On this episode of DTB’s “Gear Masters”, Harry Ruprecht, guitarist of the indie rock band, The Backfires, shows off the gear that he uses onstage, while on the "This Is Not An Exit Tour" with Foxtide and Mercury. The Backfires is currently supporting their newest album, This Is Not An Exit.
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Hey how's it going? I'm Harry from The Backfires and we're on our tour for our debut album This
Is Not An Exit and this is a rig rundown I guess. So this is my main guitar, it's an Epiphone
ES-335 Pro with some brand new pickups in it. One of them's a jazz pickup, I know that that one's a
jazz pickup and I don't know what that is and I couldn't tell you which jazz pickup. I think this
is a Seymour Duncan. I don't think this one is necessarily. It might be a Duncan Jazz.
Yeah, go to the same guy as Alex, he was talking about it in his Maata history in New York. So I
don't know anything about pickups, he does, so I trusted him and then they're in here.
And I try and use this all the time. I have everything turned up all the time and this in
the middle and that's how it is all the time. I turn this down sometimes but it's not wired
so it can be gradual. So I'll turn it all if I need to do like a hammer-on to make it like do
like a fade-in note. I don't know how to describe that. If you want the note to fade in, not without
all the attack, I can use it for that but not very effectively. It's more like a hammer-on and then
turn it on afterwards and then it's just all on. So they're just all on all the time. I don't know
that. MYXL's 10-46. This is probably actually a nicer guitar technically. It's a Gibson Les
Paul Junior double cut. I think it's Junior. Junior Special. It's got two P90s in it. I
could not tell you which ones. Probably just the ones it came with and I think it's from the 90s
this one. I also just leave this in the middle all the time, all the way up. Same strings as
the other guitar and then this also has the whatever you call this. The neck is sanded down
and then blacked over I think just to make it really smooth because the paint with my rings,
the paint was like coming off and it made it really sticky so I couldn't use it for a while
but now it's back and I don't actually use it for any of the songs unless I have to. It's just
a backup for right now. The tuning, I'm in regular tuning most of the time for one song called
Replace It All. The high E string is tuned to D and for a couple songs including Figure It Out
the low E string is tuned to D so just drop D but everything else is in standard tuning.
All right so first up there is a tuner and it's just regular input output. Cuts the signal dead
and nothing else to say about the tuner. It goes into this other tuner which is bypassed
and I use that to tune what's also making noise obviously. So like going to drop D for transitions
sometimes I have that on and you can tell that you're going to D effectively and not just guessing.
This compressor I use purely for, I only use it when I'm going for clean times so it's just
started to make the amp sound a bit better. Yeah that isn't on any other time, it's not always on
it's only for clean. And then that's going into this fuzz factory which I use for some solo parts.
I'm currently only using it for one song but it should be for two. I just haven't figured it out
for the second one so it's currently being used on a song called Turn Off The Lights. It just has
like this really big attack but it's slightly different to this pedal over here which I use
for the main solos. This OCD is just like my like main distortion that's always basically always on
and then this is a boost on top of that. Sometimes, very rarely, I'll use this one without this one
if I just need to like a bit of a cleaner part because without this one underneath it it's
a bit cleaner, like nicer, less distortion. And then this is for solos and like occasional
very loud lead parts. This is a whammy, it's just used for making noises in between songs.
It's usually in the octave up-down position. I also use it for some solo parts and on a song
called Matador there's a big riff at the end that has this octave on in combination with all three
of these at the same time. But then it's going into this one which is the timeline, Strymon Timeline.
I am not big on ******* around with the settings, I kind of just trust the presets and so setting
one on this is called Meltaway and it's got like this, it's just a delay that's like almost synth
like and I use that all the time on loads of songs, on intros, on main lead parts in combination with
these two usually. And then there's another one that I use sometimes which is like a reverse sound
and that's just to sort of make noises in between songs. It's not really that useful
for the actual songs. And then that's going into this Space Echo. This, if you hold it down,
makes like a, I don't know if it's going to do it right now, but makes like the noise,
the Space Echo noise when you like **** it with the tape. So I use that to make noises in a couple
songs down between songs and then it's occasionally used as a delay for, this is not an exit, a clean
part, this is on from the beginning and then that is going into this Strymon Night Sky which
actually broke yesterday but it's still working apart from this infinite thing.
And it's definitely fancy, basically everything is set to zero
except that there's a basic reverb dialed in and then there's a local on it and it's always on
and occasionally when I need more reverb there's a setting that it's just basically this bit up
and that's about it I think. I also had a Boss DDA that broke or isn't currently working but
that would usually be on there as well. This is a KJ Audio, it's actually not the amp I use most
of the time, my amp broke the day before we left the store. I usually use a Fender Hot Rod.
This is one of our managers and it lives at Diamond City Studio in Brooklyn where we recorded
our album and I went to test a bunch of them before we left the tour and this was the closest
one. KJ is a dude out in Minneapolis and he makes these custom amps so this is like a handmade
Marshall situation, hand-wired with Celestions speaker in the back and it's really sick but
I don't think I'm gonna get my Hot Rod back next week but this amp is very cool and you
it's just like for this amp everything's the treble and the presence are all the way up
because I need more high end than this is giving me generally. Often I like to have
the bass on my Hot Rod, the bass would be sort of up this way, the middle somewhere there and
the treble like that, that's how I generally do it. Our debut album This Is Not An Exit is out now
and we're on tour the next month going all over North America on our tour for the debut record.
