
Trace Davis’ road to rock-star glory began with a Def Leppard bus driver—and quickly progressed to modding and building amps for the likes of Bill Kelliher, Billy Gibbons, Vivian Campbell, and Richard Fortus.
Trace Davis, Voodoo Amps founder and president, says that when he was growing up his father taught him that anything worth doing was worth doing well.
“It wasn’t that he was trying to be a hard-ass,” chuckles Davis. “It was just the approach he had learned in the military for six years. He truly believed that if you’re going to do something, you really have to sit down and do it properly. You have to have a passion for it or you’re not going to excel—and I really have a passion for this because I play guitar and I love music.” Voodoo’s growing clientele is a testament to Davis’ passion. Current Voodoo amp or amp-mod players include such notables as Billy Gibbons, Joe Perry, Vivian Campbell, Doug Aldrich, and Bill Kelliher.
Of course, knowing what each amp component does is important for any amp builder, but Davis says what he’s interested in is how each component affects the amp’s feel. That process is more art form than science, so there are no hard and fast rules, but Davis says that over the years research has helped him develop an intuitive sense for it. His journey, however, began accidentally.
Lightning Strikes
It seems almost every amp builder starts out by having to fix something out of necessity rather than actual curiosity, and Davis is no exception. In 1996, he lived in Binghamton, New York, and spent his time shuttling back and forth to New York City working as both a freelance recording engineer and session guitarist.
—Voodoo Amps’ Trace Davis
“I had about 17 different amps—not counting combos or cabs—and depending on what someone needed, I could mix and match,” he recalls. One of those amps was a 1969 Marshall plexi. “You could just put a microphone in front of it, and that was it. Everyone loved it. But then one day the bassist from the band I was in at the time was playing through it when lightning hit really close by. The lightning fried the tubes and the output transformer.”
Fortunately for Davis, he’d been around electronics most of his life. His father worked at Westinghouse, where he oversaw the manufacturing, production, and quality control of tubes—which made the prospect of repairing the plexi seem more plausible. “I was always around it, but I didn’t have any interest in it until I opened up that amp to try to figure out what was wrong.” Upon doing so, Davis remembers thinking to himself, “I’ll just get a Marshall-authorized output transformer and it’ll be fine.” And he did, but when he put the amp back together and plugged it in, he says it sounded like a shadow of its former self. “I could’ve just heaved the thing out into the driveway and called it a day,” he laughs wryly. “So I had ‘it’—and then ‘it’ was gone.”
When asked to elaborate on what was so magical about the “feel” of both his old Marshall and what he’s aiming for with his own amp designs, Davis compares it to the string setup on a guitar. “To most players, tone is just what comes out of the cabinet—the sound. But when you have a guitar in your hands, you want it to feel good: Transitioning from string to string should feel good. Bending and vibrato should feel good. Let’s say you’re using .010-gauge strings—you don’t want it to feel like .011s or .012s. That’s really stiff. You want .010s to feel like .008s or .009s. It’s not fun when you’re fighting for every note—you start thinking too much about playing rather than performing or recording. You don’t want to go, ‘Argh, I’m fighting with my gear again.’”
Voodoo's main repair tech, Dan Stillwell, at his workbench.
There’s no test gear for something as nebulous as feel, but that’s where Davis says artistry comes into play. “You can line up the voltage, but if you’re using different caps, they might be the same value, but they can feel stiffer,” he explains. “I’ve tried—and continue to try—every different kind of cap out there, whether it’s a coupling cap, a bypass cap, or a filter cap, just to know how they feel. Because everything has its place.”
More Than Meets the Eye
While new-old-stock tubes, capacitors, and resistors often get bandied about as sources of elusive amp mojo, Davis says his experience has taught him that output transformers are one of the oft-overlooked components that significantly contribute to overall feel. That realization first came when he was attempting to recover his plexi’s lost tone. He bought another old Marshall and experimented with moving components from one to the other. “When I got around to swapping the output transformer, it sounded noticeably better, though not exactly the same. That’s what got me really deep into this—trying to get back something I had lost.” The quest to capture that same tone and feel has become one of the driving forces behind the Voodoo brand.
