If you’ve thought to yourself, “this is the most vicious-sounding record I’ve heard,” chances are Kurt Ballou’s fingerprints are on it. Since officially starting in 1995 inside his parents’ garage and eventually opening GodCity Studio’s doors in 2003 (in “Witch City” Salem, MA, no less), Ballou has chiseled out granite tones for bands like Every Time I Die, High on Fire, Torche, Cave In, Old Man Gloom, American Nightmare, and Kvelertak. (“He brings a lot to the table, and he’s been pretty important in terms of how our sound got formed,” Kverlertak’s Vidar Landa in a PG interview on working with Ballou.) Oh, and we can forget his genre-shaping band Converge, that he’s played guitar in since 1990, co-produced since 2001’s hardcore pillar Jane Doe and been the console captain since 2006’s No Heroes.
As you’ll soon find out in this hour-plus episode, the dude is fascinated with every component of guitar tone. In between recording projects and creating new instruments and pedals, Ballou virtually welcome PG’s Chris Kies into GodCity Studio. In this Rig Rundown, Ballou details his own GodCity Instruments Craftsman Series 1 (something he calls a “simple rock ’n’ roll machine”), provides a crash course on mics (types and techniques), and shows off additional GCI pedal wares—and a few foreign specimens—that contort, mangle, and destroy any (in the prettiest way possible) guitar’s native tongue.
D'Addario Auto Lock Strap:https://ddar.io/AutoLockStrap
[Facing a mandatory shelter-in-place ordinance to limit the spread of COVID-19, PG enacted a hybrid approach to filming and producing Rig Rundowns. This is the 38th video in that format.]
As you’ll quickly find out, if Kurt can’t find exactly what he’s after, he’ll design something that will get the job done. Above is his first guitar—built under the God City Instruments brand—called the Craftsman Series 1. This one features a chambered mahogany body with a spruce top (“it’s incredibly resonant, snappy, and lively”), set-neck construction (maple neck/wenge fretboard), 25.5" scale, Graph Tech nut and bridge, and a custom-wound, hot Slugjammer humbucker (13k output, 44 AWG). He prefers D’Addario NYXL strings (.011–.052), hammers away with Planet Waves Duralin picks .70 mm (yellow), and Ballou uses a bunch of tunings for Converge, but two of his favorites are “a little out of tune” D standard and one he calls “open Slayer” (C–F#–C–F#–C–F#).
(This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a God City Instruments’ Craftsman Series 1 on a Rig Rundown. For those that missed it, Djunah’s Donna Diane rocked out a wenge-top Craftsman Series 1 in her Rundown in late 2020.)
A close-up of his Malcolm Young-inspired Craftsman Series 1 body.
Need proof that Converge have diehard fans all over the world? Look no further than this Sparrows’ Sons head that was built for (and sent over to) Kurt from their Belarus guitar shop. He doesn’t know much about the circuit, but he notes in the Rundown that early in the signal path sits an active inductor-based midrange boost that sort of acts like a Neve preamp. Another think he mentions is that its gain knob is a dual pot that controls two tube stages at the same time giving the amp a wide range of crunch. (Ballou admits that he doesn’t use it for clean and rather make it a blast furnace of rock.)
The handmade beast (even has handwound inductors) floored Ballou enough that he ordered a second head for his European setup (but has since brought it home). He believes he owns are two of four or five in existence.
The Sparrows’ Sons custom jobber runs into a massive Emperor 6x12 that is loaded with various speakers, but what was mic’d and recorded for the Rundown were a pair of Eminence Texas Heats.
Because he’s Kurt and he’s awesome, not only did he treat this like a recording session, but he used four mics, in four different positions, to show how each works independently and how they work in unison to create a monolithic sledgehammer. The lineup starts (left to right) with an AEA N22 active ribbon mic, Heil Sound PR 30 large diaphragm dynamic supercardioid mic, a Rode (top) Reporter omnidirectional dynamic mic, and an sE Electronics X1 D large diaphragm unidirectional condenser mic.
