Perry, thank you so
much for having this chat with me! If you don't mind, could you
start by giving me a rundown of your gear history in the bands
you've played with, from the beginning?
Perry: No problem, John. It’s a
pleasure to be gabbing about gear with you! I’m such a die-hard
Revelation fan, and have admired your playing since the early 1990s.
We’re kicking it off right, aren’t we. This one’s going to be like
biting off more than you can chew. Hope you don’t mind if I get
long-winded.
Seeing as people first heard me in Destiny’s End I’ll start there.
Guitar-wise I used primarily B.C. Rich guitars. For a while I had a
Japanese Jackson Rhoads Pro, which you can hear in spots on Breathe
Deep the Dark (the first DE album). The Jackson was a cool guitar,
just not right for me. Wrong neck profile. I’ve got big hands and
long fingers, so a thin/flat neck doesn’t suit me. On Breathe Deep
you can mostly hear my old 1983 USA Warlock and 1980 B.C. Rico
Mockingbird (an early Jap neckthrough body model). I just barely got
to use my 1981 Seagull, because it had some repair issues and needed
some attention from a pro tech. Mine was busy during most of the
recording and I got jerked around by a supposedly pro shop, so the
Seagull was out of commission for most of the recording. A real
shame, because that Seagull is a super thick and heavy axe—single
cutaway like a Les Paul. The clean-tone intro to “Idle City/The
Fortress Unvanquishable” is like the only section you can hear the
Seagull on. I also had this bottom of the line Ovation roundback
copy (an Applause), which I used for all my acoustic parts on
Breathe Deep. Even though I’d been into tuning down previously, we
just tuned to E in Destiny’s End.
On Transition, the second DE album, I finally got to use some of my
other B.C. Riches, namely a 1976 Eagle Supreme and that ’81 Seagull.
Not to mention a 1999 Eagle Archtop that was built for me. The Eagle
Archtop made it on a lot of tracks, because when you’re playing that
type of prog/power metal your tuning has to be very stable, and
those old vintage B.C. Riches are notoriously a little wiggly
sometimes. Warrior guitarist Joe Floyd, the engineer we worked with
on Transition, also let me use some of his axes for additional color
on overdubs. Joe had an old Electro surf guitar, a Rickenbacker 12
string electric and a Yamaha 12 string acoustic, all of which wound
up on there somewhere.
All of my guitars had EMG active pickups in them back then. My usual
setup was an 81 in the bridge and an 85 in the neck. I’d always had
problems with passive pickups squealing in the past, so I liked the
fact that EMGs were fairly noiseless. They don’t have heaps of
output, but they kinda lack dynamics and warmth. I now realize that
I just hadn’t tried the right passive pickups when I was younger. I
now love passive pickups to death and would never go back. You hear
so much more in terms of tonal qualities of your guitar’s wood and
subtle nuances of your fingers.
The entire time I was in Destiny’s End
I stuck to Mesa/Boogie Mark IV amps with Marshall speaker cabinets.
I had a long-chassis head and eventually got a rackmount Mark IV
head. My main Marshall cab was a 320 watt 1982A slant with 80 watt
Celestions, and I just loved it to death. Initially I was using a
terrible old Digitech GSP-21 Pro to put some reverb and delay on
solos or clean-tone parts, but it was a piece of gear that I was
never satisfied with. I got the thing when I was a clueless kid
wowed by effects (1991), and within a year or two had stopped using
it altogether. But I needed something for a little boost, delay,
chorus or reverb, so I made do with it during the first several
months I was in DE. When we got our little Destiny’s End publishing
advance for Breathe Deep the Dark I went gear-crazy. Kragen Lum and
Vince Levalois, the guitarists from L.A. prog thrashers Prototype
were guys I really looked up to, and I always thought they had a
super tight and spotless sound, so I decided
to follow in their footsteps. I grabbed a Rocktron Intellifex-LTD
effects processor (single rack space unit), a Digital Music Corp.
