Hunter Hayes - GEAR MASTERS Ep. 633

I think it was the Cory Wong plug-in. I was absolutely blown away by the air. I like the size of it. I like smaller guitars, not just because it makes me look taller. What's up? Hunter Hayes here. Welcome to the stage. We are on the Evergreen tour because I just put out the Evergreen album. So this is night, I think, 11 of the tour. It's been a long time since I've been here in this room and it kind of feels like home, but I want to show you around, show you some of the toys. We've streamlined a lot on this tour. This is the most streamlined I have ever been, but there's a lot of really fun, nerdy details that I feel like some of you might appreciate. So welcome. We'll start with something I never thought I would do, which is I am entirely quad-cortex based. I used to run three amps upstage. I still run one. It's not mic'd. It's just for me and it's just for solos just because I need that stage volume and I need to feel it on stage. The same amp that I've been using for almost 10 years. It's the Morgan, basically a deluxe-ish, 66 based kind of thing. Absolutely love that amp. It's got a ton of headroom. And that is a 200 watt EV speaker. That's kind of the one thing that I can't live without. They're harder to find these days, but I rely on that for a lot of things. Typically, I'm honestly on this tour kind of just running their-ish because that's, like I said, it pushes, especially with the 200 watt EV in there. This is an aggressive amp. It's got a lot of power. It's got a lot of punch. And we have very little stage volume at this point. So I'm just trying not to, you know, make everyone's life a living hell. I've been the guy, I've been a holdout for a long time. Like I said, I had three amps upstage, very traditional pedalboard. And I think it was the first time that I heard the Neural plug-in. I think it was the Cory Wong plug-in. I was absolutely blown away by the air. I've tried other versions of this world, and I was really impressed with the modeling as well. And I've got all of the amps from home, including that amp in here. So like, I've got a couple of, you know, really cool custom things that Joe Morgan made for me in like 2015, that's all in here. Couple of compressors that I really love, they're in here now, thanks to the update. And I've got a bunch of these really cool amps that I found at Caveman Vintage in Los Angeles. There's a guy that makes amps out of random things, and they're just one-off pieces. And some of them are tube based, some of them are solid state, but they're all like right around like 200 or 300. I went to Caveman expecting to find something very specific, and I found these amps, and I started collecting a lot of them, and they're all in here, which is just awesome that I can take them all on the road. So it's hard to beat that. So, and flexibility too, I mean, this thing is, I started using it on a solo tour when I was doing just me and a bunch of looping stuff, because, I mean, I was running, I was using the guitar to like trigger SPD samples, and this helped me with that, kind of controlling the output. It was kind of wild the way that it worked. And then Z actually built this pedal board, so we've just got six more buttons we can kind of use to go anywhere. This is programmed for looping. But yeah, so this is like the line check kind of situation, just tap through, I've got four lines on stage now, and we use them in different ways. Right now I've got line one is what we call the clean channel, and that's just like, I need a very clean, kind of no breakup, compression, deluxe circuit kind of thing. I'll show you. So this is the current routing, it will change tomorrow. So the clean channel, I think I've got, yeah, the Morgan. So basically that amp with all my presets, the way that I am used to running it, and just this vintage deluxe, because that's like, if I had to go anywhere with one amp, I think that's the amp I'm always trying to get back to, is that 62-64 deluxe circuit. So that amp and I get along very well. Corresponding cabinets too, which is great. So pushing two amps out of channel one, output one, and then I've got what we call the sort of dirty or the lead channel coming out of two, I think. I'm running, yeah, so there's a, Morgan made a really cool version of a brown Tolex deluxe that has a lot more gain and a lot more saturation, and I love it for leads. And I've paired it with an analog Outfitters model, because I like how aggressive that analog Outfitters, I mean, the big B3 transformer in there, it's just like, it's really aggressive and it's great for solos. So that comes out of channel two. I'm always running a compressor. I'm actually currently using the Corey Wong compressor, because it's just