“When you first start out doing this stuff, you tend to think it’s the caps and resistors,” he says. “You think to yourself, ‘The plexi had mustard caps, so that’s got to be the secret.’ I came into it backwards with transformers. The situation with my plexi made a massive difference for me. Comparatively, the transformers sounded radically different, but they weren’t supposed to. It was really obvious, like flicking a light switch on in a dark room.”
That doesn’t mean Davis dismisses the importance of smaller components. A clear understanding of caps, resistors, and voltage is essential, of course, and he’s done considerable homework. “I studied everything, including the metallurgy of what goes into forging the metal for the laminates and the wire and the insulation.” But when all’s said and done, he sticks to his guns on the drastic impact that quality transformers can have. “Even with such knowledge, it turns out that a profound difference can be made with transformers. It can make an amp sound and feel altogether different.”
“Voodoo understands the sound of rock ’n’ roll.” —Elwood Francis, guitar tech for Billy Gibbons
The Company
Voodoo Amps started out in a 200-square-foot room in Davis’ house in Ithaca, New York, back in 1999. The company grew at a pretty rapid rate, and quickly spread into the living room. He eventually moved the business out of his house and into a 1,100-square-foot space right off of the Ithaca Commons, but he grew out of that within a year and a half. Next up was a 4,000-footer, and then, in May 2013, he moved to his current 7,000-square-foot facility in Lansing, New York.
Davis isn’t just a guitarist—he’s also a sound engineer who’s genuinely enthusiastic about music and continues to be very involved in his local scene. “When someone puts a microphone on an amp, it’s got to sound good,” he says. “There are a lot of guys outside of just the player who have an influence—the monitor engineer has to be happy, and the front-of-house engineer has to like it. Clearly the player has to be happy, but if everyone else is happy, it makes things easier. I’ve played live for a long time, and I’ve made records, and I’ve done and continue to do sound, so I understand both sides.”
Meanwhile, Cindy Davis—one of five full-time employees at Voodoo (and Trace's wife)—handles everything from bookkeeping to customer service. She also builds amps. “Trace is so meticulous in his work and has so many detailed schematics of his designs that any one of us can build an amp following his instructions, and it will sound just like he built it,” she explains. Trace still has the final say on what goes out the door, and he tests each product to make sure it measures up to his standards.
In addition to building Voodoo amps, Davis’ company does repairs, mods, and servicing. Another full-timer, Dan Stillwell—whose brother John “Dawk” Stillwell has done tech work for Ritchie Blackmore, Tony Iommi, and Richie Sambora—handles most repairs.
Photo by Chris Kies.
The Viral Bill Kelliher Signature Mod
“Bill [Kelliher, Mastodon] came to us with a Marshall JCM800 he said just didn’t sound very good, so I designed a custom mod for him” says Voodoo Amps’ Trace Davis. “Just as I was about to put it in the road case to ship back, he asked, ‘Can you install a clean channel?’ I like a good challenge, so we implemented a clean channel and added another gain and master for the clean channel. To show him what I’d done, I made a quick video on my iPhone and posted it to YouTube, thinking it would be private and I’d pull it down once he got the gist of what we did. Lo and behold,” Davis laughs, “a few weeks later we get an unsolicited request for ‘the Bill Kelliher Mod’ from someone who’d seen it on YouTube. So now we are offering that, too.”
Asked about the benefits of owning a small company, Davis says one is that Voodoo doesn’t get into pricing wars with the competition. “Our amps are designed to be a performance car, much like a Ferrari, and then the price comes at the end,” says Davis. “I haven’t had a huge desire to compete against the bottom line—that’s a hard road to travel and usually means you can’t manufacture in the U.S.A.”
