Premier Guitar hung with cerebral metalhead guitarists Sacha Dunable, Dave Timnick, and bassist Joe Lester (shown above) of Intronaut before their Nashville gig at The End. These vinyl-printing, polyrhythmic-playing, hard-touring Californians roll with one-off custom instruments and plenty of paint-peeling power.
Sacha Dunable builds his one-of-a-kind guitars that are handcarved and equipped with pickups Sacha built from scratch and are handwound. His current No. #1 is this Yeti model and is loaded with Dunable Slugwolf pickups.
His No. #2 is a Dunable Yeti with a Sapele top and back along with a pair of Dunable Direwolf pickups. Both guitars are strung with Dunlop Super Bright .013–.056 strings are tuned to a rumbly low dropped-B tuning.
Dunable tours with a Mesa/Boogie Royal Atlantic RA-100. He swapped an RCA NOS 12AX7 into the preamp, but other than that, the Boogie is stock. Depending on the size of the venue, Dunable plugs into either one or two Mesa/Boogie Traditional 4x12 cabs with Celestion V30 speakers.
Dunable’s board is centered around a Carl Martin Octa-Switch MK3 that allows him to hit any combination of pedals with one tap. His pedal array includes a Dunlop Cry Baby wah, Way Huge Saucy Box, Boss NS-2 Noise Suppressor, Mesa/Boogie Flux Drive, Electro-Harmonix Pitch Fork, Eventide TimeFactor, MXR Reverb, Electro-Harmonix SuperEgo, and a TC Electronic Ditto X2.
Dave Timnick now knows it’s good to be in a band with a guitar builder as his current main ride is a Dunable Yeti with a swamp ash body and Dunable Slugwolf pickups.
Timnick’s backup is this Dunable Yarnhawk that sports a mahogany body. Both guitars are strung with Dunlop .013-.056 strings and Timnick uses Dunlop Tortex .73 mm picks.
Dave Timnick runs a single Mesa/Boogie Royal Atlantic RA-100 into a Mesa Traditional 4x12 cab with Celestion V30 speakers.
Timnick plugs his guitar directly into his Boss TU-2 tuner. From there, the signal then hits a MXR Il Torino Overdrive, Boss NS-2 Noise Suppressor, Electro-Harmonix Ring Thing, Mesa/Boogie Tone Burst, and a Way Huge Echo. The Eventide TimeFactor runs through the Mesa’s effects loop.
Joe Lester tours with a single bass, his 2013 Zon Legacy Elite 5-string fretless built to his specifications. Those specs include a 35" scale, 19 mm string spacing, mahogany body, bocóte (Mexican rosewood) top, carbon fiber composite neck, phenowood fingerboard with urethane finish, Aguilar OBP-3 onboard preamp, and EMG 40CSX soapbar pickups. The Zon is strung with Dunlop Super Brights .040–.120.
Lester runs an Aguilar DB751 amp with three 12AX7 tubes, which feeds a MOSFET power section. The amp runs into an Ampeg Pro Neo series PN410 4x10 and a PN115 1x15 cab.
Lester goes direct into a compact, but versatile pedalboard that includes a Source Audio Soundblox Bass Envelope Filter, Darkglass Electronics B7K Microtubes preamp, Dunlop Cry Baby wah, Fulltone MOSFET Bass Drive, MXR M-80 Bass DI, and a Boss DD-500 Digital Delay.