the easiest one to dial in and it sounds phenomenal. Also using his envelope filter, the Pulsar service, I believe is what it's called. Got a delay on both channels, analog, just the standard analog delay, not doing anything crazy. A little bit of a tight plate reverb. Use that for some of the slower, like, you know, solo type things. They're only going to one amp per side versus kind of going through both. What else are we doing? Oh, yeah, classic Myth Drive. You know, I had the Archer on my pedal board, never took it off, used it at bib, but that was my, that is my solo, that's everybody's solo channel, I feel like, is that sound. So it's pretty simple. And then for acoustics, I've got a bunch of weird stuff going on, but I also use this as a mute. The light's on, it's muted, chirps up a lot of people, but running a Fishman Aura back in the day when I first went on tour in, like, arenas, I had an acoustic, couldn't figure out how to make it sound the way I wanted to, tried an Aura and was blown away. And even still, I think it's some of the best, like, acoustic mic modeling. And so I just captured all of my favorite settings into here and I can, I bring the Fishman Aura pedal on the road. We also have the Jerry Douglas Aura modeled in here because the resonator tones in that are amazing. So I use that. This is kind of my Jerry Douglas Aura using the Corey Wong compressor again. Jerry Douglas Aura has a, the resonator sound, the resonator sampler, basically, has its own output. So during the show, I do a lot of riffs on acoustic, and that's just kind of like a boost, kind of like acts like a boosted, just, it has such a mid-range transient that cuts through, and it lets the acoustic tone be nice and mellow. And I've also got a way to turn off any of the Aura stuff and just have the direct acoustic signal. And then this, I believe, is an octave. Oh yeah, that's what I did yesterday. So, just put an octave up so that I have it for around the sun, kind of needs a 12-string approach. And this is my way of getting that without actually taking a 12-string on the road. Heavily EQ'd. I mean, it's kind of insane, but that's kind of the only place where I want that octave up to come through. And then, yeah, that was the compressor I tried yesterday, and I guess I liked it. So that's still there. Have some reverbs on that. And then the craziest thing I think I'm doing is probably this Mando channel. So I've got, I'll show you in a minute, I've got this really cool Eastman kind of Mando cello electric Mustang kind of looking thing. I needed it for Evergreen. Evergreen has such a specific octave Mando part that I did not play on an octave Mando. I played on like five other things on the album, but I needed something consistent for stage and I needed something that looked cool. And so I found this thing and we strung it differently. We set it differently, set it up differently. So for a while I had no idea how it was actually strung, but thanks, Bella. But this is the thing I'm talking about. So octave Mando on a really cool kind of historic looking shape, you know? It's nice and small. So I feel like a rock star, but when I play it, it sounds very, it's very confusing for people to see. But I've actually got three different channels of the Fishman Aura modeling. There are three different settings that I liked and we blend them. We change the blend depending on the room. There's kind of a top end, there's a mid range and there's kind of a low end that we just like kind of balance and blend every day. Guitar world. This is also the most concise, I think I've ever been on the road. But it really, for me, electric wise, everything's based around two things. One, electric. This is my signature with Ernie Ball. It is a Cutlass model. It's got a giant, I can't remember if it's 12, 10 or 12 dB boost, but I did copy and paste this out of Steve Lukather's signature model because that's one of the first models that they sent me. I thought I would hate it. I love it. I'm obsessed with it. And so, and when I say I thought I would hate it, I typically, humbuckers and I don't get along. I do. I'll show you that. Anyway, so this has the boost. It also has no tone knob because I've never really used the tone knob. And so what we did was we put piezo pickups. It's also a brass saddle based Cutlass because I'm a big Tele guy. So this kind of gives me the best of both worlds. This is a blend knob. It puts these in series so I can get kind of some really interesting, clean, you know, almost Gibson-esque type things out of this. This is a volume knob for a separate output. So you'll notice this is taped up so I don't mistakenly use this one. But sometimes I'll be able to run two packs and this is a piezo output. So you can blend