Flyleaf’s Sameer Bhattacharya - GEAR MASTERS Ep. 651

It sounds so natural and sustained. It sustains for days. It sounds like a string section but like it's like a string section that's just like kind of angry. Hi, I'm Samir from Flyleaf and this is my gear rundown. Flyleaf is on our 20th anniversary tour. This is the gear that I've brought with me. I have to showcase some cool stuff here. This guy right here, LSL built this thing for me and it's so beautiful and it sounds so great. So thank you Johnny and everyone at LSL for this guy. Yeah, very excited about it. Humbucker P90. It's overwound so it's a little hotter but it's still warm and the goal here was to have a guitar that captured the warmth but still kind of cut. Because when I play, I'm not super high gain. I like a natural sounding instrument and that I can kind of do anything with. So that's the goal of this guy and it's, man, it plays so well and it sounds really good. They are LSL pickups. These pickups are made by the company. So I'm using 11 to 49 geared areas. As far as the way I use the knobs, it really depends on the night. It depends on if I kick my distortion pedal so that it's too fuzzy or whatever. I'll adjust it here. If it's too bitey, I'll roll it back. If I need it to be really round, I'll really roll it back. It really depends on what the sound needs according to every night. I would say it's inconsistent as far as how I use it but I'm going for a feeling. I'm constantly dialing it in to get what's appropriate for the night. Two tunings. The first half of the set, I'm tuned down a whole step and I'm doing drop tuning. So it's like drop D but a whole step down. So yeah, it's in C. For the second half of the set, it's in C sharp. I use a lot of different guitars. This one is awesome. This guy PRS sent to me and it's been quite a workhorse. The shorter scale, I didn't think I would really enjoy the shorter scale. This is 24 and a half as opposed to this guy which is 25 and a half. So the necks are different. This is like a standard 25 and a half and this is 24 and a half which is smaller. But this is the Santana Retro. Yeah, this is the Santana Retro. Whatever pickups are in here, it's whatever Santana and Paul Reed Smith, this is their collaboration. Dude, this thing is ripping. It's awesome. It sounds so natural and it sustains for days. It's a Final Tap reference but yeah, you can still hear that thing going from last night. I've really fallen in love with the floating tremolo which I didn't really start off with the floating tremolo like early on in the early Flight Leaf days. I was always hard to tell. I think if you're a Flight Leaf fan, you might recognize this guy. It's always been my main for a very long time. This is the Artist Series Spruce Top Hollowbody. I think this is a Hollowbody 1. I don't think this is a Hollowbody 2. It might be a Hollowbody 2. I don't know but it's awesome. It sounds so good right now. You can see it's just the things and shambles but it still plays really well. It sounds awesome. I love the way it looks all beat up because I've beat it up. I've played it but hard to tell and not the floating tremolo. So, I was very against the floating tremolo. I thought it was cheesy for so long but this is an awesome part. I do need to see the locks on here. It's got locks. I need to play it but with the floating tremolo, it's really cool because I can add a bunch of tension. I'm not using it like a shredder or anything like that but I use it to add tension to chords or note and maybe it's like, I don't know, make it sound a little darker, a little more chaotic. So, at the beginning of the tour, I was using 10 to 46 which is standard. Out of the factory, Paul Reed Smiths come 10 to 46 and it was awesome and super fast but just out of convenience and not having to buy a variety of strings. When I had to change strings, I went ahead and put 11 to 49 on here just because it's consistent across the board. It's easier just to pack and order strings. I do like the 10 to 46. I think at home, I might just keep the 10 to 46 but on the road, it's more convenient to use 11 to 49. As far as the tour goes, this is my C sharp guitar so I'll use this for the second half of the set. This guy, Starla with the Bigsby. This is the one, this is the guitar that made me really appreciate a floating tremolo and being able to use the Bigsby just to, I don't know, just give it something, something eerie. I've been using this as my C guitar in the first half of the set. I've been using these guys as like backups but this guy over here, and same thing, 11 to 49 strings. It's PRS standard stock everything. This guy is an amalgamation of a bunch of stuff. This has been like a project guitar for me. It's awesome. I did have, I had the Mojo Quiet Coil broadcaster pickups in here but the output was just so low that it wasn't really, the gain staging was just, it was so unbalanced with the rest of the band so I put the Seymour Duncan little 59s in there. So it's, yeah, it's a humbucker that fits inside the single coil slot so it's cool. I didn't have to like carve it out or anything but this guitar is like, this is my, I'm gonna grow old with this thing kind of guitar. The pickguard is leather. It's unfinished. It's an oil finish. This is, I'll call this my reverb.com parts caster. I went, I found a cool neck. I found the body. Everything's from a different vendor. I just wanted something that was unique, that was dark sounding, you know, so this is a mahogany body which is, I guess it's not that unusual anymore for tall casters but usually it's like alder or, you know, some other wood like that but this is a mahogany body, roasted maple neck and this is a fun, it's a fun guitar to play. Yeah, I really enjoy it. It's just fun. Makes you feel safe. Early on I was known for a notoriously large pedalboard and like effects upon effects upon effects but I've decided like, you know, there's only a few things that I've actually, that I use constantly and some things I can double on so like right now I have tuner into the rat and that's my overdrive. I'm not using, I'm not using amp distortion. I'm using, this is my distortion here. It's like clean or it's the rat. Fat boost, I use it