
Now the world’s best-known 6-string duo, Gabriela Quintero and Rodrigo Sánchez have long-reaching roots that extend from metal to Irish folk music and distill into their unique take on nylon-string-acoustic-guitar music.
On their new album, In Between Thoughts… A New World, the acoustic duo goes half-electric, plumbs programmed beats, adds slide guitar, and explores nondualism—following a creative path that opened due to the Covid shutdown.
Grammy Award-winning guitar virtuosi Rodrigo y Gabriela started recording what would become their latest album, In Between Thoughts… A New World, in February 2021. At the time, crafting a new album wasn’t the catalyst for making new music. They really just wanted to write, jam, and record without an agenda while locked down during the pandemic.
“It was just something to kill time,” admits Gabriela Quintero, one half of the Mexican guitar duo. “Just to be in the moment and not to think too much about it, even though here in Zihuatanejo it was more like the tropical version of the apocalypse [laughs].”
The other half of the duo, Rodrigo Sánchez, concurs that the pandemic presented a unique set of circumstances that allowed them to be creative without the added pressure of making a record, going on tour, or meeting a deadline. “Musically speaking, it was a very unusual process for us,” he says. “We weren’t really thinking about recording a new Rod and Gab record, and we didn’t really know what was going to happen. It was a really detailed process we never had done before, because we never had this amount of time to record an album.”
Rodrigo y Gabriela - True Nature (Official Audio)
"True Nature" is off Rodrigo y Gabriela's first album in 4 years. The album 'In Between Thoughts...A New World’ is available now on limited edition vinyl, CD...Guided by spiritual practices like Buddhism and nondualism, Rodrigo y Gabriela’s presence-of-mind approach to the guitar has led them on a fantastic, fulfilling journey from their humble heavy metal beginnings in Mexico City, to busking on the streets of Ireland, to performing in front of tens of thousands of people on the world’s biggest stages, opening for Muse and others.
Formed in 1998 out of the ashes of their heavy metal band, Tierra Ácida, Rodrigo y Gabriela left their hometown of Mexico City to pursue their musical ambitions in Dublin, Ireland, where they first began busking with their acoustic guitars on tourist-heavy Grafton Street, mixing elements of flamenco, rock, and heavy metal. In 2002, they released re-Foc, showcasing their virtuosity on guitar and their unique fusion of musical styles—even incorporating elements of the Irish folk music they had immersed themselves in while living abroad. In 2006, the duo released Rodrigo y Gabriela, a mix of original compositions and covers of classic songs by early influences Led Zeppelin and Metallica. The album was a commercial success, reaching the top of the Irish album charts and earning them a nomination for the Mercury Prize, awarded for the best album released in the United Kingdom by a British or Irish act. In 2008, they released 11:11, which featured 11 original compositions—each dedicated to a different musician who had influenced their music. In January 2020, Mettavolution, their fifth album, won Best Contemporary Instrumental Album at the Grammy Awards, cementing Rodrigo y Gabriela’s status as one of the most innovative and exciting guitar duos in the world.
“Gab has seven piezos inside her guitar, and everything is very tight. And I have five piezos.”—Rodrigo Sánchez
Gabriela Quintero’s Gear
Lead guitar provides the flash, but Gabriela Quintero’s right hand is what keeps the party jumping, with a driving, uncommon approach drawn more from traditional Irish music than flamenco.