GCX midi switching system w/Ground Control pedal board, a Korg rack
tuner and a Rocktron Hush Super C. The GCX is like a mini Bradshaw
switcher that allows you to switch effects patches and amp channels
simultaneously. Suddenly I was able to have whatever effect I wanted
plus whatever amp channel instantly switchable at my feet, which was
helpful, considering we rarely had our own live sound engineer to
put any outboard effects on our guitars from the mixer. I had this 8
space Boogie Shockmount rack on wheels to house all that crap. After
trying the Hush noise gate rack piece out for a few months, I
stopped using it altogether. I found it sucked away my sustain, not
to mention the Boogie Mark IV is a relatively quiet high-gain amp.
The long-chassis Boogie Mark IV head became more of a backup after I
got the rackmount version, and I also used it to travel, since
taking a big-ass rack to Europe was out of the question. A few times
when we were traveling we had to play on a borrowed backline, so I
made do with various Marshall heads, but I didn’t have much
experience with old tube Marshalls back then. The first time I
actually got to take a good Marshall head for a spin was when Joe
Floyd suggested I play some lead overdubs on Transition through one
of his modded Plexis.
After Destiny’s End I started Artisan, and I was still hooked on the
Mesa/Boogie Mark IV and EMG active pickups. They suited that style
of fast/technical/progressive/death/thrash metal. I’d ditched all of
my guitars with Floyd Rose trems. I’d come to the conclusion I was a
fixed-bridge man. We tuned to D in Artisan, which I really dug.
While I was in Artisan I started to really experiment a lot with
using that midi switcher to change all of the wacky settings on the
Boogie Mark IV head. You could go to triode mode and only have three
preamp tubes burning instead of the usual five—or go half power by
turning off two of the power tubes. This is what I was doing when I
first started Falcon in 2002 to approximate the sound of a vintage
amp. On the Falcon demo I still had EMG pickups in most of my
guitars too, but I fooled a lot of people into thinking I’d used an
old Marshall or a Laney. I wasn’t fooling myself, though. There was
this overbearing sense of things being too modern and sterile. It
goes without saying that troubleshooting a massive rack rig in the
dark at a gig is well-nigh impossible. A nightmare. I got so sick of
the mass of spaghetti cables that I decided it was high time to
return to basics. A few pedals and a head.
When I flew to Germany in 2003 to work
on the Isen Torr Mighty and Superior EP with Rich Walker I took my
1980 B.C. Rico Mockinbird (a Jap neckthrough), which still had EMGs
in it. We both played through a very odd Marshall 100 Watt hybrid
head (the model no. is 2200) that belonged to recording engineer
Michael Hahn. It had a solid-state preamp section and a tube power
section. That’s the opposite of the early ’90s Valvestate. It was
kind of like putting a good old distortion pedal in front of a
Marshall power amp. I really like how raw it sounded. I didn’t use
any pedals, aside from a slight boost from a Boss GE-7 Graphic EQ
pedal on my two solos and a bit of my Vox Reissue Wah on one lead.
The rhythm tracks were totally dry, straight into the Marshall,
which kept us sounding very vintage despite the fact that we were
tuned down to B! Somehow I managed to pry Rich away from his Boss
Metal Zone pedal on the rhythm tracks. Phew! As a result, there was
a lot of room for Zülle’s bass.
On the Falcon demo in 2003 I switched between my 1975 B.C. Rich
Seagull, 2000 Gibson faded Flying V (my first Gibson), and ’76 B.C.
Rich Eagle. No pedals whatsoever aside from a bit of Big Muff Pi on
a couple of overdubs and some wah. Just after the Falcon demo I
bought a Marshall 100 Watt Plexi Reissue and ditched the Boogies
altogether. I was so stoked with the Marshall from day-one. I also
finally managed to find a beautiful 1976 Les Paul Deluxe, which
became my main guitar for Falcon. Dan DeLucie from Destiny’s End
grabbed a Les Paul Custom in 1999, and I loved it so much I knew I
needed to get myself one.
You obviously have a much different
guitar tone in Falcon than you did in Destiny's End. What made you
change your sound? Was it the music that you were writing demanded a
different sound, or was this the sound in your head from the
beginning?
Perry: I changed sounds because I
wanted Falcon to be 100% convincing as a vintage heavy rock band.