occasionally like if I need to, if I need to even out gain structure or if I want to boost first. I haven't used it a lot, honestly, on this tour because I really like how, I like how my guitar's been sitting in the mix even when I go to like melodies and stuff that are supposed to be like more pronounced. That it isn't and it kind of sits in it, it feels more powerful to me. This is a really cool phaser. I was using the Boss PH3, I think it's PH3, phase shifter and which sounds awesome but for some reason, I don't know if it's like a power thing or whatever but that it is not sending output anymore. So I had this guy sitting in one of my drawers and it sounds so lush, it sounds so great and it's been doubling as a phaser and I kind of use it as a wall, like an auto wall or something. I mean, obviously, it doesn't sound like a wall exactly but you know, it gets the job done for songs like Fully Alive and some other things. And then I'm using this Superchorus to widen the stereo field and you can see, you know, the level's all the way up, EQ's in the middle, rate's all the way down because I'm not looking for the chorus effect, I'm looking for it to spread the sound out and have the depth all the way up. And with this guy, I learned how to appreciate delay pedals with the Line 6 DL4, the original, but they kept on like failing on me and the MK2, it's awesome, it doesn't fail and it has all the original sounds of the DL4 plus has some of the sounds of like, you know, more contemporary stuff that Line 6 is doing with their delays and their reverbs. Yeah, this is pretty much what I use. I love to be able to move knobs around when I'm playing because depending on what I'm doing, you know, I might, you know, turn up, you know, the modulation or I might, you know, adjust the repeats of the mix in real time, in the time, you know, I mean, adjusting the time is like so, it's kind of cheesy now, but when it's done within the context of the sounds, it can sound otherworldly and really beautiful. But that's through my board, I can get all the sounds I want out of this as opposed to, you know, I had like three delay pedals and like all these, my board is huge and cumbersome, but now I've distilled it down to this. On the record and for live, for so long, excuse me, I've been using a whammy pedal to do those octave things and now instead of using whammy, I'm just sliding up to them and it sounds, it feels so much better. Yeah, I don't know if anyone else is going to like it, but I love it. This AC-30, it's cool. I was in Guitar Center getting strings in San Diego and I saw, you know, I hadn't seen a box this color, it's like, that's a cool color, so I plugged it in and turned it up and it sounded so beautiful, it's like I had to take it home. And it's been like, I've been using a Class A, Class AB combo for, yeah, since, almost since the beginning, I mean, since I started using two amps on, within the Value Store 2006. And it changes according to room to room, right? I'm not, I'm not married to any of these settings. If it's too harsh for some reason, you know, dial it back. If it's too muddy, fix that, you know? Like, so it's like, it's just, the amp is the amp, the guitar is the guitar, and like, you know, it's just catering, you know, dialing it in for the room. This is the Fopstar, Drew Foppy, who's a brilliant, brilliant man. He's out of Phoenix. He designs and builds amps. He does everything, everything gear and guitar, he's the go-to. This is all point-to-point wiring. It's a Plexi thing to it, but also it's like a Fender thing to it. It's awesome. And there's an attenuator back here, so I can, it's hard to see because it's all, it's underneath here. This is the attenuator. There's another, some knobs over here. I can choose the impedance. It's, this is one of the coolest amps I've ever played. Yeah, as far as like the sound, the clarity, it punches, it cuts through without being harsh. Even when I try to get it harsh, it's just like beautiful. The Vox has more of like a mid-range punchiness to it. Yeah, almost like a boxy thing. Some people would think it's, would say it sounds muddy, but I, it works for me. It works for the sound and works in the context of everything. This has that sparkle, that Plexi sparkle to it. And the frequencies, they complement each other and they fill each other's gaps. I've been using the Big Stubby by Jim Dunlop, Dunlop. It's a one, or the two millimeter, two millimeter Big Stubby. And I love the control that I have with it. Like before I was using, when I first started, I was using on the 60, 0.6, 60 millimeter picks, those orange, orange ones. And like, kind of liked it floppy and kind of, kind of messy. But as I like, you know, I've learned how to play my instrument over the years. I've really appreciated the control of like a, of those thick jazz picks and like the nuances and like, you know, crank your amps and you want to don't, you don't just like play at 11 the whole time. You know, you can crank your amps and then have nuance in the tones and yeah. And so I've really appreciated the nuance in cranking the amps and using a fatter pick and yeah, feeling out the parts and filling out like what the band is doing. And if it's digging, if I need to dig, I can dig in and get that, get that bite. But if I need to back off, I can just play a little lighter in that those picks, they still have clarity. So articulation. In ears, I'm using the 6-4 audios. These are the AT6, I think. Yeah, the AT6. There's six drivers. They're great. Thank you 6-4 for this, because these are really good ears. I use the bow. It's a party trick, but I, it's, I use it like an effects pedal or like the Bigsby or something. It's just to give, it gives a different sound. You know, for me, it sounds like an aggressive cello, but then go up and use the high, you know, the top strings and, you know, it gets really cool. It sounds like a string section, but like, it's like a string section that's just like kind of angry. Thank you for watching. I hope that I've explained some of the gear to you that you've found it useful. You can find us on flyleafmusic.com. You can always find us on social medias at Flyleaf Music. Yeah, and I hope to see you on the road.