Lord of the Lost’s Benjamin Benji Mundigler - GEAR MASTERS Ep. 616

And it sounds actually really good. Better than all the other modelers. To be honest I think two volume knobs would be better for me. I don't really use the tone knob that much. And when we fly, all I need to take is the quad cortex and my laptop. Hi, this is Benji from Lord of the Lost. We're here in Chicago today and we're going to have a look a bit at our gear that we use when we play live. So part of this is rental gear since we are from Germany and obviously we can't bring everything over to America. Let's start with the main central guitar part of a sound. I bet you've seen this before, quad cortex. It's everywhere and for good reason. Hi and I both use it so we both have the same device. I have the expression pedal for a bit of wah-wah or whammy stuff. I use it in hybrid mode so I've got my synths down here. Which I can change like solos or lead or just rhythm. And then I can add like different effects which I want and I like the flexibility it gives me. Pi I think has it only in scenes so it's got eight scenes for different tunings whatever. What really is fantastic about this unit is that it can do the transposing things. So like if I want to play a different tuning and we've only got space for two guitars. So we play drop D and drop A. But we also have songs which are on drop D. I just use it from patch. It's got transposing in it. Pitches it to drop C. And it sounds actually really good. Better than all the other modelers which I have heard, from my taste anyway. It just sounds the cleanest when transposing to different tunings. To be honest I don't specifically always choose a single amp that I know that is my go-to. I know I'm a big Dual Rectifier fan. But in this case actually it was the Bogner Uberschall I went with in the end. I just tried out everything which I thought would be interesting. And that was the one which just appealed to me the most. I think Pi uses the Gojira plug-in from Neural DSP which you nowadays can load onto the units. And I think that's based on a 5150 but I may be mistaken. We don't really have a signature guitar sound so much. Since we're so much synth focused and I've got all the 80s sounds and everything going on. The guitars are more a layer on top but they're not the main focus of the music. So we've just got our general reverbs, delays for leads and solos. We've got some modulation, chorusy, flanger things. We've got filters from typical intros. That's actually pretty much it. Maybe some fuzz extras but nothing really unique where you'd say this is completely out of the box. Unusual design or something. This is where the quadcortex will come back in again. So I also play keyboards live. Many people would argue that keyboards in a metal band are kind of, well they used to say gay. I think that's not an appropriate term. So what we have is two keyboards. The second keyboardist has already set down his stuff so he's not visible at the moment. But we have got two keyboards. Sounds get run by a main stage. So I've got a laptop sitting down here. I can change my patches to synths, pianos, pads, leads, whatever we need just to fill up the song. And this is what I love about the quadcortex. It's got so many routing options and ins and outs. So this is my audio interface for my laptop. So I've got my guitar coming out of here. I've also got my keyboards coming out of here. Which means we've got the plug box here. Everything is really nice and compact. And when we fly like for example now to the US and play shows elsewhere. All I need to take is the quadcortex and my laptop. And all the sounds which I use are all with me. I'm on board. It doesn't matter which controller I use. It's all the same. And that is just fantastic. Backing vocals we all have Audex mics. I've got the OM5. The other guys have the OM2. And Chris our singer has an OM6 I believe. Super tight cardioid. Like hypercardioid. So it's really really clean signals. Don't get a lot of jump spill. Chris can go down into the barrier. We don't have any issues with feedbacks. So absolutely fantastic live vocals. Miced live vocals. So for guitars we all play a company called Sion. It's Aluthia from Hamburg where we come from. All hand built custom guitars. This is my guitar for drop D tuning. So regular 6 string drop D tuning. It has a Simoduncan SD4 and SD1 I believe is the combination. We've got strings by Richter Strings. Many know them for their guitar straps which almost everyone use. Including us. But they also do strings. And they're actually really durable. I've very very rarely had them tear. So that's very convenient. This would be 10-6D I believe. Pickup wise I like these two because they're just slightly more old school-y sound. Not quite as modern as the Fishman Fluence which lots of people are using nowadays. Volume knob, tone knob. To be honest I think two volume knobs would be better for me. I don't really use the tone knob that much. But I have the coil split to use them as single coils. And this is what I really love about them. They really sound as single coil-y as a humbucker can sound. Without it actually being a proper single coil. And I'll dial it in a little bit every now and then. In certain songs where it's more for the fun of it. Especially for cleans I like the more glassy, ring-y single coil sound. But most of the time it's just everything open. Bridge pickup and just full throttle distortion. My other guitar is a bit different because this actually is a 7-string. I'm the only one who has a 7-string. Kai only plays 6-string guitars. This is a... Oh, crumbs. Benacle Super Distor... No, sorry, Tone Zone. Tone Zone, that's the one I always keep forgetting. And to be honest I've got no idea what this is. Because Aluthia, he just put something in. And if it sounds good, it sounds good. And that's what counts. Here, two volumes. Two separate coil splits. A nice kill switch which I always like. I prefer to have both open to be able to switch between pickups. I know some would just turn down the one and use that as a kill switch. But I prefer to have a separate knob. This is a unique string gauge. The thinnest is an 8 gauge and the thickest is a 70. But I like, because this is drop A tuning, I like the really thick strings on the bottom. This is a 28-inch scale guitar so it is already baritone. I still want the thick strings so I can really chug into it and without it pitching the note too much. Otherwise you get this... If the strings are too thin. But this is exactly what I want with the thin strings. That I can go into bendings, vibrato, without having to really push it. Because, I don't know, my fingers are too sensitive for that apparently. Otherwise all guitars, locking tuners, cheat code for the backliners to know how to tune the guitars. All passive pickups because I don't want to mess with batteries during the show. It's already nuisance enough with wireless. Obviously wireless is a must nowadays for stages after certain size. But it's nice not having to deal with even more batteries. It's more sustainable right now. So for picks we've got these Jazz XL shaped customs from Pick Me Custom. One millimetre in strength. I just like the slightly smaller size. Just a bit more nimble. I could play with anything but this is just personal preference. We have in-ear monitoring for live. I'm personally using just the very usual Shure 315. Thank you for watching. Please check out the other videos if you like. Like for example for the drum rundown. We have our third part of Opus Noir Volume 1, 2 and now 3 coming out in April. So feel free to check that out. We're on tour in Europe, in Australia, all over the world in the next half year. So feel free to check those dates out. Otherwise follow us on Instagram, Facebook, wherever you want to. And see you soon.