this into your magnetic pickup world, but you can also do a separate output like I have done. And I run that to a Fishman Aura. And so I'm getting an acoustic tone through one direction and then my favorite single coil electric tones out of the other. I love this thing. I can play a whole show on this if I had to, one guitar. And that's what I love about it. In fact, when we've done like some of our crazier, you know, international shows where we can only fly with very limited things, I have absolutely played a whole show on maybe two of these. This one stays a half down. So you see this on Tattoo. You see it on Crazy. You'll see it on Better Than This. You'll see it on some other songs, some throwback songs because almost everything on my first like two albums was a half step down. So yeah, this comes out towards the end of the show now. Half step down electrics. I think we use 11s. Standard, we use 10s. That's what we've settled on. So this thing, this thing is wild. Eight strings. Dave Brown, my buddy Dave Brown came up with a way to string this with just standard electric. I think he uses 10s, two sets of 10s. And tuned like an octave mando. I can't remember off the top of my head what that is. I've got it written down. And I just love this thing. It's just so cool. I have a lot of stuff that needs mandolin. I only played once in the show, but this is what I start every show with. This is the Evergreen guitar. What I love about it, even though I like to play crazy tunings and crazy things, on Evergreen, it's just the riff, you know? And then I spend the rest of the song just, or the verse is just. So it's great because in the first song of the show, I don't have to think about playing. I'm focused on singing. I'm looking at the audience. And I am here versus here. So huge fan of that. This is the For the Love of Music guitar. This is my custom. When I first started working with Martin, I got to order this. And it's got Koa back and sides. It's got a bunch of really cool details. They copied my handwriting on my first guitar. We painted everything on the stage for a while in chalkboard paint. And we picked lyrics to put on our instruments. This wasn't a lyric, but it's been on my guitar for a better part of 15 years. They copied it in this beautiful. I don't think it's actually Pearl. It's like some other version of doesn't matter. They also put my logo at the top here. And they also put the lightning symbol from Storm Warning. And the cool thing about this is this. These two triangles are the same triangles that make up my paper airplane, which is on every pick. It's on a bunch of merch. And we've tried to do a version of it. That's what that symbol is. It's the paper airplane. It comes from these two triangles, which come from my original logo in the center there. So a lot of really cool things. I use this the entire show. This comes out for Storm Warning first. Then this is on Still Fallen. And then this is in almost every song I play acoustic on. This is my first choice. I like the size of it. I like smaller guitars, not just because it makes me look taller, but also because I just like... Smaller guitars tend to be louder in the mid-range and higher frequencies. And on stage, I don't really want anything that has a lot of low end because there's plenty of other things taking up that sonic space in two sets of speakers. And so I need this to speak in the mid-range. I'm always looking for more mid-range out of an acoustic. So this thing does that really, really well. So yeah. I mean, even sitting here, there's no low end, but that's what I wanted it for. So this has been with me for 15 years as well. Just opening up and finding its own story. This is a new edition. Beautiful artwork. Martin actually surprised me with this on the week that the album came out. I had gotten to meet the artist who's done so many other guitars. And we talked a little bit at NAMM and then my manager and Martin started working on this project and surprised me with this on release week. And so this comes out... I've currently got a little rubber bridge kind of thing here. I think it's called the Dead Ringer Bridge because this comes out on Too Late. And on Too Late, it's almost all, not rubber bridge, but it's all nylon. So it just kind of gives me a different texture in the show. And it's the third song in the show. So it's a nice little scene change, you know? But I love just getting to see the evergreen from the audience. This guitar is just beautiful. So yeah, huge fan. We've got the Steve Lukather. I hate this thing up so much because I ended up playing this on so many of the more aggressive, almost rock-influenced tunes. But I also use this on Until She Comes Along, which is a very sort of 6-8 ballad guitar