Voodoo amp prices range from $1,495 to $2,995, and Davis started manufacturing the line in 2002—again, partly out of necessity. “Some guys would call and just ask, ‘Do you have an amp I can just buy?’” he says. “They didn’t want to bother with shipping their amp back and forth for a mod. So I said, ‘Let’s just put out an amp so that people can buy it.’ Some production models come from that. For example, the V-Rock is loosely based on our Jose Mod, which is intended to capture the hot-rodded Marshall tones from the 1980s.”
Another catalyst for manufacturing amps came from a customer who once needed an old Marshall plexi serviced. “It was in rough shape,” recalls Davis. “So we cleaned it up to the point where we could fire it up, and when I hit a chord, I was like ‘Oh my god, that’s exactly it—that’s like the amp I had.’” In that moment, Davis decided to offer an out-of-the-box plexi that would be consistent with the qualities he remembered from his beloved ’69 of many years before. Davis acquired the amp from the customer, and it became the model for the Voodoo V-Plex. “We sent the transformers to Mercury Magnetics to have them cloned, so that we could get them as authentic as possible,” he explains. With the transformers replicated, the 50-watt single lead V-Plex was born. Davis also started designing higher-gain amps similar to ones the company had been doing mods on. The Hex and Witchdoctor were the first high-gain, multi-channel amps offered by Voodoo.
Mercury Magnetics transformers are used on all production Voodoo amps, and F&T capacitors are frequently used. Some models have an aluminum chassis, while others use steel. “They do sound and feel different,” Davis says about the chassis materials. “We’ve built them side-by-side, with the only differing variable being the chassis, and anybody who plugs into it notices that the steel is a more aggressive, harder sound. The aluminum has a very sweet kind of thing going on.” Davis says he’s experimented with this “exhaustively.”
Voodoo Amps V-Rock DL100 Chassis.
More on Mods
“Building products is different from doing mods,” explains Davis. “I’ve built enough amps with aluminum chassis, steel chassis, chassis with various different kind of plating, that I know what I want to do for my own product,” he says. “Especially when it’s for one kind of amp, for one kind of sound, aimed at one particular market.”
Conversely, when designing a mod you obviously have to work around what’s already there. “If it’s a massive circuit board and a 4-channel amp, you really have to take that into account,” Davis says. “I’ve gotten to the point where I can play an amp and then go look at the schematic and take some voltage readings and say, ‘Okay, we need to do this here, here, and here,’ and the amp will be 90 percent of the way there. Then it’s just a matter of finessing it. The equation just somehow makes sense in my mind. I’m not even sure how it makes sense, because I just look at it and see what needs to be done based on what the customer is saying he doesn’t like. I know what will fix that.”
Davis says the lack of information in the ’80s inspired him to make professional mods available to the public. “When I grew up, there was only Mike Soldano, Lee Jackson, and Jose Arredondo,” he recalls. “I came across a magazine article somebody wrote on mod techs, but it didn’t have a way to contact any of them.
—Voodoo Amps’ Trace Davis
So I thought that if a player could read something like that nowadays—in a magazine or on the internet—and be able to contact us to get the exact same thing as, say, Vivian Campbell or Billy Gibbons, well, ‘Here you go. This is exactly what they use. Verbatim.’ A lot of players like that.”
Voodoo mods range in price from $195 to $1,200, and the company’s website lists a multitude of mods designed for specific amps, such as the Peavey 5150, Marshall JVM series, Mesa/Boogie Rectifiers, and the Marshall JMP-1—their most popular preamp mod. “It’s still the most widely used preamp on tours,” says Davis. “We’ve got seven or eight players currently using it, and everyone has the exact same mod.”
Billy Gibbons is one of those players. He uses Voodoo’s Platinum Mod on all 13 of his JMP-1 preamps. “Voodoo understands the sound of rock ’n’ roll—it’s that simple,” says Gibbons’ guitar tech, Elwood Francis. “As far as the Platinum Mod is concerned, it’s a night-and-day difference. Before the mod, the JMP-1 was bland, noisy, had no dynamics and was squishy. After the mod, it’s open-sounding, the gain is harmonically rich and very round, and it has far less noise despite having more gain on top. It’s like the difference between a VW and a Porsche. A VW is an excellent car for getting around, then one day you drive a Porsche—big difference.”
