The Frights’ Mikey Carnevale - GEAR MASTERS Ep. 598

Are you interested? And I was like, yes, this sounds like a scam. It's been half step down since I turned 22, because this don't work as well as it used to. I play whatever picks Jordan has in his pocket, because I'm always forgetting mine. I'm Mikey Carnivale from The Frights, we are on tour right now in Chicago. We just put out a new record, Ready When You Are. We're out here, where are we at? Bottom Lounge. And we're going to show you some gear, I've got an acoustic guitar, some silly little pedals and some very, very popular amps. That's it baby, rock and roll. So this is actually probably the only thing I have some serious business to say about, because this was a, I got this guitar from Fender in 2017, 2018, and at first I was very hesitant to play a Fender acoustic, because of the, you know, just wanting to play a Martin or something kind of cool, not to say this isn't cool, but you know what I mean. And so I bought a shitload of other acoustic guitars, and I had a big collection, and I've tried every acoustic guitar in a live setting, and nothing has ever come remotely close to feeling this good, or playing as well as it does, and it frankly pisses me off. So I've played the hell out of this for the last almost 10 years, I just got it fixed, there was a crack down the back, I can't even think, they did such a good job you can't even see anymore, but I went through a phase of treating this guitar poorly, I dropped it a bunch, now I take good care of it because I recognize it's my soulmate, and it'll be with me forever, and it's just my little baby, I love it. I don't even know if they make this, yeah this is the Paramount PM2E, I don't know if they make this exact guitar anymore, I think they still do the Paramount Series, I could be wrong, but great guitar, love it. Strings, usually I am playing D'Addario's custom light, I think I've changed now to just regular old light, and as far as changing, we started this tour, we're doing it in legs, we started this tour back in September, I haven't changed them since we left. Because for me there's this fine line where when you change acoustic guitar strings it's very churchy, is the worst way I can put it, and so after about a month and a half of good playing is when you get that, it starts to feel like it has a story to tell, as stupid as that sounds, and that's when it starts to feel good to me. So if I'm lucky, I only have two acoustic songs in this set, I shouldn't break a string until the tour is over, and then I'll have that perfect tone in about a week. So yeah, as rarely as I can change them without feeling like I'm playing a piece of ---- is how often I change my strings, basically. Tuning, oh, half-step, half-step down. For pretty much everything, I think amongst the band we have maybe one or two guitars that are in standard, but other than that, it's been half-step down since I turned 22 because this don't work as well as it used to. This is my pedalboard. As you can see, we have four pedals, two of which are really special. They're what we call tuners, and I vary them up here with one analog and one poly-tune, fully electric. Look at this. This is very nice. I'd use this one, as you should, for electric, and this one for acoustic, just for the vibe. So then the rest of these here, we have two. Now this reverb, I'm not in love with it, it just happens to be, again, kind of a part of my setup at this point because I'm lazy, but it's great. I just keep it on the plate setting, and I use it for some of the older Freight stuff that requires that dirty doo-wop, they used to call it, sound, and so it's fine. No problem with this pedal, it's great, love it, but I don't know much about it besides what I currently use it for, which is minimal. This, however, has been similar to my acoustic, the pedal I cannot escape. I have tried so many times to find another exciting overdrive distortion pedal, but every time I go to the guitar store, I'm like, hey, can you turn me on to something new? They're like, what do you have? I'm like, the GT500. Oh, that's the best one. That's the one. I was like, alright. So again, I just fully accepted this, like I did my acoustic as this is my way, and now I love it to death, it's a part of me, and I pretty much run it all show on the booster overdrive setting, and then occasionally for some heavier stuff, I'll throw on distortions, but for the most part, it's on the overdrive. This is the electric I have right now, this is a guitar made by this gentleman in San Antonio called Rosewood God Guitars, and he hit me up about a year and a half ago, and he said, hey man, I want to make a guitar for you, are you interested? And I was like, yes, this sounds like a scam. So I was like, let's see how this goes. He's like, well, you're coming to San Antonio, I'll come out to the show, and I'll bring you, this is what he usually makes, he's like gold, crazy, you know, multiple parallel settings on the pickups, Tele's, he does a bunch of stuff for specific artists, and I saw this, I was like, that's cool, it's not necessarily my style, but I'll check it out, and he brought it to the show, and I played it on the next tour, and I just like fell in love with it, and I ended