a regular part of my technique, so I want a rig that is highly responsive to those subtle changes.
Live Equipment
- Ibanez S7320 7 string with DiMarzio Crunch Lab (bridge) and Blaze (neck) pickups
- Ibanez RG7320EX 7 string (stock pickups)
- Orange OR15H amplifier (stock)
- Zilla Cabs Custom Studio Pro 2×12 speaker cabinet with Celestion V30s
- Line 6 Helix HX Effects multi-fx unit with Mission Engineering EP1-L6 expression pedal
- Shure GLDX16+ wireless
Guitars
All of vexmantra’s material is played using half a step down (Eb) tuning. Most of my influences have used this tuning and it’s one that has a really cool bluesy feel. I use the D’Addario EXL110-7 set (gauges 10-59) on both guitars.
These guitars have Ibanez’s custom pickup selector which allows parallel and coil split options. These are fantastic for making subtle but distinctive tonal changes, and I try to use as many of them as I can to give a decent variety of sounds.
I replaced the factory strap buttons with D’Addario strap locks which are far more secure.
Like many guitar players, I’ve tried most plectrums available at one time or another. I had settled on Gravity Classic Standard 1.5mm plectrums as I found the bigger size and shape surprisingly comfortable, but lately have returned to the massively popular Dunlop Jazz III XL as my picking technique improves. I still use the Gravity plectrums for acoustic guitar and bass, the larger size is great for both purposes.
Backline
I’m using an Orange OR15H single channel amp as the foundation for all my tones. It’s an incredibly versatile amp and I like that I can just use the guitar volume to go from clean to slightly driven tones. If I want more distortion, I use a clean boost in front of the amp such as the Minotaur block on the HX Effects.
The amp settings may surprise you. I set the EQ to 12 o’clock and leave it there! I only change the EQ if something isn’t sounding right in the room, or if I’m using a different cab. The gain control is about 1 o’clock, and the volume control sits somewhere between 10-12 o’clock depending on how much volume the sound engineer will let me get away with. There isn’t much more volume to be had after 12 o’clock so I never set it any higher.
The Zilla Studio Pro cab was originally bought to pair with a PRS MT-15 amp head, hence the look, but I ended up choosing the OR15H after trying it through the cab. It’s a great all-round cab and helps clean tones come through beautifully.
Pedalboard
I only use four things on my pedalboard: a Shure wireless receiver, a multi-effects unit, an expression pedal, and a noise reducer. That’s it!
The board itself is made out of a thick plywood sheet and a wooden block to raise the back up, which my dad kindly cut and assembled for me. I finished it with two coats of Ikea’s POPPARE black furniture paint. The pedals are stuck onto the board using generic “hook and loop” strips from Amazon. I placed a number of “loop” strips horizontally on the board, and used the “hook” strips vertically on the pedals. The crisscross of hook and loop allows multiple points of contact to keep the pedals secure. There is an aluminium panel set into the board which has a Truetone 1SPOT Pro CS6 power supply mounted to it with screws. More about that later!
HX Effects
vexmantra’s material requires a lot of different sounds, in fact, a friend once asked me when I became a synth player! I’m not really a pedal guy so I’m quite happy using a multi-fx unit for everything. The HX Effects is a fantastic and extremely well designed effects platform. Each musical number in the set is programmed into the HX Effects as one or more presets. Most numbers will fit into one preset but it depends on how many blocks I’m using. Bad Trip for example is very heavy on effects, so I spread it over two presets which are switched twice in the song.
The snapshot feature on the Helix line is one of its best features in my opinion. It allows me to switch between four different “snapshots” of the same preset, such as a clean sound to a lead sound, with zero latency. The change is immediate, which is great when I’m switching back and forth between snapshots on some faster songs. I also use the occasional stomp bypass if I want to add something for one part without using a whole snapshot. I have set the unit to forget any snapshot changes so I can use different effects and settings without having them persist between snapshots. If I want to reset anything, I just hit the snapshot again and it’s all back to normal. There are a lot of thoughtful features in the Helix line and I use many of them to make live performance more streamlined. Little things like disabling a wah block on a snapshot that won’t use it (so I don’t have to make sure the expression pedal is returned to the heel) or setting the starting snapshot to the one I need when the preset loads helps a lot. I must’ve sunk hours and hours into making these presets as easy as possible to use, so maybe I’ll do a video on it one day!
To control wah, whammy, and volume blocks, I use a Mission Engineering EP1-L6 expression pedal. It’s a little on the expensive side, but it’s built like a tank and works flawlessly with the HX FX. Most importantly, the travel is extremely smooth and comfortable which allows me to have far more control over the pedal’s position.