While you can approximate that with modern gear, it’s still not
exactly the same thing. I could tell the difference, and I always
felt as if something was missing at first. I totally re-examined my
sound and wound up making a 180 degree turn. No more active pickups,
no more high-gain amps. You hit it, John, it just demanded—screamed
out—for the sort of gear my heroes used to use back in the late
1960s and early 1970s. I knew how I wanted things to sound from the
beginning, but I was also pretty clueless about vintage or reissue
amps. A lot of my friends badmouthed Marshalls and said they’d never
played one that sounded any good. This is obviously where I wrapped
my head around the concept of non-master volume amps. Those were the
only things available to Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton in Cream, Tony
Iommi in early Sabbath, Leslie West in Mountain, etc. They have to
be cranked to pump out power amp distortion. Many of those guys used
Treble Booster units for more hair (Joe Perry likes to refer to
distortion as hair!) atop their primitive valve monsters! I played
through friend and Superbees/Shakey Mallard guitarist Dave James’
Plexi Reissue when I bought one of his old SGs off him and was
instantaneously smitten/bitten with British non-master volume
madness. Sometimes we get lumped into the stoner rock genre, but I’m
very opposed to the usual overt fuzziness involved with bands like
Kyuss. I like that fact that you can really hear little
idiosyncrasies and flubs when people play dry through an NMV amp.
The individual character really shines through!
More than ever I play with oodles of midrange in my tone. Guitar is
a midrange instrument, and when you scoop out the mids you’re doing
yourself no favors. The last thing I want to do is occupy territory
the bassist should. Heaviness on many of my fave recordings comes
from the roar of the bass, not an overly percussive guitar tone.
Since Falcon is what you're doing
these days, I'd like to look more into your gear choices for each of
the two records. Maybe you could compare first what guitars and amps
you used on each, and then tell about the two recording situations
and gear.
Perry: For both Falcon albums we
recorded the basic tracks live. Me, Greg Lindstrom and Darin
McCloskey were all in the same room. No scratch tracks, no click
tracks, no bullshit. We had very little rehearsal (about 2-3 days
for both albums). There were definitely no drum punch-ins. Barely
any guitar or bass punch-ins on the basic tracks—maybe one or two,
which isn’t bad for ten songs! Because we weren’t using
computers/hard disks, there was no editing whatsoever involved. I
wouldn’t have it any other way! What you hear is what we played. Due
to the layout of the Polar Bear Lair (Chris Kozlowski’s studio in
Middletown, MD) our amps/cabs were not in the same small room.
Instead we all had headphones on. There was still a lot of
interaction and more of a classic, raw power trio vibe than on any
other recordings I’ve ever done. Greg L. has a better attention span
than I do, and he spurs me to keep aware and on top of things if my
mind starts to wander. We do our share of head nodding if there are
tricky changes coming up. The fact that I knew I was moving to
Australia shortly after recording Die Wontcha really made me buckle
down. Bleed is actually a big part of staying true to the vintage
mentality. I don’t mind a little bleed of guitars or bass into drum
mics, but by nature every instrument was isolated at “Kozwald’s”
place.
I knew Chris Kozlowski had heaps of
vintage amps when we were headed to the east coast to record the
self-titled Falcon album. So, I just wound up switching between
Chris’ original Sunn Model T, Orange Overdrive Series Two, Orange
OR-120 and occasionally an Orange combo for some overdubs. I only
brought my Les Paul out for the self-titled Falcon recording
sessions, but we had to go back to Maryland for a few days of mixing
on that first album, so I brought my 1976 B.C. Rich Eagle out and
re-recorded the solos for “Downer” and “Throwback” to add a little
more contrast. That 1976 Les Paul Deluxe rules, but it’s always a
good idea to use different axes so there’s a lot of separation and
contrast on recordings. Who wants signal cancellation?! For the
slide intro to “Castle Peak” I plugged into my MXR Distortion + and
then direct into the mic preamp for a very buzzy/fuzzy tone.