GN'R guitarist Richard Fortus tests out some Voodoo prototypes onstage before a gig.
Guns N’ Roses’ Richard Fortus on Voodoo Amps
I first heard about Voodoo Amps about eight or nine years ago. I was looking to have my favorite ’73 100-watt Marshall cloned, and my tech at the time (Jason Baskin) recommended Voodoo. I bought the head from Mick Mars (Mötley Crüe) about 11 years ago. A friend of mine who owned a shop in L.A. called me and told me that Mick was selling off a bunch of Marshalls, so we went to his house and I played through about a dozen Jose Arredondo-modded heads. I plugged into one and hit a chord, and it was as if the clouds parted and the angels sang. My jaw hit the floor. Mick looked at me and said, “Yeah, that’s the one I did all the records with.” That became my No. 1 amp for years until I met Trace—he not only meticulously cloned it, but he beat it.
The main heads that I use live are a pair of signature Voodoo R4-100 heads that Trace and I designed. They are like having four of my favorite Marshalls in one head. I’m not a huge fan of multi-channel amps, but there seem to be no sacrifices in tone with this amp. It’s a two-channel head with an extra volume and gain that can be engaged for each channel. The first channel is based on my favorite plexi, and the second channel is based on the ’73 Jose. I also have a single-channel head that Trace meticulously cloned from the ground up. His attention to detail is beyond any amp guy I’ve ever worked with.
Voodoo’s first high-profile mod user came via a particularly unusual route. “A good friend of mine drove for Def Leppard, and he lined up a meeting for us,” says Davis. “He said, ‘You can bring some stuff up. If they like it, you can figure it out from there—I’m just setting up the introduction.’ We ended up getting Def Leppard as one of our first endorsements, which we didn’t think would happen right away. We figured we had another four or five or six years of climbing the ladder. Once we had a noted artist like Def Leppard, it seemed to add some legitimacy and bring new customers.”
Davis is proud to offer everyday players a very personal experience, too. “We often get calls from people who say, ‘I see you do work for a lot of big players, so if they like it, it must be good. Here’s what I like and here’s what this doesn’t do. Is it modifiable, and if not, what should I get? Here’s my budget.’” He says Voodoo will also look at what a customer wants and the budget they have to work with and help them get the most bang for their buck. “We’re trying to establish relationships with customers over the long term.”
A live editor and browser for customizing Tone Models and presets.
IK Multimedia is pleased to release the TONEX Editor, a free update for TONEX Pedal and TONEX ONE users, available today through the IK Product Manager. This standalone application organizes the hardware library and enables real-time edits to Tone Models and presets with a connected TONEX pedal.
You can access your complete TONEX library, including Tone Models, presets and ToneNET, quickly load favorites to audition, and save to a designated hardware slot on IK hardware pedals. This easy-to-use application simplifies workflow, providing a streamlined experience for preparing TONEX pedals for the stage.
Fine-tune and organize your pedal presets in real time for playing live. Fully compatible with all your previous TONEX library settings and presets. Complete control over all pedal preset parameters, including Global setups. Access all Tone Models/IRs in the hardware memory, computer library, and ToneNET Export/Import entire libraries at once to back up and prepare for gigs Redesigned GUI with adaptive resize saves time and screen space Instantly audition any computer Tone Model or preset through the pedal.
Studio to Stage
Edit any onboard Tone Model or preset while hearing changes instantly through the pedal. Save new settings directly to the pedal, including global setup and performance modes (TONEX ONE), making it easy to fine-tune and customize your sound. The updated editor features a new floating window design for better screen organization and seamless browsing of Tone Models, amps, cabs, custom IRs and VIR. You can directly access Tone Models and IRs stored in the hardware memory and computer library, streamlining workflow.
