On this episode of DTB’s “Gear Masters”, Brett “Bat” Carruthers, bassist of the darkwave band, The Birthday Massacre, shows off the gear that he uses onstage, while on the Dark Winter Tour with Lord of the Lost and Wednesday 13. The Birthday Massacre is currently supporting their newest album, Pathways.
ABOUT DIGITAL TOUR BUS: Digital Tour Bus is your backstage pass to your favorite touring artists! With daily video releases, we cover all genres, and have had the pleasure of featuring the likes of Matchbox Twenty, Twenty One Pilots, Megadeth, MGK, Papa Roach, AJR, Pierce The Veil, Simple Plan, A Day to Remember, and thousands of others over the past 15 years. "Bus Invaders" takes you inside an artist's home on the road, "Cooking at 65mph" showcases the culinary skills of artists on tour, "Gear Masters" unveils the equipment musicians use on stage, and "Stage Threads" dives into the meaning and inspiration behind the clothing artists wear during their performances.
Affiliate Disclosure: Some of the links in this description are affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you if you make a purchase. Your support helps me continue to create content like this. Thank you!
AI Generated·May contain errors
It's the perfect goth bass tone.
It can't be beat, in my opinion.
Kind of has a mix of a Jaguar with a Rickenbacker.
I love these tiny tuners now
that don't take up a lot of room.
It's great.
Hey, I'm Brett, or Bat, from The Birthday Massacre.
I play bass.
We're out on the road right now on the Dark Winter Tour
with Wednesday 13 and Lord of the Lost.
So this is our Chicago date.
We're about, I don't know, nine or 10 shows in.
So things are finally feeling good, feeling confident.
Everything's running really well.
And the tour's been great so far.
The bands are amazing.
And yeah, this is the second US tour we've done
for our Pathways album, which came out earlier in 2025.
All right, so this bass is a custom bass
that was made for me by a good friend named Randy.
He lives in Orillia, Ontario, Canada.
His company's called Ratt Instruments.
So this is a design that actually a drummer
in another band that I play with
called The Primitive Evolution, he helped me design this.
I think he was calling it the Beretta
was the original idea behind it.
You know, something new, something fresh.
Kind of has a mix of a Jaguar with a Rickenbacker.
Total mix up.
And then for the pickups, these are custom pickups
by MJS from Mississauga, Ontario, Canada as well.
And Smitty set me up with a really interesting tone
that's reminiscent of the like 70s SG basses
and those old like Gibson Road basses.
So I'm kind of keeping everything cranked.
These are both just jacked.
It gives this really cool like mid-range boost and punch.
So I'm just running it straight up.
I play in D standard tuning just because I find it easier
when we're doing some of the bouncy disco kind of stuff
that I can move around like that for.
D'Addario strings, it's the balanced tension.
I think it's the EXL 160 BT.
If I'm not mistaken, that might be right.
But it's a 120 on top so I can drop it down to C
if I need to do drop C stuff
and it keeps the tension really nice.
This bass is also a long scale bass.
So it's a 35 inch scale on it,
which makes it just tighter
when you're playing that low drop stuff.
It's a little longer.
It took me a while to get used to it with my short arms.
But yeah, this bass has been great.
I love it.
It sounds good.
It feels good.
It stays in tune.
It's just a beautiful work of art.
Starting to get really worn in here.
The pick bass stuff.
But it's exactly the finish I wanted it
and to degrade like that,
that was like the idea behind it.
First part of the chain's the tuner.
Easy, nice and tiny.
I love these tiny tuners now
that don't take up a lot of room.
It's great.
Then this is the Whitey Tidy by JHS.
Now it's just a compressor.
Sort of emulates like a FET compressor, I think.
So I'm just blending it in 50-50
just to give it a little bit more sustain
on the held notes
and juice up the signal a little bit
before I hit my overdrives.
Then I use the SuperOctave OC3.
There's a track where like the breakdown
in Stars and Satellites,
it goes down to like a low B.
But rather than have another bass,
I use the SuperOctave to kick in
for that part to drop and blend in an octave
so it's got a double octaver effect on it.
And then this is one of my favorite pedal companies.
It's called Abominable Electronics.
He's got this OCD oppressive cult destroyer,
he calls it.
It's perfect a bass overdrive, in my opinion.
I love this pedal so much on bass
and guitar as well, actually.
But it's got like a clean blend
so you can keep the integrity of the bass
and then add a little bit of dirt.
So that's like my mid-range dirty pedal.
Then this one's called the Wicked Garden.
It's also by Abominable.
I use this one solely for its one knob chorus
on this pedal.
And to me, it's like, it's the perfect goth bass tone.
It can't be beat, in my opinion.
Very simple, just one knob, it's perfect.
And then for like really fuzzed out, long sustained stuff,
I'm using the Red Panda Bitmap
just to completely annihilate the signal.
And again, it's got a mix on it
so you can bring in some of your real bass tone.
But then the Bit Crusher cranked all the way up,
it just creates this wicked fuzz
that breaks up in this awesome way
and just gates all the noise out.
So I really love this too for like big fuzzy moments.
The next step is the RBI by SansAmp.
It's an older one, love the SansAmp bass driver.
Very similar to that pedal,
but this is the rack unit, the old RBI unit.
And that's just like the stuff that SansAmp did
with their EQ curve.
It just scoops it out in the perfect ways
and just, to me, it makes everything sound better
from your distortions, everything.
It just cleans up the mids, makes it real nice.
And then I'm going into this Wounded Paw
from Toronto as well.
A local Toronto maker.
He started making these bass amps like five or six years ago
or yeah, I just love them.
He's onto a new model now.
Can't remember what the new ones are called,
but Wounded Paw, it's on his website.
And it's got like this great multiband overdrive section.
So you can sort of choose the frequency you want,
choose if you want it distorted or not,
and dial it in that way.
So that's just my last sort of sculpting
before it heads to the old GK Neo 412.
This thing's a beast.
It's been around for like 20 years now.
Just a road hog, yeah.
Well, my pick right now,
like these are actually my wife, Stephanie's bass picks.
I didn't have time to get custom ones
for Birthday Massacre, so I've been using her picks.
They're by Intune Guitar Picks
and they're millimeter thick, so I like that.
I've gotten used to like the dry kind of Tortex style feel.
And the big size for a bass pick,
I find it makes it a little more comfortable.
A little less fatiguing
than like a smaller regular guitar pick.
I think everyone who helped me create this rig
and you know, like from Randy at Wrapped and Smitty at MJS,
the bass tone wouldn't be what it is without those guys.
And all these pedal companies are great.
And I love this like era of boutique pedals
and people making really specific stuff.
It's really exciting,
especially like with the amp from Wounded Paw.
And like you can get so specific.
It's really exciting to me.
Right now, Birthday Massacre,
we're gonna finish up this tour
and then we're back in the studio.
So there'll be another record on the way
and check out our website, birthdaymassacre.com
and check out those dates if we're coming to your town.