“One of the nicest things about owning a studio and designing pedals is that I can figure out what do I have a need for,” admits Ballou. And as you’ll soon find out, his biggest (and constant) need is angry, violent, metallic distortion. Starting at the top left (and then going clockwise), we have the Demedash Effects T-120 Videotape Echo. “This is one of the coolest analog delay pedals,” giddily asserts Ballou. He loves the overall functionality of the pedal and its feature set, but the icing on the cake is that when bypassed you can hold down the left footswitch and it will act as a momentary freeze/shimmer/oscillator. Next you have the Shift Line A+ Astronaut III Multiverb Space Unit. Kurt got hip to this pedal when Converge was touring Russia and ventured into a guitar store in St. Petersburg. For this pedal, Kurt’s go-to setting is the reverse shimmer.
The single-knob red GCI design (Oh Yes!) is Kurt’s latest creation (mentions tentatively it may be called Onslaught) that is a “mid-forward, ultimate thrashy, djenty, clanky, articulate, heavy guitar pedal.” The red pedal on the right is Kurt’s first original codesign—the SBD or Super Beatle Distortion—that was inspired by a circuit from Fu Manchu bassist Brad Davis’ Creepy Little Fingers. Taking it up a notch, Ballou added in an active mid boost in front of the fuzz circuit. Additionally, he boosts the bass level after the fuzz circuit so it sounds huge.
Next up in green is the God City Instruments OGR (a collaboration with Electronic Audio Experiments’ John Snyder). The Optical Gain Reduction is a compressor that Ballou uses on every bass-recorded track in God City Studio.
Then there is the Foxrox Electronics Octron2 (inspired by the guitar feedback lassoed by Mahogany Rush guitarist Frank Marino) that Ballou uses for thorny solos that bristle with weird overtones and elastic ghost notes. Following that is a newer GCI Crimson Cock (original codesigned with Rob Davis) that is a treble booster loosely based on the Rangemaster circuit with an added range control (a cap blend on the input) and the switch toggles in a Muff stage at the end of the circuit.
The penultimate stomp is the God City Instruments Ape Eye (collaborated with Soursound) that is dirt box centered around the API 2520 discrete op amp. Lastly, we have Kurt’s Jugendstil silicon fuzz that is aptly described on their site: “If there were a Venn Diagram showing the overlap between ‘90s British shoegaze and ‘90s Swedish death metal, Jugendstil would feel right at home in the middle.” And everything was powered by a Truetone 1 Spot PRO CS7.
An unheralded but appreciated tool used by Ballou is this Radial Engineering SGI TX that is line driver system that takes an unbalanced instrument signal and allows you to drive it as far as 300' feet without noise.
A few years ago Kurt’s gear-tinkering lore started catching a buzz when he was handing out circuit-board business cards at NAMM. He’s since developed several pedals (some assembled, some in PCB form) and he’s now producing guitars all under God City Instruments. He’s officially released two models and the one above is his first design—the Craftsman Series 1.
This result is Donna Diane’s first “new” guitar she’s gotten in a long time. She preordered it online and recently scored it during quarantine. The first guitar model Ballou designed features a chambered mahogany body (something Donna says gives it unending sustain at high volumes), wenge top, set maple neck, wenge fretboard, Graph Tech hardware, and a single GCI Slugjammer that’s overwound to a spicy 13k.
During the Rundown, Donna admits to preferring single-coil tones, but has been enjoying the single humbucker as it provides her a moodier, cutting tone that isn’t lost when her guitar-and-synth setup is raging. Both her guitars take D’Addario NYXL .010–.046 strings.
“I’m in love with this P-90,” declares Diane. “It’s superhot and hits my amp unlike any other pickup.” Here is a 1967 Gibson SG that Donna first rocked in her previous band Beat Drun Juel. She found the ’60s player-grade axe at Rock N Roll Vintage in Chicago.