Photo by Jim Bennett
Guitars
- Yamaha NCX5 Signature Model
Effects
- Boss FV-500L Volume Pedal
- Boss OC-3 Super Octave
- Boss TU-3S Chromatic Tuner
- Dunlop Cry Baby Standard Wah
- Dunlop DVP4 Volume (X) Mini Pedal
- Lehle P-Split III Box
Strings
- D’Addario Pro-Arté EJ45 Normal Tension
Self-produced by Rodrigo y Gabriela at their studio in the resort city of Ixtapa, Mexico, In Between Thoughts… A New World reasserts their seemingly innate ability for cultivating a musical repertoire that captures the zeitgeist. And while it may have begun without intention, that doesn’t mean In Between Thoughts lacks direction. Like its predecessors, there’s a familiar and explosive display of virtuosic guitar craft, including all of the hallmarks one would expect from Rodrigo y Gabriela. The powerful, percussive playing of Quintero and the deft melodicism of Sánchez remain the duo’s calling cards. But new, unexpected sonic elements abound as well, including the reverb-drenched slide guitar on “Egoland,” the energetic percussion on “Descending to Nowhere,” the kinetic electronic beats on “The Ride of the Mind,” the passionately chanted vocals of “Broken Rage,” and the dreamy mystique of the robotic vocal effects embedded within “Finding Myself Leads Me to You.”
In fall 2020, while recovering from Covid, Sánchez stumbled upon an online video on nondualism—the notion that there is a “single, infinite, and indivisible reality, whose nature is pure consciousness, from which all objects and selves derive their apparently independent existence,” as defined by author/teacher Rupert Spira. “Advaita Vedanta, or nonduality, is often called the direct path—accepting what is,” explains Sánchez. “We’re not saying that everything in this structure of the body/mind we live in is right. It is just what is, and we cannot really argue with that.”
“The beauty about music is that it’s always expanding.”—Gabriela Quintero
During the early stages of the pandemic, Rodrigo y Gabriela did what many other artists did: They turned to social media, posting short anecdotal performances from their studio. But when they finally got bored of that, they started to write music based on the concept of nondualism without really thinking it would become their new album. “It was just a project,” emphasizes Sánchez. “We were just here in the studio doing things that we would never dofor Rod and Gab. I started to work with electronics, I left my acoustic guitar [at home] and just took my electric guitars [into the studio]. We started writing the music at the same time as we were writing a story based on this philosophy that we were so much attracted to. If we had known that it was going to become the Rod and Gab album, we probably would’ve limited ourselves in terms of not using electronics, or not using too much electric guitar. But we didn’t really think that way. That’s how the album came about.”
Their new album began as a pandemic songwriting and recording project, and took shape almost by accident as they accumulated tracks and tunes.
As for Quintero, she took a slightly more pragmatic approach to the endeavor, particularly regarding nondualism. “I think me and Rod, we share a lot of things that we like, and we feel attracted to, but we process differently,” she explains. “That’s where the nondualism becomes dual [laughs]. I discovered these teachings through a book called The Power of Now [by Eckhart Tolle]. To me, that book was incredibly insightful and practical, and such a ‘no rules’ type of thing. I tried to meditate but there was too much discipline with some of the spiritual teachings. I remember when Rod was into Buddhism, and he was meditating a lot of hours a day and learning some mantras that were very strict. And for me, it was too much of a discipline. When I discovered The Power of Now, it was like, ‘Oh great, you don’t have to basically do anything [laughs].’ And then, when the pandemic came in and Rod discovered these videos about nondualism, the way he presented them to me sounded super confusing and too much like nihilism. So, we were constantly having friendly debates here in the studio. And I was going, ‘This is too crazy.’ It felt to me that it was denying this existence. But then we discovered these are the same teachings as The Power of Now, but in different words, in a different way. Then we stopped the debates.”
Quintero, very late into their writing and recording process, asked Sánchez if they were, in fact, writing their next record. “And then she asked, ‘When are we going to record it?’” says Sánchez. “We’d been recording [what we were writing] from day one with quality, and so I went back to the studio that afternoon and I checked all the recordings and all the levels, and we had produced the album already. We had the record.”
