Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker

Tame Impala mastermind takes it all in during the beginning of “Let It Happen” that started the band’s buoyant set. Parker is seen here using bandmate Jay Watson’s Squier J Mascis Jazzmaster that’s been outfitted with a Roland GR-55 synth pickup. In a 2015 interview with PG, Parker had this to say about the guitar-pickup combo: “I used that a lot on the album, actually. It was a cheap shortcut to doing something I love: making a guitar sound not like a guitar. I’ve always been obsessed with tricking people into thinking that a guitar is actually a synth. I used to do it with octave pedals and different types of auto-filters and stuff, and then I’d play the instrument in a different way to make it sound like it’s not a guitar. So, when I started getting into guitar synths, it made it all too easy. It’s a Roland GR-55, and a lot of the presets are totally nasty. They’re almost stuck between a metal guitar and a saxophone. A lot of the presets Roland offers are terrible. But if you start from scratch building your own patches and then combine them with cool effects and outboard stuff, it starts to sound really cool.”