So why would someone already singing and playing guitar look to further complicate things by adding bass-guitar duties to one’s feet? In short, when Donna Diane’s previous band’s demise was apparent, she started plotting how she could continue into greener pastures by performing solo while still representing full bass tones. The experiment went well enough that she recruited Smalkowski on drums.
The solution is in the above collage: Top photo is the brains of the operation—Moog Minitaur Analog Bass Synth—while the bottom photo shows the controller—Roland PK-5A MIDI Pedal—that is engaged by Diane tap dancing on the key levers. Some of the programming and modding she’s done to the units are adding in an octave-up coating and slowing the filter sweep that provides a fuller, thicker, constant roar. (Not pictured: She also built an on/off switcher that brings in/out the sustain circuit on the Minitaur.)
And as for simultaneously pulling off singing, playing guitar, and tapping out bass notes, Diane says “I’m sometimes a person that is very over analytical that gets in my own head a lot and overthink things a lot,” admits Diane. “This actually is good therapy for me because when you overload the system with so many tasks you have to let go and it becomes an out-of-body experience.”
Her guitar signal runs into this 40-watt 1970s Traynor YSR-1 Custom Reverb that has a set of EL34s. In a live setting, she would blast that through an Emperor 2x12 loaded with Eminence Wizard speakers (underneath the Beta Lead head in the video), but for the Rundown she routed it through a Two Notes Torpedo Captor X Load Box/DI. (Here’s another nugget pulled from Ballou who guided her in this direction when during quarantine she asked him advice on how to build an iso box.)
“I originally tried the Moog Minitaur through several tube heads, but it didn’t sound good at all,” says Diane. “The 100-watt solid-state Sunn Beta Lead really accentuates and adds texture to the growl.”
Here are the five stomps that add filth and mystique to her guitar-and-bass tsunami. (Clockwise from top left) JPTR FX Add Violence Planetary Disorder Unit (a Univox Super Fuzz spin-off she runs with the synth), custom-built Bright Onion Pedals switcher (allows her to independently toggle her separate effects loops in/out for guitar and bass), God City Brutalist Jr. (she built the pedal around the circuit board sold by Kurt Ballou and digs its “darker, characterful gain”), GCI Badder Larry (another Ballou invention) was instrumental on Ex Voto for guitar distortion, and the EarthQuaker Devices Tone Job is set for a clean boost that equalizes the volume/tone differences between the Craftsman and SG.
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“It took a long time for me to even identify as a guitar player,” says Kurt Ballou. “For me, it’s so much more about doing what it takes to get the song across.” An unexpected statement from the mouth of a player as influential—not to mention athletic—as Converge’s axeman and producer. However, it’s certainly one that underlines the all-for-one, hardcore-punk ethos that’s fueled the band’s 25-year career. There’s some humble irony in his statement, too, considering Ballou’s personal business cards literally double as a PCB (printed circuit board) for a build-your-own distortion pedal which he helped design. Ballou and Converge bassist, Nate Newton, also recently unveiled a YouTube channel specifically for gear reviews called“demovids.”
From seminal albums like Jane Doe and You Fail Me to evolved late-career masterworks like All We Love We Leave Behind, Converge’s approach has always been fearless. The band’s music showed that the metal-tinged hardcore concept has space for abstraction, textural intrigue, and emotional depth. “None of us are really afraid of taking risks musically at this point,” says Newton. “We’re just doing what we want to do and writing the records we want to hear.” This approach keeps Converge from falling prey to the stagnancy that plagues so many of its peers. While the Boston-bred, metallic-hardcore band’s sound is undeniably a sum of its parts—reliant as much on Newton’s substantially punishing bass work, drummer Ben Koller’s imaginative and dexterous drumming, and frontman Jacob Bannon’s poetic sensibilities and inimitable mixture of pained barks and post-punk-informed monologues—there’s no minimizing the importance Ballou’s guitar plays within that recipe.