A straightforward drop-down menu provides quick access to hardware-stored Tone Models conveniently sorted by type and character. Additionally, the editor offers complete control over all key parameters, including FX, Tone Model Amps, Tone Model Cabs/IR/VIR, and tempo and global setup options, delivering comprehensive, real-time control over all settings.
A Seamless Ecosystem of Tones
TONEX Editor automatically syncs with the entire TONEX user library within the Librarian tab. It provides quick access to all Tone Models, presets and ToneNET, with advanced filtering and folder organization for easy navigation. At the same time, a dedicated auto-load button lets you preview any Tone Model or preset in a designated hardware slot before committing changes.This streamlined workflow ensures quick edits, precise adjustments and the ultimate flexibility in sculpting your tone.
Get Started Today
TONEX Editor is included with TONEX 1.9.0, which was released today. Download or update the TONEX Mac/PC software from the IK Product Manager to install it. Then, launch TONEX Editor from your applications folder or Explorer.
For more information and videos about TONEX Editor, TONEX Pedal, TONEX ONE, and TONEX Cab, visit:
www.ikmultimedia.com/tonexeditor
The luthier’s stash.
There is more to a guitar than just the details.
A guitar is not simply a collection of wood, wire, and metal—it is an act of faith. Faith that a slab of lumber can be coaxed to sing, and that magnets and copper wire can capture something as expansive as human emotion. While it’s comforting to think that tone can be calculated like a tax return, the truth is far messier. A guitar is a living argument between its components—an uneasy alliance of materials and craftsmanship. When it works, it’s glorious.
The Uncooperative Nature of Wood
For me it all starts with the wood. Not just the species, but the piece. Despite what spec sheets and tonewood debates would have you believe, no two boards are the same. One piece of ash might have a bright, airy ring, while another from the same tree might sound like it spent a hard winter in a muddy ditch.
Builders know this, which is why you’ll occasionally catch one tapping on a rough blank, head cocked like a bird listening. They’re not crazy. They’re hunting for a lively, responsive quality that makes the wood feel awake in your hands. But wood is less than half the battle. So many guitarists make the mistake of buying the lumber instead of the luthier.
Pickups: Magnetic Hopes and Dreams
The engine of the guitar, pickups are the part that allegedly defines the electric guitar’s voice. Sure, swapping pickups will alter the tonality, to use a color metaphor, but they can only translate what’s already there, and there’s little percentage in trying to wake the dead. Yet, pickups do matter. A PAF-style might offer more harmonic complexity, or an overwound single-coil may bring some extra snarl, but here’s the thing: Two pickups made to the same specs can still sound different. The wire tension, the winding pattern, or even the temperature on the assembly line that day all add tiny variables that the spec sheet doesn’t mention. Don’t even get me started about the unrepeatability of “hand-scatter winding,” unless you’re a compulsive gambler.
“One piece of ash might have a bright, airy ring, while another from the same tree might sound like it spent a hard winter in a muddy ditch.”
Wires, Caps, and Wishful Thinking
Inside the control cavity, the pots and capacitors await, quietly shaping your tone whether you notice them or not. A potentiometer swap can make your volume taper feel like an on/off switch or smooth as an aged Tennessee whiskey. A capacitor change can make or break the tone control’s usefulness. It’s subtle, but noticeable. The kind of detail that sends people down the rabbit hole of swapping $3 capacitors for $50 “vintage-spec” caps, just to see if they can “feel” the mojo of the 1950s.
Hardware: The Unsung Saboteur
Bridges, nuts, tuners, and tailpieces are occasionally credited for their sonic contributions, but they’re quietly running the show. A steel block reflects and resonates differently than a die-cast zinc or aluminum bridge. Sloppy threads on bridge studs can weigh in, just as plate-style bridges can couple firmly to the body. Tuning machines can influence not just tuning stability, but their weight can alter the way the headstock itself vibrates.
