Guitarist Ben McLeod travels light and lean when the band tours. He only brings two guitars and neither one of them are backups for the other. His main squeeze is a Les Paul Traditional that he’s modded by replacing the plastic nut with one made of bone—he says it not only helps with intonation but gives the guitar a silkier sound—and swapped out the LP’s stock Classic ’57 humbucker for a DiMarzio Super Distortion. He landed on that particular pickup after he dressed up as The Sword’s guitarist Kyle Shutt for a Halloween show and used Kyle’s guitar. He was so impressed with it that after the show Kyle’s tech gave Ben a spare Super Distortion for his Traditional. And one last aesthetic tweak to his guitar was the removal of its pickguard because he is such a big fan of Duane Allman and he didn’t feel like covering up the full burst anymore. This particular 6-string uses a set of DR Strings Pure Blues (.010–.046) and is typically tuned to drop C.