PG’s Chris Kies caught up with Chelsea Wolfe and her longtime collaborator Ben Chisholm at Marathon Music Works in Nashville, where they were playing in support of Wolfe’s new record, The Dark. Have a look at some quick highlights below, and tune into the new Rig Rundown for all the details.
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Hollow Victory
Wolfe was given this Gretsch Broadkaster years back and keeps coming back to it—she’s drifted further into hollowbodies over time, which she says is a shame given how much she likes her solidbodies. She likes the resonant feedback and the low end, and feels a bigger guitar suits her frame. Managing that feedback is a nightly adjustment depending on the room.
Cold Comfort
The ES-335 has long been seen as Wolfe’s signature electric, and it’s still on the road, though at the moment it comes out for one song—“Cold.” She figures every tour ends up with one guitar you play the most, and this time it isn’t this one.
Dolly’s Pickguard
Her Taylor 416ce sports a custom pickguard inspired by a photo of Dolly Parton with a similar one. Taylor gave her this one and sent it to a maker in Nashville to have the pickguard made. People point out she rarely uses a pick on the acoustic. She thinks it looks beautiful anyway.
Grayscale
Wolfe’s amp is a Fender Bassbreaker combo, which she believes is discontinued. She likes how it takes pedals, and she likes the look: slightly vintage but in grayscale rather than the usual tan. She has the head and cab as well, but it’s the combo on this tour.
Chelsea Wolfe’s Pedalboard
The top row of Chelsea’s board stays on all night: a JHS NOTAKLÖN for general gain, an EarthQuaker ZEQD-Pre she landed on after a long search for the right preamp, a UAFX 1176 compressor, and an EQD Dispatch Master. The heavier end runs a JHS Hard Drive for most of the newer material, an EQD Acapulco Gold that’s been on her board since the Hiss Spun era, and a Death by Audio Apocalypse. A Korg tuner and a Dunlop volume pedal round it out.
Her Happy Place
The left half of the floor is all vocals. Wolfe’s father gave her pedals as a kid and she ran her voice through them with an adapter she rigged for the mic cable, which is where all this started. A Radial Voco-Loco gets the mic into the chain, feeding a DigiTech DigiDelay and a Boss RV-6 she calls her ride or dies, an EQD Afterneath, a JHS Octave Reverb, and a Boss RC-20XL. Not seen here: the Third Man Troika, a Jack White and JHS design built for singers—the one piece of gear she admits to impulse-buying.
Florida Man Special
Chisholm found this Peavey T-40 on Reverb, sold by Drew Storcks of Shy, Low, already fitted with an Electrical Guitar Company aluminum neck by someone he’s never identified. He’d wanted a T-40 since seeing one at a session with the Armed, and wanted an aluminum neck for the sustain. It’s brighter and meaner than anything else he’s played, enough that he had to calm down his existing tones to accommodate it.
The B Team
The Nash bass was his main for years and he used it a lot on the new album, before the Peavey turned up. It’s the backup now, and picking it up after the T-40 is a shock—mostly because of how light it is.
Quad Squad
Chisholm abandoned a full pedalboard mid-rehearsal once a Neural DSP Quad Cortex arrived. It’s running Ampeg models, fuzz, overdrive, compression, and chorus, plus the modulated-delay patch behind the whale noises he makes between songs. A clean channel runs parallel at 50 percent, so the low end survives the worst of the fuzz. A Dunlop Volume (X) 8, Korg tuner, and Walrus Audio supply round things out.
Two Fifteens
A Quilter Bass Block 802 powers the rig, with its EQ bypassed entirely — he’s using the effects return and letting the Quad Cortex do the amp work. The cab is a Tyrant 2x15 he got from Sean at Tyrant years ago, after deciding an 8x10 wasn’t delivering the sub frequencies he wanted.
