Softcult's Mercedes Arn-Horn - GEAR MASTERS Ep. 481

[Applause] hey everyone I'm Mercedes I play in the band soft Cults we're on tour with movements mannequin [ __ ] in heart to gold right now in Sunny Chicago and this is my Rig Rundown this is my baby it is a fender professional two series job Master we love Fender in this band uh and I think the Jazzmaster is my favorite guitar I've ever played I use really light strings I actually use nines um the Ernie Ball uh super slinkies uh cuz I don't have a very heavy right hand I don't I kind of just play really lightly um and I love getting super bendy with it so the lighter gauge is really nice for that uh pickup wise I tend to ride the Rhythm pickup a lot because it's got a much warmer sound and it's got sort of a woer grittier tone for um the cords and stuff but even the leads like when I throw fuzz on it it just has this really nice warm sound that I'm a fan of so I almost exclusively use the Rhythm pickup for this one which I know is kind of weird but that's how I do it so right now this guitar is tuned to D standard which is the tuning that most of our songs on the newest DP are in um and for the ones that are in standard I just throw a c on the second threat and tune her up um volume wise I kind of just keep it right at like the loudest it'll go and tone wise same I don't actually adjust the tone knob because there really is no tone knob anymore there but you can see here there's kind of a tap and I like to have it out just so I have a more jangly sound for like the shoe gazy Vibes when I push this bad boy in it gets super gritty sounding which I like for like the heavier songs but for the most part I just leave it kind of open so it's a little bit cleaner sounding this pick guard actually is made of a collage of uh different pieces and cutouts from our Zen we put out like a monthly Zen um and one of my friends actually made this she gets the Zen every month mailed to her so then she just made a collage of her own and put it on a piit guard and I've just had it on my guitar ever since it's just like a really Unique Piece but it's all just glued together there so here I have my inear monitor receiver and then I've also got my ears the JH audio they're molded just to my ears although it's hilarious cuz Phoenix and I have the same shaped ear canal so we can switch out each other's uh molds but I think that's cuz we're identical twins so that makes sense and then we have the Sennheiser 300 IEM the g3s um and we just use a rack unit X32 to mix our own in on stage so it's a game Cher for being able to hear yourself especially any size venue but even in the smaller size venues I just way prefer this to using monitors and I don't know if I'll ever be able to go back so in uh DC my head kind of exploded we don't really know what happened um maybe a tube or a fuse or something super random a short in the board but Brent and I both use Victory cabs and victory heads uh so I emailed them and they sent me another one I normally use the V4 copper series but for the purposes of this tour I'm using the V4 Sheriff um cool thing about these is they have the amp Sims in them so even if you don't have a cab which sometimes happens uh you can just go directly out with the cab Sim and it's just got a ton of options the tone sounds amazing um customizable my um copper had like a trouble boost but this one seems to be just a channel switch you can preset your Sims you know all the classic knobs for adjusting your EQ and everything here we've got like different channels you can go from the hot rod to the Vintage uh and then the different gains from hot rod and vintage too um but yeah it really is it's so light it's like the size and weight of a lunchbox literally and uh they're just gorgeous amps and I swear by them for vocals I use the v7x the reason I like this mic it's hypercardioid so it's really only picking up what's directly in front of it and it's not picking up symbols or any bleed from the amps or anything like that which was a problem before so this is really good for getting just the pure vocal sound right in my in ears um and into the PA as well this is the fun part so this is my pedal board uh it's been a long work in progress and it's kind of constantly changing I'm still swapping in and out pedals but I start my chain here with the tuner and then that goes into the walrus ages um it's an overdrive pedal lot of different settings on it and I kind of just leave this one on the whole time um so that's like my main overdrive even on the cleaner sounding tones it just gives it a little bit of nice crunchiness on the cords and everything like that and some more luckiness on the leads that goes into the long sword if I want like a grittier grungier tone you know for choruses I just click that on um it's another overdrive pedal and then it's also got a boost so if I really need to get super nasty sounding with it I can just click the boost on that goes into my fuzz pedal so this is the elect um the EarthQuaker devices jumas petal again one of my favorite petals I've ever used definitely my favorite um fuzz petal I've ever used it's a triangle fuzz uh and it just has a lot of different character to it you can make it really warm and like velcro or you can get really high- Endy and like crackly with it and uh it's really versatile fuzz it's sick that goes into my boss multi overtone and I have it set to do a high octave overtone so it's kind of like an octaver but it's not glitchy like an octaver gets and I can throw it on cords and it still sounds really good so for the super dreamy washy shoe gazy choruses when I want a little bit of lift and fullness that's usually when I put that on but sometimes in leads if I want to have a high octive as well so that it really stands out I'll throw it on too it's just kind of a cool one you can kind of be creative with how you use it then that goes into my chorus which is the walrus Juliana chorus it's a Leslie chorus um again it's super versatile but I just have it on the like Leslie sort of um swave and right now it's on the quarter note setting but you can totally change that and it's also got other settings to play with as well but I use this as my main chorus and that goes into the EarthQuaker devices afterneath which is my second Reverb um so when I want really cavernous open Reverb I kind of just throw both of these on and this is like a second layer that just has a longer Trail there's a few Staples that I always have on the board this one is the slow Reverb by walrus audio all of us in soft called are huge walrus audio fans like their pedals are just sort of the best in the game in my opinion this Reverb in particular might be my favorite um pedal that I have on my board it's just the nicest most ambient beautiful sounding Reverb and it's very customizable I always have it on the dream setting um and I pretty much keep it like so there's a bit of clean signal going in but once I click it on you get that super dreamy shoe gazy feel and it actually also has a sustain so if I want to freeze like I hit a cord and freeze it it just keeps sustaining forever so yeah that's probably my favorite pedal on this board but they're all really cool and lastly that goes into this stman elcy ST which is my delay pedal um and it's a really cool one cuz it's got this really vintagey sound you can adjust the repeats the tape age so it can have really like warbly kind of old school sounding stuff where every delay kind of the pitch will bend and it's really cool when you use it in like a creative way you can make it just repeat forever so it kind of feeds back into itself which is what I do a lot and it's got a wow and flutter so you can make it sound really old and and Vint it's really cool well that was my Rig Rundown I hope you guys enjoyed it I'm Mercedes from soft cult if you want to listen to our music it's everywhere check out the videos on YouTube check out the Spotify Apple music whatever you like to listen to we've got a new EP that came out earlier this year called see you in the dark uh and we're coming to a city near you soon thanks for watching a