Recording guitars direct is usually a very bad idea, but it’s kinda
cool when you’re shooting for something with that thin/fizzy tone. I
was a little disappointed that I didn’t bring my Big Muff Pi for
fuzz. Chris’ old Deluxe Big Muff (the plug-in version) sounded like
an explosive dying seal, so I had to resort to cranking my MXR
Distortion + for the little Blue Cheer-like fuzzy freak-outs at the
beginning and in the middle of “Throwback.” Luckily the MXR, like
many other very old distortion units, is based on a Germanium
circuit and gets really nasty at high settings.
On Die Wontcha I was more conscious
about playing only non-master volume amps at the Polar Bear Lair. I
know two of the Oranges we used a bit on the self-titled were early
master volume heads, so I stayed away from them. The main rhythm
track was my ’76 Les Paul straight into Chris’ Laney Supergroup 60
watt head and the second was my 2000 Flying V into Chris’ awesome
original Sunn Model T. I switched guitars a lot for solos and little
lead overdubs. Once I used Greg Lindstrom’s Les Paul Jr. for a small
part. I really paid a lot of attention to dynamics. You’ll hear
parts where I back my guitar volume down. When the section warrants
it, I’m not completely blaring. I even applied a technique I learned
from Eric Clapton in Cream and Leslie West: playing lead with the
neck pickup on and the tone control on the guitar backed down to
zero. That’s what people referred to as Clapton’s “Woman Tone.” You
can hear that in the solo on top of the mellow section in “Falcon”
and towards the end of the solo on “Everything There Is to Know.”
I think you can really hear an added confidence in Die Wontcha
because we finally got the opportunity to play a gig with Darin on
drums several months before we hit the Polar Bear Lair. Darin was my
first choice to play drums for Falcon because of how much of a Pale
Divine nut I was/am. With Greg Lindstrom it’s even more of an honor
because of how huge a Cirith Ungol fan I am. Despite the fact that
we never jammed before they joined Falcon, we have this amazing
chemistry. If we spent more time jamming together I can only imagine
how intense the tunes would be.
I know you're a fan of non-master
volume amps. What is it about the tone you prefer? I've read of how
many NMV Marshall owners are rarely able to turn up loud enough to
exploit the amp's gain and tone. Do you ever find yourself in this
situation?
Perry: Yup, now I’m a such a massive
nut for non-master volume amps. I feel there’s more interaction
between player an amp with an NMV. And I feel like the individual
character of the player is clearer; it’s like playing naked. If you
aim to sound like say one of our mutual faves Alex Lifeson did back
on Fly by Night, you’ve just got to use one. Something like a
Marshall JTM-45 or 100 or a Marshall 1959 Super Lead 100. The Laney
Super Group 120, Sunn Model T, Sound City 120, Orange OR-120 or even
HiWatt are also cool NMV heads. These days there are a lot of
clueless live sound “engineers” who instantly climb the walls the
second they see one of these amps lifted out of a roadcase in a
club. I let it get to me at the first Falcon gig, but thereafter I
was more sensible! The fact remains that NMV amps are a necessity to
play heavy-ass rock the way it was back in the heyday. I found
myself in that annoying situation a few times in L.A., which is a
notoriously lame location if you’re not a band touring from out of
town. If it we were meant to play a dinky place I’d only bring one
of my Marshall cabs. That usually remedied the problem. Didn’t take
as much to make the amp break up nicely. There was one occasion
where we played a very big venue, the Ventura Theater, when it
would’ve been perfect for two stacks a la Jimi. I only had one.
Should’ve rented or borrowed a second! I was getting hassled for
completely different reasons and told my stage volume was “louder
than Hendrix,” which is simply not possible! Even though I usually
only had the Plexi on 8 or so, I threw it on 10 because we were
being screwed with in Cirith Ungol’s hometown. I told the story in
my recent Hellride interview. It’s a tragicomedy in three parts!? If
you’re playing a large club, theater or bigger venue it’s definitely
all right to have a hundred watt NMV head and two cabs. I have yet
to find a speaker attenuator that I like enough to buy. That’s fine,
because I don’t need to play my Plexi in my apartment. You can use a
master volume amp or a small combo amp for that!