“We love flamenco. My best friend in that scene, Vicente Amigo, is one of the best. But no, we never play flamenco.”—Rodrigo Sánchez
As for how they record, Sánchez says it happens all sorts of ways—sometimes tracking together, sometimes individually. Sánchez says the acoustic guitars get picked up by German-made Schoeps MK 4 mics, recommended to him by his close friend, Spanish guitar maestro Vicente Amigo. They also adopted some of what he calls his “old-school metal techniques” for recording. “Knowing that we were going to have orchestra and electronics and all that, I used room mics for Gabs—and instead of just copying her track, I have her record two guitars exactly the same,” he explains, noting he did not use the copy/paste shortcut many musicians use nowadays. “She would do one guitar rhythm and then she would double that to make it sound bigger. Overdubbing the same rhythms and the same parts actually give her much more presence on top of the electronics. And she’s so good at it.”
Due in large part to Quintero’s right-hand technique, which Sánchez recorded so well on In Between Thoughts, “heavy metal flamenco” is a label often applied to the duo. “Ah, the ‘F’ word,” laughs Sánchez. “We love flamenco. My best friend in that scene, Vicente Amigo, is one of the best. But no, we never play flamenco. I understand some people are confused because of Gab’s rasgueado[gesture to invoke her right-hand technique], but actually she’s not doing the flamenco technique at all. She learned most of these techniques from an Irish bodhrán player, Robbie Harris.”
Rodrigo Sánchez’s Gear
Rodrigo Sánchez wears his musical roots on his chest,
in a t-shirt proclaiming his fan status for the Bay Area metal band Testament.
Photo by Dan Locke/Frank White Photo Agency
Guitars
- Yamaha NTX5 Signature Model
- Fender Jaguar
Amps
- Fractal Audio Axe-Fx II XL+
- Marshall JCM900 4100 Hi Gain Dual Reverb
Effects
- Boss DD-3 Digital Delay
- Boss FV-500L Volume Pedal
- Boss OC-3 Super Octave
- Ibanez WH10 V3 Wah Pedal
- Lehle P-Split III DI Box
- MXR M133 Micro Amp
- MXR M234 Analog Chorus
- One Control Minimal Series AB Box
- TC Electronic Ditto X2 Looper
- Truetone 1 Spot Pro CS7 Power Supply
- TWA WR-03 Wah Rocker
Strings & Picks
- D’Addario EXL115 (.011–.049
- D’Addario Pro-Arté EJ46 Hard Tension
- Jim Dunlop Jazz III Black Stiffo
The bodhrán is a frame drum used in traditional Irish music that Quintero learned about when they moved to Ireland. “At the time, I was trying to imagine how flamenco players played their rhythms,” she explains. “I couldn’t figure it out, because back then there was not YouTube—there was nothing. Nowadays, you can go and say, ‘How to play rasgueado flamenco, how to play rhumba,’ and you’ll find something, but not back then. And I always got it wrong. And then I discovered the bodhrán.”
In the old days, the bodhrán was played with hands, not with a stick, as is often seen presently, and she says the Irish kept telling her she actually exhibited the movements of a bodhrán player, but on guitar. “They encouraged me to do certain rhythms. So, just watching them, it was easy to emulate a lot of the movements—it just came organically. The beauty about music is that it’s always expanding.”
“If I came back to a solo bit or something, there was not that beat—people were not jumping anymore, and it was like, ‘Ah, we’re losing the audience,’ so I tried to become more the drummer of the band.”—Gabriela Quintero
After weaning his guitar craft on West Coast thrash metal bands Testament, Megadeth, and Slayer, and New Yorkers Anthrax, Sánchez’s nylon-string style was originally grounded in a lot of the palm-muting he carried over from that style of electric playing. “First of all, I had to translate my palm muting [from electric to nylon string],” he explains. “Then, I used a little bit more of Al Di Meola’s technique, but he was playing steel-strings, right? So, I was like, ‘Okay, how can I translate this into nylon?’ And then I started to listen to Strunz & Farah, and they are incredible. I listened to the way they played, especially Jorge Strunz, who is so clean and so fast. And I started to learn some of his licks here and there, so I was in that zone already.”