up using this guitar solely, this electric guitar, on the record we just made, Running With You Are, and just fell in love with how gnarly it can sound. Point being, it sounds sick, I love it, he did make me a custom guitar that's even sicker, and I left it at the venue yesterday. So perfect time for my rig rundown, don't have my ******* custom guitar, but it's being shipped back to us in San Diego, so that's cool, but this guitar rules, he rules, Rosewood God, check him out, great guitars, love it. Ernie Ball, regular Slinkys, yeah, I don't mess with electric guitar strings, for some reason it's just the way it is, again, I'm not too particular, I'm way more particular about my acoustic guitar, and my acoustic guitar playing, than I am with electric guitar, for whatever reason, always maxing my volume and tone out, I never mess with it, it hurts my brain to mess, especially with the volume, it really hurts to like imagine that there's a louder possible setting here, so I've never, ever, ever been messing with my volume or tone, yeah. This, I don't know if you'll recognize it, this is a very rare 2020 Twin Reverb by a little company called Fender, and they've been making some good stuff for a couple years at least, I can't complain, I'm giving them a shot, I feel like they're like a nice new startup, so, I don't know, I'm just helping the little guys out, right, so this is my amp, I keep it, as you can see, 5 5 5 5 5, and then 2, and then 0, so I keep it pretty much straight across the board, because I'm just a middle of the road kinda guy, and sometimes the sound guy will make me do this, and I'll go to 4, and that is frustrating, but that's okay, I get it, it's for the good of the people, so I keep it at 5 until someone tells me otherwise, and I keep it no bright, because this guitar is bright as ****, and I used to when I played Strat, which was my guitar for years, until I got this, throw it on bright, treble up a little bit, keep it a little, get a little preshante feeling with it, now I just, I'm pretty run of the mill, so, that's my Fender Twin Reverb, which blew out it's tubes, right before a big show we had back home, I tried, I borrowed a friend's, those tubes blew, borrowed another friend's, those tubes blew, I eventually went to Guitar Center and I picked up one of their new ones, Solid State Twin Reverb, and so I was actually super into that for a second, but I feel like I would lose some street cred if I ditched the tubes, so, here we are, risky and blowing tubes again. This has been here since probably 2016, and this is what my old tour manager used to use when I would use this, the normal channel, and now I do want a little bit of verb, so, yeah, this is just part of the story, I guess. This is the brother to the sister of the guitar, this amp has been with me as long as this guitar has been with me, and I, again, ordered this from Fender, I like the way it looked mainly, I needed an acoustic guitar amp, I've been going DI for years before that, and I really, really hated that, I was going DI with a J45 Gibson, and it just sounded ******* terrible, so, this came, and I was like, again, skeptical, unbelievable, and I, this sounds crazy, but, and I don't want to say it too loud so he hears me, but a lot of sound guys give me compliments on this, and if you get a compliment from a sound guy, that's the craziest thing that's ever happened. So, that's really cool, these guys just, again, a perfect combo, and it looks cool, and I don't believe they make this anymore, I think they make a smaller one, if I'm not mistaken, but I love this amp, I love this guitar, I hope nothing ever happens to either of them, they rule. This guitar's pretty warm, for the most part, so I try to, I used to actually, like, again, I would keep everything right down the middle, and now I just started dialing the highs back, because with the new strings, or new-ish strings, it comes in a little bright, so I have to tone that back a touch, otherwise, the reverb on this sounds really nice, I give it a touch, again, I used to go more ham with it, I keep it pretty mellow these days, I try to, that's kind of like the story of my life, is to try to tone myself down the older I get, and mature, and not blast everything out to 100, so, yeah, that's where we're running there. So, picks, I play whatever picks Jordan has in his pocket, because I'm always forgetting mine, so, these are my preferred ones, Ernie Ball mediums, I love those, I will settle, oh, I don't even know what this is, this one doesn't even have a label anymore, I thought this was gonna be, oh, it is, yeah, Tortex, just, again, the mediums, the little orange boys, but I do prefer these, just, I don't know why, I like the way they look, and they feel great, and the Ernie Ball logo gives a little grip, but, again, I usually walk on stage at sound check, I'm like, Jordan, what you got, like, I need a pick, and he has something for me, so that's what I got today. So, like I said, we released Ready When You Are back in August, and it's on Spotify, Apple Music, fuckin' Tidal, whatever you want to listen to, we took two months out of our last year just busting ass making this record, we're super proud of it, so, give it a listen, I like it, you might too.