“These are the s**t – you cannot do better!”: The $150 “monster guitar” Mick Thomson used for Slipknot’s early gigs
Slipknot guitarist Mick Thomson has revealed the $150 “monster guitar” that powered his performances during the band’s early days.
The metal titans, known for their chaotic, high-octane shows and aggressive riffs, burst onto the scene with their self-titled debut album in 1999. Speaking in a new interview with Guitar World, Thomson shares how financial constraints in Slipknot’s formative years had shaped his sound and approach to performing, stressing that you don’t need to spend a thousand bucks on gear to make an impact on stage.
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Reflecting on his main axe at the time, Thomson says that he didn’t use the instrument for live performances back then due to how expensive it was.
“My Jackson King V. Three-piece Eastern hard rock maple body, with swamp ash sides. Ebony board. EMG 81’s,” he says of the guitar’s features. “And I fixed the bridge. I put a screw in it, and then I let the sustain block just pull into that when you pull the string. So it had better sustain and was a little bit bigger sounding than stock.”
“But I wasn’t playing that guitar live, because it was a Custom Shop order and it took me a year to get it, and years of payments on a loan just to buy it. I didn’t want to get it hurt.”
Instead, Thomson turned to second-hand guitars like the Ibanez RG550s and RG560s that he’d gotten for cheap.
“So I started playing Ibanez 550s and 560s, because I could pick ‘em up at pawn shops for 150 bucks,” he says. “I’d get one of those, put EMGs in it, do a fret job and set it up, shim the bridge, and now I’ve got a monster guitar.”
“That’s why I was always telling people, ‘Man, these fucking Ibanezes are just the shit. You cannot do better. You can go spend a thousand dollars on a new guitar or spend $150 on this used Ibanez.’”
“So that was what I played live early on. Because onstage I would take Clown damage or Sid damage… shit used to be nuts. I mean, Clown used to use, like, metal bars and shit. We were very unsafe. You break the headstock off a $200 fucking used Ibanez it’s one thing, but a Custom Shop Jack- son King V is another.”
The post “These are the s**t – you cannot do better!”: The $150 “monster guitar” Mick Thomson used for Slipknot’s early gigs appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
