Alex Skolnick: BD interview

4) A question for our guitar lovers on the site: Some of the tones you achieve sound so natural, woody and warm. What guitars, amps and effects did you use for the recording process?

My main instruments are Heritage Guitars, built in the old Gibson plant in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Heritage guitars are a bit harder to acquire than most- you won't find them in Guitar Center or Sam Ash. But they're the only new guitars I'm aware of that give you the feeling of shopping in a great vintage guitar shop like Mandolin Bros in New York or Gruhn Guitars in Nashville. Mostly what you hear is a Heritage H575 archtop, similar to a Gibson 175. There is also my signature 'Alex Skolnick' model, which is like a Les Paul- it stands toe to toe with any classic Gibson Les Paul. There are also a couple of great acoustics on there, both made by Yamaha. One is an LJX steel string and the other is an NCX Nylon string.

For amps, I used my signature Budda, which is my main amp live. It's a compo amp with one speaker. For effects, I used a bit of delay, the Carbon-Copy, manufactured by Jim Dunlop. Live, I'm using loop pedals from Line 6 and Boss, but in the studio, we mimicked the loops on actual tracks, for the sake of sound quality. more