Signal Flow
I use the 4 cable method which means effects blocks on the HX FX can be placed before the preamp, and between the preamp and power amp (aka the “effects loop”).
The guitar’s signal goes into the HX first where it meets any blocks that need to be placed in front of the preamp section, such as boosts and fuzzes. I also place wahs, pitch shifters, and anything else that should affect the signal before it reaches the preamp stage.
I use the send/return block on the HX FX which allows the signal to exit the unit and go into the amp’s guitar input, or preamp. The preamp is what gives the sound a lot of its character so it’s important to dial this in a way that’s fairly neutral. The signal then goes from the amp’s effects send output back to the HX FX, where the signal coloured by the preamp can be further modified. Any blocks here are usually time-based such as reverbs and delays, but I also place volume blocks at the very end for giving myself a solo boost.
Finally, the signal is sent back to the amp’s effects return, where the signal is amplified by the power amp to drive whatever is connected to the amp’s speaker outputs. Usually it’s a cab, but I also use a Torpedo Captor for recording at home and as a DI-out onstage if I don’t have a cab, or if the sound engineer wants to blend a mic’d cab and the Captor.
Cable Loom
Having 3 separate cables running between the pedalboard and the amp is a bit of a pain to connect and looks untidy onstage, so I assembled a cable loom to make everything easier. The loom consists three 5-metre patch cables wrapped with a polyethylene mesh sleeve from Amazon. I used heat shrink on the ends of the sleeve to help keep it all together. All the cable plugs and the input ports have coloured insulating tape which makes plugging everything in very easy. When setting up before a show, I don’t want to stop and think about what connections are going where, I just have to match the colours.
Wireless
Continually tripping over my instrument cable pushed me into going wireless. I hadn’t used wireless systems before but I knew I wanted a transmitter I could securely mount to my guitar strap, and a receiver on my pedal board with a tuner function. I was particularly attracted to the build quality of the Shure GLXD16+ after trying it at a jam, and decided to get one. I looked at lots of other products too, but I settled on the Shure in the end.
I attached the pack to the guitar strap upside down so that I didn’t have the cable flapping around behind me. The pack is held securely on the guitar strap by the metal fastener that comes with the transmitter unit. Because I use the same type of straplocks for both guitars, I can change guitars without removing the transmitter from the strap. The tuner on the Shure receiver is very good and I use it all the time now, however I still use the tuner on the HX Effects to mute the whole rig when needed.
Power
For power, I use a Truetone 1SPOT Pro CS6 unit mounted to an aluminium panel set into the top of the board. The panel also acts as a sort of heat sink for the power supply which can get a little toasty, as there’s nowhere for the heat to rise. I chose the CS6 because I wanted something that was small enough to fit underneath the board, could power the HX Effects (and later the Shure), and which took an IEC C13 (kettle lead) as input. A Cioks SOL was another alternative but I decided on the CS6.
When setting up live, I didn’t want to have to carry a dedicated power supply brick. I wanted to be able to just plug a common kettle lead into the power supply and have everything work. Since kettle leads are available everywhere, I’d always have a way of powering the board. The CS6 has an output of up to 1600mA which is more than enough for the HX Effects and the Shure wireless receiver, and leaves around 200mA spare if I wanted to power a few other pedals in future.
The HX Effects is powered from the two 500mA outputs on the CS6 going into a series of adapter cables that came with the CS6 unit. First, the MC2 cable merges the two 500mA outputs into a single 1000mA output. Next, a CYR adapter reverses the polarity. Finally, the CL6 adapter connects into the HX Effects power port. Apparently it’s possible to power the HX Effects from a single 500mA output, as long as the 1SPOT CS6’s limit of 1600mA across all all outputs isn’t exceeded. However I decided to combine the two 500mA outputs in the end, it just felt safer. Maybe I’ll change that in future.
Finally, the Shure wireless unit is powered directly from one of the 12v outputs.
I use various cable ties and sticky bases to keep all the cables secure.
Miscellaneous
The natural oils and sweat from hands quickly corrode strings which causes them to sound lifeless and dull. I use WD-40 sprayed onto a GHS Fast Fret applicator between songs to try and keep strings clean and prolong their life. It also helps keep the strings nice and slick!
This rig has been built up over about four years in total, with me adding onto it when both time and money allowed it!
Links
Retro Workshop – Valve amp repairs based in Hythe
Andertons – My primary source of guitar equipment
Strings Direct – Purveyors of strings