It’s All Connected
Then there’s the neck joint—the place where sustain goes to die. A tight neck pocket allows the energy to transfer efficiently. A sloppy fit? Some credit it for creating the infamous cluck and twang of Fender guitars, so pick your poison. One of the most important specs is scale length. A longer scale not only creates more string tension, it also requires the frets to be further apart. This changes the feel and the sound. A shorter scale seems to diminish bright overtones, accentuating the lows and mids. Scale length has a definite effect on where the neck joins the body and the position of the bridge, where compromises must be made in a guitar’s overall design. There are so many choices, and just as many opportunities to miss the mark. It’s like driving without a map unless you’ve been there before.
Alchemy, Not Arithmetic
At the end of the day, a guitar’s greatness doesn’t come from its spec sheet. It’s not about the wood species or the coil-wire gauge. It’s about how it all conspires to either soar or sink. Two guitars, built to identical specs, can feel like long-lost soulmates or total strangers. All of these factors are why mix-and-match mods are a long game that can eventually pay off. But that’s the mystery of it. You can’t build magic from a parts list. You can’t buy mojo by the pound. A guitar is more than the sum of its parts—it’s a sometimes unpredictable collaboration of materials, choices, and human touch. And sometimes, whether in the hands of an experienced builder or a dedicated tinkerer, it just works.
MT 15 and Archon 50 Classic amplifiers offer fresh tones in release alongside a doubled-in-size Archon cabinet
PRS Guitars today released the updated MT 15 and the new Archon Classic amplifiers, along with a larger Archon speaker cabinet. The 15-watt, two-channel Mark Tremonti signature amp MT 15 now features a lead channel overdrive control. An addition to the Archon series, not a replacement, the 50-watt Classic offers a fresh voice by producing retro rock “classic” tones reminiscent of sound permeating the radio four and five decades ago. Now twice the size of the first Archon cabinet, the Archon 4x12 boasts four Celestion V-Type speakers.
MT 15 Amplifier Head
Balancing aggression and articulation, this 15-watt amp supplies both heavy rhythms and clear lead tones. The MT 15 revision builds off the design of the MT 100, bringing the voice of the 100’s overdrive channel into its smaller-format sibling. Updating the model, the lead channel also features a push/pull overdrive control that removes two gain stages to produce vintage, crunchier “mid gain” tones. The clean channel still features a push/pull boost control that adds a touch of overdrive crunch. A half-power switch takes the MT to 7 watts.
“Seven years ago, we released my signature MT 15 amplifier, a compact powerhouse that quickly became a go-to for players seeking both pristine cleans and crushing high-gain tones. In 2023, we took things even further with the MT 100, delivering a full-scale amplifier that carried my signature sound to the next level. That inspired us to find a way to fit the 100's third channel into the 15's lunchbox size,” said Mark Tremonti.
“Today, I’m beyond excited to introduce the next evolution of the MT15, now featuring a push/pull overdrive control on the Lead channel and a half-power switch, giving players even more tonal flexibility to shape their sound with a compact amp. Can’t wait for you all to plug in and experience it!”
Archon Classic Amplifier Head
With a refined gain structure from the original Archon, the Archon Classic’s lead channel offers a wider range of tones colored with gain, especially in the midrange. The clean channel goes from pristine all the way to the edge of breakup. This additional Archon version was developed to be a go-to tool for playing classic rock or pushing the envelope into modern territory. The Archon Classic still features the original’s bright switch, presence and depth controls. PRS continues to stock the Archon in retailers worldwide.
“The Archon Classic is not a re-issue of the original Archon, but a newly voiced circuit with the lead channel excelling in '70s and '80s rock tones and a hotter clean channel able to go into breakup. This is the answer for those wanting an Archon with a hotrod vintage lead channel gain structure without changing preamp tube types, and a juiced- up clean channel without having to use a boost pedal, all wrapped up in a retro-inspired cabinet design,” said PRS Amp Designer Doug Sewell.