They want a whole lotta folk! Rodrigo y Gabriela get down on the Newport Folk Festival’s Harbor Stage in 2014.
Photo by Tim Bugbee/Tinnitus Photography
It’s worth noting that the nylon-string guitars Rodrigo y Gabriela play live are the result of years of practical research and application in collaboration with Yamaha and are not models or designs your average nylon-string player would use, nor are they commercially available. “It’s not like any nylon-string guitar can just go and play in the middle of a festival of 40,000 people,” explains Sánchez. Originally, they were using guitars made by Irish luthier Frank Tate, which they still use at home and in the studio. But the guitars they now use live were specially designed over a 14-year period by Yamaha’s Japan-based Custom Shop for arena-concert environments. “These guitars have a very special system for us to sound the way they sound live,” he says. “Gab has seven piezos inside her guitar, and everything is very tight. And I have five piezos, which is really important for those kinds of shows.”
Within the duo, both players are very melodic and very rhythmical, but Quintero did gravitate to doing more of the beats, simply out of necessity, once they started playing bigger shows. “At the beginning when we used to play together, we swapped all the time—solos, arpeggios, and all of this,” she explains. “Eventually, when we started playing rock festivals, because I was the one who played the chords and the beat, if I came back to a solo bit or something, there was not that beat—people were not jumping anymore, and it was like, ‘Ah, we’re losing the audience,’ so I tried to become more the drummer of the band.”
Jumping from a metal band in Mexico City to an acoustic guitar duo busking the streets of Ireland seems quite serendipitous and grounded in the kind of ideology they eventually discovered via nondualism. Circling back to Quintero’s The Power of Now-influenced, pragmatic approach, she jokes that the decision was really quite simple. “Eventually, we were so internationally non-famous and miserable, we decided we’re going to quit the band,” she chuckles. “But we’re not going to quit music. We wanted to travel the world. So, our new goal was to travel and play guitar.”
YouTube It
While this live performance doesn’t capture the duo’s current blend of acoustic and electric sounds, it does afford a close-up look at their playing technique. In particular, check out Gabriela’s right-hand approach, which is based on the traditional Irish instrument called the bodhrán.
- Quick Hit: Fender CN-60S Review ›
- Interview: Rodrigo y Gabriela - Busking for Broke ›
- Shredding Nylon: Rodrigo y Gabriela ›
- Rodrigo Y Gabriela 2023 Rig Rundown - Premier Guitar ›
The two-in-one “sonic refractor” takes tremolo and wavefolding to radical new depths.
Pros: Huge range of usable sounds. Delicious distortion tones. Broadens your conception of what guitar can be.
Build quirks will turn some users off.
$279
Cosmodio Gravity Well
cosmod.io
Know what a wavefolder does to your guitar signal? If you don’t, that’s okay. I didn’t either until I started messing around with the all-analog Cosmodio Instruments Gravity Well. It’s a dual-effect pedal with a tremolo and wavefolder, the latter more widely used in synthesis that , at a certain threshold, shifts or inverts the direction the wave is traveling—in essence, folding it upon itself. Used together here, they make up what Cosmodio calls a sonic refractor.
Two Plus One
Gravity Well’s design and control set make it a charm to use. Two footswitches engage tremolo and wavefolder independently, and one of three toggle switches swaps the order of the effects. The two 3-way switches toggle different tone and voice options, from darker and thicker to brighter and more aggressive. (Mixing and matching with these two toggles yields great results.)
The wavefolder, which has an all-analog signal path bit a digitally controlled LFO, is controlled by knobs for both gain and volume, which provide enormous dynamic range. The LFO tremolo gets three knobs: speed, depth, and waveform. The first two are self-explanatory, but the latter offers switching between eight different tremolo waveforms. You’ll find standard sawtooth, triangle, square, and sine waves, but Cosmodio also included some wacko shapes: asymmetric swoop, ramp, sample and hold, and random. These weirder forms force truly weird relationships with the pedal, forcing your playing into increasingly unpredictable and bizarre territories.