Armed with a singular approach to the instrument that flexes with shades of Greg Ginn’s simplicity and aggression, Slayer-informed dissonance and calisthenics, a lethal rhythmic sense, and textured, effects-heavy ambience, Ballou’s unique style boils down his disparate influences to reach far beyond the typical palette of tones and ideas heavy metal and hardcore players often rely upon. Throughout Converge’s discography, Ballou has displayed what’s possible for heavy players who seek something beyond bludgeoning riffs—though there’s no shortage of those within his oeuvre, either. Ballou’s avant-garde sense of phrasing, use of oddball tunings, and penchant for unexpected equipment (like Rickenbackers fitted with EMGs and vintage Marshall 8x10 cabs) have made the man a revolutionary player amid a sea of guitarists chugging away in dropped tunings through Peavey 5150s. And all of this is to say nothing of the staggering number of credits Ballou has earned as a taste-making producer and engineer at his GodCity Studio, shaping the records of countless cutting-edge artists that run the gamut of genres from High on Fire to Chelsea Wolfe.
With their ninth studio release, The Dusk in Us, Converge has issued yet another statement of its potency as an increasingly artistically minded, viscerally intense, and dynamic band. Tracked and produced by Ballou at GodCity, much of the guitar on The Dusk in Us was performed on custom guitars the restless Renaissance man has been building under the GodCity Instruments moniker, with tones further tweaked by prototype pedals he’s been tinkering with for the past year. PG sought an audience with Ballou during the first leg of the band’s current tour to get inside his head and discuss the mountains of gear used on the new album, talk about his new venture as a guitar and pedal manufacturer, and to glean some pearls of wisdom from a player and producer who has quietly helped reshape the heavy music landscape of the past two decades.
On their 9th studio album, The Dusk in Us, Converge didn’t work independently at all. Everything was worked out collaboratively as a team in GodCity Studio.
What’s the story with your guitar and pedal company, GodCity Instruments? I see a lot of new gear on your social media. Have you decided to expand into full production any time soon?
GCI is a labor of love and it’s something that I’m passionate about, but it’s also something that I presently consider my hobby. I’ve come to find out that trying to manufacture something in the United States requires a lot of time and effort and money, and I would essentially need to stop my recording business if I wanted to really dive into making GCI what I want it to be. I’m continuing to prototype things and learn and develop partnerships with people, but there is not presently a rollout plan for any kind of full-scale manufacturing.
That said, I’m learning a ton, and I feel like I understand completely what I want from a guitar perspective these days. For my taste, it’s still a 25.5” scale. I find that for people that tune a bit lower than standard, like myself, the longer scale length adds a lot of tuning stability to the guitar. I’m not trying to make a guitar for everybody. I’m trying to make a guitar for me that other people might also like.
I’ve been prototyping the pedals like crazy and I’m learning a ton from that process. I’ve got some really amazing-sounding pedal designs now—several of which I used on our new record. However, once you have a design, you need to make it manufacturable, so, I’m refining designs while simultaneously working on making them efficient to manufacture. Unfortunately, it’s something I can’t devote a ton of time to presently and I can’t promise that something’s going to be available when I really don’t know when. But I do love doing it!
You played a black guitar with a bound body at the show in Brooklyn a few weeks back. Could you tell me about that one?
That’s my latest design. I’m calling it the Craftsman, and it’s basically a much more stripped-down version of the very first GCI design I had. I have a manufacturing partner for that one and we’re still working things out, but we’ll hopefully be able to produce those in small batches. The work has been incredible and I love the way it sounds. I’ve pretty much settled on Planet Waves tuners and a particular Graph Tech bridge, and the pickups are probably going to be a new design from Lollar called the dB. I have several prototypes of that guitar made with different woods, so I haven’t yet settled on what wood it will be made of or what the cosmetic accoutrement will be, but that thing really does rule. My philosophy with that guitar is the Malcolm Young Gretsch-style, stripped-and-simple thing, and it’s working out really well for me. I used it a ton on the new album.