Archon 4x12 Cabinet
As in the Archon 1x12 and 2x12, the mega-sized PRS Archon 4x12 speaker cabinet features Celestion V-Type speakers and a closed-back design, delivering power, punch, and tight low end. Also like its smaller brethren, the 4x12 is wrapped in durable black vinyl and adorned with a British-style black knitted-weave grill cloth. The Archon 4x12 is only the second four-speaker cabinet in the PRS lineup, next to the HDRX 4x12.
PRS Guitars continues its schedule of launching new products each month in 2025. Stay tuned to see new gear and 40 th Anniversary limited-edition guitars throughout the year. For all of the latest news, click www.prsguitars.com/40 and follow @prsguitars on Instagram, Tik Tok, Facebook, X, and YouTube.
The Austin-based guitarist sticks with a tried-and-true combo of American guitars and British amps.
If you’ve been on the path of this spring’s Rhett Schull/Zach Person tour, you’ve been treated to one of the coolest rock ’n’ roll double bills criss-crossing North America this year. Person, who is based in Austin, put out his second full-length record, Let’s Get Loud, in March 2024, and it was packed with alt-, blues-, and psychedelic-rock anthems built around his take-no-prisoners playing.
This year, Person is road-doggin’ it around the United States as a two-piece unit with just a drummer, and PG’s Chris Kies caught up with him before he and Shull played the Eastside Bowl in Madison, Tennessee, to see what goods Person is bringing for this spring’s shows.
Brought to you by D’Addario
Customized Custom
This Gibson Jimi Hendrix 1967 Custom SG came from Gibson’s custom shop, and for Person, an SG with humbuckers is a hard combination to beat. He removed the Maestro trem system and had a tailpiece installed for tuning stability on the road, and he subjected the neck humbucker to a “Jimmy Page mod,” which entails removing the pole pieces to get closer to single-coil tones. This SG stays in standard tuning, with Ernie Ball or D’Addario strings (usually .010–.046s). Person digs Dunlop Flow Grip .88 mm picks.
Brown Sound
Person brought this 1967 Gibson SG Special back to life with a list of modifications and upgrades, including new pickups and a refinish, but its wood, neck shape, and original frets all made it worth it to him. The neck shape is narrow but chunky in Person’s hands, landing somewhere near the feel of Tyler Bryant’s 1962 Stratocaster. The pickups now are OX4 P-90s, and like the Custom, this one’s had its Maestro system amputated.
Jeannie Comes Alive
One Thanksgiving at his in-laws’ home in Dallas, Person mentioned how badly he wanted a Gibson LG-2 acoustic. As it happened, his father-in-law suspected his mother had one, which had been relegated to storage in a shed. Person and his wife’s father ventured through rain to dig it out, and sure enough, a very beat up LG-1 was withering away in its case. No local techs in Austin thought it was worth saving, except for Elaine Filion, who was used to taking on bigger restoration projects. Filion succeeded, taking the top off and installing an X-bracing system to turn the LG-1 into an LG-2-style guitar. Now, it’s got an L.R. Baggs pickup and bears the nameplate “Jeannie” on its headstock to commemorate his wife’s grandma, the original owner. Jeannie usually stays home, but Person brought her out specially for the Rundown.
Marshall Muscle
This Marshall JTM45 MkII is Person’s usual go-to. It runs just at breakup volume and gets pushed with some variation of a Pro Co RAT, his favorite dirt box.
Supro Signature
This Super Black Magick Reverb, Tyler Bryant’s signature, is along for the ride as a backup to the Marshall.
Zach Person’s Pedalboard
Person has done tours with just an overdrive pedal and nothing else, so by comparison, this two-tiered Vertex board is luxurious. Still, it’s compact and carries all he needs at the moment. The JHS Pack Rat is the core sound, set fairly heavy and dirty. The rest includes a Boss TU-3, EarthQuaker Devices Double Hoof, Vox Clyde McCoy wah, Boss BF-2, DigiTech Drop, Strymon El Capistan, and an Interstellar Audio Machines Marsling Octafuzzdrive. A TC Helicon Mic Mechanic rides along as a vocal effect so Person can keep control over his voice from night to night.