This is all housed in a trippy, beautifully decorated Hammond 1590BB-sized enclosure, with in/out, expression pedal, and power jacks. I had concerns about the durability of the expression jack because it’s not sealed to its opening with an outer nut and washer, making it feel more susceptible to damage if a cable gets stepped on or jostled near the connection, as well as from moisture. After a look at the interior, though, the build seems sturdy as any I’ve seen.
Splatterhouse Audio
Cosmodio’s claim that the refractor is a “first-of-its-kind” modulation effect is pretty grand, but they have a point in that the wavefolder is rare-ish in the guitar domain and pairing it with tremolo creates some pretty foreign sounds. Barton McGuire, the Massachusetts-based builder behind Cosmodio, released a few videos that demonstrate, visually, how a wavefolder impacts your guitar’s signal—I highly suggest checking them out to understand some of the principles behind the effect (and to see an ’80s Muppet Babies-branded keyboard in action.)
By folding a waveform back on itself, rather than clipping it as a conventional distortion would, the wavefolder section produces colliding, reflecting overtones and harmonics. The resulting distortion is unique: It can sound lo-fi and broken in the low- to mid-gain range, or synthy and extraterrestrial when the gain is dimed. Add in the tremolo, and you’ve got a lot of sonic variables to play with.
Used independently, the tremolo effect is great, but the wavefolder is where the real fun is. With the gain at 12 o’clock, it mimics a vintage 1x10 tube amp cranked to the breaking point by a splatty germanium OD. A soft touch cleans up the signal really nicely, while maintaining the weirdness the wavefolder imparts to its signal. With forceful pick strokes at high gain, it functions like a unique fuzz-distortion hybrid with bizarre alien artifacts punching through the synthy goop.
One forum commenter suggested that the Gravity Well effect is often in charge as much the guitar itself, and that’s spot on at the pedal's extremes. Whatever you expect from your usual playing techniques tends to go out the window —generating instead crumbling, sputtering bursts of blubbering sound. Learning to respond to the pedal in these environments can redefine the guitar as an instrument, and that’s a big part of Gravity Well’s magic.
The Verdict
Gravity Well is the most fun I’ve had with a modulation pedal in a while. It strikes a brilliant balance between adventurous and useful, with a broad range of LFO modulations and a totally excellent oddball distortion. The combination of the two effects yields some of the coolest sounds I’ve heard from an electric guitar, and at $279, it’s a very reasonably priced journey to deeply inspiring corners you probably never expected your 6-string (or bass, or drums, or Muppet Babies Casio EP-10) to lead you to.
The author in the spray booth.
Does the type of finish on an electric guitar—whether nitro, poly, or oil and wax—really affect its tone?
There’s an allure to the sound and feel of a great electric guitar. Many of us believe those instruments have something special that speaks not just to the ear but to the soul, where every note, every nuance feels personal. As much as we obsess over the pickups, wood, and hardware, there’s a subtler, more controversial character at play: the role of the finish. It’s the shimmering outer skin of the guitar, which some think exists solely for protection and aesthetics, and others insist has a role influencing the voice of the instrument. Builders pontificate about how their choice of finishing material may enhance tone by allowing the guitar to “breathe,” or resonate unfettered. They throw around terms like plasticizers, solids percentages, and “thin skin” to lend support to their claims. Are these people tripping? Say what you will, but I believe there is another truth behind the smoke.
It’s the shimmering outer skin of the guitar, which some think exists solely for protection and aesthetics, and others insist has a role influencing the voice of the instrument. Builders pontificate about how their choice of finishing material may enhance tone by allowing the guitar to “breathe,” or resonate unfettered. They throw around terms like plasticizers, solids percentages, and “thin skin” to lend support to their claims. Are these people tripping? Say what you will, but I believe there is another truth behind the smoke.