I'm curious about your set-up at gigs.
Do you try for the same tones on the Falcon records, or do you try
to have a more high-gain sound?
Perry: Because I’m not using Chris Kozlowski’s amps live, I sound
slightly different than on the Falcon albums. For one thing I’m
brighter, because my Marshall has EL34 power tubes, whereas a Sunn
Model T has that deep bass-heavy 6550 tube tone. A Laney Supergroup
has 6L6s, so it sort of soft/warm by comparison to the harsher bark
of a Marshall Plexi Reissue. It would be wrong to play Falcon stuff
with higher gain or with a fuzz pedal on 24/7. I have a very
earthy/naked approach to guitar in Falcon. I don’t hide behind walls
of distortion, nor do I use things that compress the hell out my
sound. One thing I always do, regardless of what non-master volume
head I’m playing through, is to jump the high/low channels together
for a more well-rounded tone. You get the best of both worlds. I
just had no concept of that possibility until I actually spent some
time fiddling with an NMV amp. Some amps require you to use a small
cable to jump the channels together, while others have an extra
input jack solely for the purpose.
Can you explain a bit about your
guitars? Make and models? Have you modified them?
Perry: The scorecard now reads 5 B.C.
Riches and 4 Gibsons. I own most of my dream B.C. Rich axes. I
wouldn’t mind finding a Bich someday, but that’s about it. Vintage
Gibsons cost an arm and a leg, so all but one of mine are fairly
new.
The B.C. Riches are: 1975 Seagull
(trans blue), 1976 Eagle Supreme (natural), 1980 Rico Mockingbird
(natural), 1981 Seagull (trans blue), 1999 Eagle Archtop (stained
black). Secondhand and vintage guitars usually need a lot of love
before they’re reliable, so all my Eagle Archtop had plenty of work
done. All of those have the same Schaller fixed bridge with
fine-tune tailpiece on them to improve tuning stability and
intonation. I had lots of issues with stock B.C. Rich Quad bridges
and Badass bridges, so I found an awesome alternative. A few of them
also had the tuners changed. They now have Grover tuners with art
deco machine heads. With the exception of the Eagle Archtop, all of
those had their electronics gutted to accommodate EMG active
pickups. When I got sick of EMGs, all of the electronics in those
were replaced around 2003. All have Gibson pickups in them now. I
tend to swear by Gibson 57 Classic/Classic Plus pickups, although my
’75 Seagull has P-94s in it. They’re P-90s in a humbucker housing.
The ’75 Seagull is a very light mahogany single-cutaway guitar,
kinda like Leslie West with his Les Paul Jr., so it’s a nod to the
Great Fatsby. Both Seagulls and the 1976 Eagle have the funky and
complex electronics designed by Neal Moser (coil tap switches,
booster, Varitone). Electronics don’t last forever, so you have to
keep on top of these things. I sold the Warlock I used to own ages
ago because it’d been butchered by the previous owner, and I got
sick of all the lame issues.
Gibsons? I wish I’d been smart enough to buy them sooner. There were
still deals to be had when I was younger. Currently I’ve got a 1976
Les Paul Deluxe (tobacco sunburst), 1996 SG Standard (heritage
cherry), 2000 Gibson faded Flying V (cherry) and a 2006 Les Paul
Standard (faded honeyburst). No major mods here. The stock pickups
in the Flying V were way too hot for Falcon but perfect for metal. I
put Gibson 57 Classic Plus and 57 Classic pickups in the V and stuck
its ceramic magnet humbuckers in my Mockingbird, which always needed
a kick up the bum. I’m very stoked on the 1976 Les Paul because it
has those original 1970s PAF-type pickups, the so-called T-Buckers.
Slightly more authentic than those 57 Classics. My pal Ed Laing
potted the pickups so well that they only feedback when I want them
to! No annoying squeal like you’d get with un-potted ones.
I'd read you you've been using an MXR
Micro Amp (actually, it's an updated version by Custom Audio
Electronics, as Perry explains - Ed.). What problem does this
pedal solve for you? Do you use other pedals, either live or in the
studio? You've used a wah-wah on the Falcon records; what kind is
it? Have you tried different wahs and prefer one over the others?
