GuitarOne: How do you approach cutting a lead track in the studio, Ross? Do you improvise solos, work 'em 
out, or do otherplayers suggest things?

Ross: It kinda depends on the song. I think there's a few of them that I did improvise, and then there's a few that I 
kind of thought out, in a way. It just depends. If it's a rock song, then maybe I'll approach it that way and try to get 
this "rock solo" going on - something more improvised. If it's more of a melody-driven song, it might require a 
melodic solo - or sometimes maybe it needs the opposite. Maybe it needs something not melody-driven, just to 
offset that. It all depends on the song. And that's basically where it comes from: trying to fit things for the song.




GuitarOne: What kinds of guitars did you guys use on this record?

Ross: There's a whole potpourri of guitars, a vast array. I use a lot of Paul Reed Smith stuff. There's Telecasters 
everywhere. There are Les Pauls, there's a Firebird, there are so many acoustics - some of those acoustic 
guitars sound really cool. Definetly. Ed played one on "Run." That's an incredible-sounding acoustic.

Ed: That's a Collings acoustic that I bought. I love that guitar; it's one of the greatest-sounding guitars. And then I 
used a Washburn 12-string. When my boy was born, I bought him a prototype Firebird, but of course I ended up 
using it, it has a really great sound. I pretty much use a Tele on most of the stuff though.

Dean: In the studio, we'll play anything - different amps, different guitars. Live, I'm playing my Les Paul pretty 
much all the time.




GuitarOne: There are great guitar sounds throughout the record - particularly the effected clean tones. What 
kinds of effects devices did you use to get some of those sounds?

Ed: I think some of those were an old Roland Jazz Chorus amp. And on some tracks, like on "Crown," Ross did 
a solo with a real clean sound and we thought, "Um, that was a little too clean." Then we just ran the signal back 
through a "dirty" amp and kinda mixed the tones together. But I think most of the clean stuff was through a Roland
Jazz Chorus.

Ross: In some of those cases, the color came from the sound of the amp going through a compressor, which 
just totally brings out this really cool tonality you wouldn't normally hear. The compressor causes it to come alive 
somehow. But you're also having to deal with mics. What you hear with your ear on the amp is not what's going to 
be heard when you mic the cabinet, and that sometimes changes things. But there's this little multi-effects box 
that Korg has put out called Pandora's Box. That's a really cool little deal. It's a little-bitty gadget that somebody 
can plug headphones into and play with. It's like a Zoom, but they call it Pandora's Box. We used that on a good 
amount of stuff - little weird sounds, just tweaking it out a little bit. And then in some cases, there are Dunlop 
tremolos, auto-filters, and a Diaz tremolo that we used. Auto-filters kind of sound like a "wah" randomly being
thrown in there, depending upon how hard you hit the guitar with your pick.




GuitarOne: When all three guitars are going at once, do you have to do a lot of experimentation with guitar tones
to get all instruments to sit right in the mix?

Ed: Sometimes, but we didn't this time. We had made an amp - it's called the Sugarfuzz. That's the one we used 
for all the crunchiness. Basically it was our guitar tech, Joel Kosche, who invented it. I had an old Vox amp, and 
he hot-rodded it. The Vox was great sounding, but it would change from second to second just because of the 
tubes, and the old circuitry. So basically we took that idea and kinda made it our "secret weapon." That's what 
we like to call it.

Dean: Joel made that amp scream. It's great. That's probably what the next record will be recorded on.


more