Nitrocellulose lacquer, or “nitro,” has long been the finish of choice for vintage guitar buffs, and it’s easy to see why. Used by Fender, Gibson, and other legendary manufacturers from the 1950s through the 1970s, nitro has a history as storied as the instruments it’s adorned. Its appeal lies not just in its beauty but in its delicate nature. Nitro, unlike some modern finishes, can be fragile. It wears and cracks over time, creating a visual patina that tells the story of every song, every stage, every late-night jam session. The sonic argument goes like this: Nitro is thin, almost imperceptible. It wraps the wood like silk. The sound is unhindered, alive, warm, and dynamic. It’s as if the guitar has a more intimate connection between its wood and the player's touch. Of course, some call bullscheiße.
In my estimation, nitro is not just about tonal gratification. Just like any finish, it can be laid on thick or thin. Some have added flexibility agents (those plasticizers) that help resist damage. But as it ages, old-school nitro can begin to wear and “check,” as subtle lines weave across the body of the guitar. And with those changes comes a mellowing, as if the guitar itself is growing wiser with age. Whether a tonal shift is real or imagined is part of the mystique, but it’s undeniable that a nitro-finished guitar has a feel that harkens back to a romantic time in music, and for some that’s enough.
Enter the modern era, and we find a shift toward practicality—polyurethane and polyester finishes, commonly known as “poly.” These finishes, while not as romantic as nitro, serve a different kind of beauty. They are durable, resilient, and protective. If nitro is like a delicate silk scarf, poly is armor—sometimes thicker, shinier, and built to last. The fact that they reduce production times is a bonus that rarely gets mentioned. For the player who prizes consistency and durability, poly is a guardian. But in that protection, some say, comes a price. Some argue that the sound becomes more controlled, more focused—but less alive. Still, poly finishes have their own kind of charm. They certainly maintain that showroom-fresh look, and to someone who likes to polish and detail their prized possessions, that can be a big plus.
“With those changes comes a mellowing, as if the guitar itself is growing wiser with age.”
For those seeking an even more natural experience, oil and wax finishes offer something primal. These finishes, often applied by hand, mostly penetrate the wood as much as coating it, leaving the guitar’s surface nearly bare. Proponents of oil and/or wax finishes say these materials allow the wood to vibrate freely, unencumbered by “heavy” coatings. The theory is there’s nothing getting in the way—sort of like a nudist colony mantra. Without the protection of nitro or poly, these guitars may wear more quickly, bearing the scars of its life more openly. This can be seen as a plus or minus, I imagine.
My take is that finishes matter because they are part of the bond we have with our instruments. I can’t say that I can hear a difference, and I think a myth has sprouted from the acoustic guitar world where maybe you can. Those who remove their instrument’s finish and claim to notice a difference are going on memory for the comparison. Who is to say every component (including strings) went back together exactly the same? So when we think about finishes, we’re not just talking about tone—we’re thinking about the total connection between musician and instrument. It’s that perception that makes a guitar more than just wood and wire. The vibe makes it a living, breathing part of the music—and you.
Featuring a preamp and Dynamic Expansion circuit for punch and attack, plus switchable amp simulations.
"Like a missile seeking its target, Heatseeker will give you the explosive sound of rock! Inspired directly from the gear setup used by Angus Young,it features the most important sonic elements to match the tone of the short-pants-rock-God.
It’s no secret that a major role to his sound, along with the Marshall-brick walls, played one of the first wireless systems for guitar that quickly became a classic among guitar greats, the Schaffer Vega Diversity System."
The preamp along with the Dynamic Expansion circuit found in the wireless transmitter/receiver gave it its distinct sound. Besides boosting the signal, the preamp tightens up lower frequencies and slightly accentuates mid frequencies while the Dynamic Expansion circuit enhances the dynamic response and harmonics of the signal giving punch and attack to ensure that it will cut through the mix. Instead of opting for a prefix setting for the Dynamic Expansion circuit as found in the original unit, we have re-imagined our version with the enhanced knob on the Heatseeker to have more control over the guitar tone’s dynamic response. Setting it around 10 o‘clock is a good starting point to add some extra sparkle. Max it out to bring back to life even the most dull and colorless sounds.