Perry: My ol’ pal Mike Bear from
Artisan gave me a Custom Audio Electronics MXR Boost/Line Drive
pedal for my last b-day because we were talking about how I was
gonna buy a MXR Micro Amp for a slight lead boost. I used a friend’s
a few times and liked it. My friend Angelo Tringali from Cold
Mourning and Slough Feg swears by his Micro Amp, and I love how he
sounds. Anyhow, the Boost/Line Drive is exactly the same as the
Micro Amp but with true bypass and a nifty blue LED so you an always
tell when the pedal’s on/off. Most of the time I want a slight boost
for solos, a little added sustain and just a small added kick. Those
two MXR units will give you a boost from 0-20db. But I don’t want to
mess with my tone. Most distortion and overdrive pedals color your
tone way too much. For the first several years with Falcon I used an
MXR Distortion + for a slight boost on solos. It doesn’t have any EQ
controls on it, which I like. It works really well with non-master
volume amps, but sounds terrible with master volume ones. Now I have
the perfect solution for whatever amp I’ll be using. Ordinarily I
could care less about true bypass circuits. Losing a bit of signal
is actually part of the game if you’re trying to sound like
guitarists from the Sixties and Seventies. True bypass didn’t exist!
I use an MXR Phase 90 both live and in the studio on little bits.
It’s the classic phaser. Sometimes when I don’t have the Phase 90
I’ll just add the phaser in the mix with a rack piece. Chris
Kozlowski has an awesome old Roland phaser I like a lot. I have a
Big Muff Pi USA that I like using on scattered little sections that
require beefy fuzz, especially when I’m going for a Leslie West-like
bloopy tone—sparingly though. I’ve had the same Vox Reissue wah for
about 11 years. It’s sturdy and sounds killer. I’ve owned Crybabies
and like how they sound, but they always broke within a year, and I
got sick of replacing them. I bought an original Foxx Wa Machine
many years ago in L.A. which has a few different settings on it, but
it needs some love from an effects tech. I don’t use a wah on every
solo, and sometimes I’ll only use it as a filter, keeping it in one
position most of the time. I totally hear Michael Schenker doing
that in UFO, not to mention Scott Gorham or Brian Robertson from
Thin Lizzy.
I really got into octave fuzz pedals around 2003. Jimi popularized
the Octavia in the late 1960s. Octave fuzz units are very hard to
tame, and I investigated a lot of different ones before I settled on
the Foxx Tone Machine. You can turn the octave function off and just
use it as a fuzz, which is useful. Foxx returned to the effect
business after many years, and I was lucky enough to bump into them
at NAMM in L.A. An interesting sidenote: the mastermind behind the
original Foxx pedals wound up at Danelectro, and their French Toast
pedal is simply the Tone Machine in a tiny case. I snagged one for
$40 so I don’t have to cart around the larger and far more expensive
Tone Machine everywhere. I know Billy Gibbons loves that Foxx unit,
so it can’t be half bad! Greg Lindstrom and Jerry Fogle both had
them back in the early days of Cirith Ungol too, only they didn’t
use the octave function much if ever. I have an old Boss CE-2 chorus
pedal that I sometimes break out. I’ve I prefer the CE-2 over
anything except the old 1970s Roland Chorus Ensemble.
What amp don't you own but wish you did? What guitar would you buy
if money was no object?
I’d love to have a Laney Supergroup 120 and a Sunn Model T. Thanks
to my wonderful wife Tanya I now have one of the other Marshalls
I’ve always wanted: a 2203 100 watt Master Volume head from 1978.
(That “JMP” was her amp in the early 1990s.) I wouldn’t turn down a
JTM-45, 50 or 100. Also wouldn’t mind a Fender Twin Reverb for clean
bits. And if I had a gazillion dollars, I’d go straight out and buy
a korina 1958 Gibson Flying V.
Thanks again, Perry! This is enlightening information for fans of
your work in all your bands, but especially for someone like me who
is so completely into Falcon. Cheers!
Go here to learn
more:
www.falconband.net
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