Utilizing an all-analog JFET circuit, running on 27 volts via an internal voltage boost (DO NOT plug higher than 9V DC power supply), we have captured the tone and feel of three British tube amplifiers, synonymous with the sound of rock and roll, with an excellent clean-to-mean dynamic response. With the flip of a toggle switch, you can capture the sound and feel of a JTM45, 1959 Super Lead, or JMP 2203. A smart switching circuit follows the signal path and respective gain stages tuned for each amp and combines them with an actual Marshall style EQ and power amp simula-tion circuit for thundering rock tones. Angus Young usually plugs into Channel 1 or High Treble input of his JTM45s and Super Leads so we opted for that sound when we started visualizing Heatseeker on the drawing board. We have also extended the range of the presence control beyond the original so that the user will be able to match the pedal to any amp or gear setup. The master volume offers plenty of output so that you can also use the pedal as a preamp and plug it into a clean power amp or straight to your DAW. Note that the pedal doesn’t feature any speaker simulation circuit so we recommend using a separate hardware or software guitar speaker simulation when going direct to DAW or a full-range speaker.
A new feature to our booster/drive + amp-in-a-box line of pedals, recreating legendary sounds, is the switchable WoS (Wall of Sound) circuit. We have carefully tuned this circuit at the output of the AMP section of the Heatseeker to open up the soundstage by increasing the output, adding thundering lows, and thickening high mid frequencies. Imagine standing in front of a wall loaded with Marshall amp heads and 4x12 speaker cabinets, grabbing your SG, and hitting a chord. You will be blown away by the sound projection! In combination with the tube power amp simulation and the enhanced circuit of the right section, we’ve made sure that the pick attack will be as dynamic as it gets, so¥er picking will produce clean and slightly crunchy sounds, and hard picking will give explosive distorted sounds! While primarily designed for Angus Young sounds, Heatseeker will definitely open the door to countless other guitar-great tones that use these Marshall amps and/or the Schaffer Vega Diversity System. Think of KISS, Peter Frampton, and Van Halen to name a few.
Like our other dual overdrive/amp-in-a-box designs, Heatseeker features a passive effects loop to give you the option to connect your beloved pedals between the preamp/enhancer and amp-in-a-box circuit or use the two sections as separate and independent effects when using an external bypass switcher/looper. SND is the output of the BOOST/ENHANCE section, RTN is the input of the AMP section. SND is connected to RTN when no instrument jacks are inserted in the effects loop. Note that all pedals inserted in the passive effects loop are still in the signal chain when any or both sections of the Heatseeker are in bypass mode.
Heatseeker features a power-up bypass/engage pre-set function for the footswitches. You can change the default function by holding down the footswitch(es) during power-up. That way you can select which state your pedal will go to when you plug the power supply. This function comes in especially handy to people who use remote pedal switchers/loopers as they only set the state of the pedal once and then operate from the controller.
Street/MAP Price: $279
For more information, please visit crazytubecircuits.com.
Creed extend their sold-out Summer of ’99 Tour with 23 additional dates.
Produced by Live Nation, the dates begin July 9 at Rupp Arena in Lexington, KY and wrap August 20 at the Scotiabank Saddledome in Calgary, AB with support from 3 Doors Down, Daughtry, Mammoth WVH and Big Wreck. *Check individual dates for lineup in each market.
When it kicked off in 2024, The Summer of ’99 Tour quickly became “one of the most anticipated tours of the summer” (USA Today) and “one of the hottest rock tickets of the year” (Billboard) for a return that “may be something this industry has never seen” (Pollstar). To date, CREED’s Scott Stapp, Mark Tremonti, Brian Marshall, and Scott Phillips have performed over 60 sold-out concerts throughout North America, selling over 800,000 tickets and breaking venue records in multiple markets.
“Thirty years in, it’s been a blessing to pick up right where we left off with longtime fans and to meet the next generation for the first time. It’s been an incredible ride, and we aren’t done, so here’s to a ‘Summer’ that never ends. We’ll see you on the road,” states Scott Stapp.
Creed will close out 2024 with shows in Las Vegas, NV (Dec. 30 & Dec. 31) and their newly announced dates in 2025 will follow their already sold-out Summer of ’99 and Beyond cruise sailing April 9– April 13 from Miami to Nassau with Sevendust, Hoobastank, Lit, Hinder, Fuel and more. Also in April, the band - whose audience has included fans of mainstream, rock, and country for over 25 years - will perform at Stagecoach.
For more information on all Creed tour dates as well as the opportunity to purchase entry into Mark Tremonti’s guitar clinic can be found at https://creed.com.
Tour Dates
CREED: SUMMER OF ‘99 TOUR 2025 DATES:
3DD – 3 Doors Down / D – Daughtry / BW – Big Wreck / MWVH – Mammoth WVH
Wed Jul 09 | Lexington, KY | Rupp Arena – 3DD/MWVH
Fri Jul 11 | Syracuse, NY | Empower Federal Credit Union Amphitheater at Lakeview – 3DD/MWVH
Sat Jul 12 | Camden, NJ | Freedom Mortgage Pavilion – 3DD
Tue Jul 15 | Wantagh, NY | Northwell at Jones Beach Theater – D/MWVH
Wed Jul 16 | Scranton, PA | The Pavilion at Montage Mountain – D/MWVH
Sun Jul 20 | Columbus, OH | Schottenstein Center – 3DD/MWVH
Tue Jul 22 | Hartford, CT | Xfinity Theatre – 3DD/MWVH
Thu Jul 24 | Charleston, SC | Credit One Stadium – 3DD/MWVH
Sat Jul 26 | New Orleans, LA | Smoothie King Center – 3DD/MWVH
Sun Jul 27 | Memphis, TN | FedExForum – 3DD/MWVH
Tue Jul 29 | Wichita, KS | INTRUST Bank Arena – D/MWVH
Fri Aug 01 | Lincoln, NE | Pinnacle Bank Arena – D/MWVH
Sat Aug 02 | Ridgedale, MO | Thunder Ridge Nature Arena – D/MWVH
Mon Aug 04 | Albuquerque, NM | Isleta Amphitheater – D/MWVH
Wed Aug 06 | Chula Vista, CA | North Island Credit Union Amphitheatre – D/MWVH
Thu Aug 07 | Palm Desert, CA | Acrisure Arena at Greater Palm Springs – 3DD/MWVH
Sat Aug 09 | Mountain View, CA | Shoreline Amphitheatre – 3DD/MWVH
Sun Aug 10 | Stateline, NV | Lake Tahoe Outdoor Arena at Harveys – 3DD/MWVH (Not a Live Nation date)
Wed Aug 13 | Ridgefield, WA | RV Inn Style Resorts Amphitheater – 3DD/MWVH
Thu Aug 14 | Auburn, WA | White River Amphitheatre – 3DD/MWVH
Sat Aug 16 | Vancouver, BC | Rogers Arena – BW/MWVH
Tue Aug 19 | Edmonton, AB | Rogers Place – BW/MWVH
Wed Aug 20 | Calgary, AB | Scotiabank Saddledome – BW/MWVH
Previously Announced CREED Dates:
Sat Dec 28 | Durant, OK | Choctaw Casino & Resort (Sold Out)
Mon Dec 30 | Las Vegas, NV | The Colosseum
Tue Dec 31 | Las Vegas, NV | The Colosseum
Apr 9 – Apr 13 | Miami – Nassau | Summer of ’99 and Beyond Cruise (Sold Out)
Sat Apr 26 | Indio, CA | Stagecoach