song. I feel like every show I've done, we've had some version of a 6-8 guitar song towards the beginning of the show. And on this show, it's Until She Comes Along. And it's kind of my chance to relax a little bit with the fourth song of the show. So I get to just kind of sing and be the vocalist. And then when the song ends, we go into a big guitar jam and it's the first time that I've gotten to be like an electric guitar player on stage. And so the whole first four songs are just a series of kind of sinking in to my foundation, get comfortable on stage. And this is the guitar that you see on Until She Comes Along. Also on Dream About. These pickups are the perfect balance. There's enough attack for me to play it the way that I like to play it and get some dynamic push out of it. But it's not nearly as like transient forward as, you know, a single coil. And when you throw the boost on, it's just a different machine. It just goes to, it goes to 11. So these are stock pickups. This is exactly how they sent it to me. And this is one of the guitars. They sent me this the first time I was talking to them. They were like, well, why don't you try a few things in rehearsal and kind of see how you like it? So we were rehearsing back in 2015 and they sent a cut list for me to try and they sent this for me to try. And I bought this and I bought the cut list. I didn't, I wasn't, I don't know what I was expecting. But I just love the, I loved, I ended up playing the cut list on like five songs in that rehearsal because it had, the pickups were hand wound. They were, I think, slightly lower output. So it gave me so much more room. To work with everything else in my pedalboard world. And then these did not do what I expected humbuckers to do. Normally I don't get along with a humbucker design, but obviously these are made for crazy playing. So just trying to make them proud, you know? Then we've got two other versions of my signature model. We've got a red one for Red Sky, which actually this is the standard one. So this has got 10s on it. This is the tuned standard. And then this one is in 21 tuning, which is the E string is up a whole step. On the song 21, on the song Wild Card, I started doing this tuning to get B, to get a high fifth on the E string, but play B shaped chords. And there's a lot of riffs that I ended up doing with that. So I've used the tuning quite a lot. It's just a simple, dumb, easy tuning thing. But I need it. I need that. I need that for 21. So that kind of lives there. This, man, I went to Carter vintage one day and I was trying out a little amp. I was looking for a little amp. I think my rule was it had to be weird and it had to be like under $500 and it had to be a combo. And I was just walking around. I saw this thing. It looked cool. These pickups are wild. They're super high output. They're not like super bright. And it's just a very different texture. So like I use this on one shot because Alex is playing a lot of single coil stuff on some of those songs. And this is kind of a good balance for that. I use it on weight because it kind of lets me get a little bit more high output rock kind of thing. This is tuned standard with 10s. So yeah, this and the Lukather kind of like end up going back and forth. This doesn't have a boost on it. So I use the Lukather for anything I need a boost for. But yeah, wild little guitar. And then I fell in love with my buddy. My buddy came to Nashville for a couple of weeks a couple of years ago and he just bought one of these at Guitar Center. And I had not spent a lot of time with this series from Martin but it's like a vintage kind of retro. I love this finish and then it's like a matte finish. There's not a lot of paint on it. I've already kind of messed it up. But man, do I love these things for like not only the lightness of it and the sort of... I'm a big fan of this finish. I don't know what it is about this finish but I just love how... I don't know. It just feels more grounded. It feels earthy to me. And it just speaks. Oh, it's got the... Okay, yeah. So every now and then I'll tune the B string up a half step to get like a C shape. I use that on Dear God. I use this... Man, I use this guitar on a bunch of stuff. This and the custom kind of go interchange. So yeah, love this thing. I have three of them now because that's how much I love them. Bought one, tried it on the road and for a while this was like in every music video on Red Sky just because I love the look of it. It's just very retro and it just sounds amazing. So there you go. Well, for a long time, this... My friend introduced me to the Hurtem Picks because that's what The Edge plays. And I'm a big fan of The Edge. And I always play backwards. Like anytime I'm playing anything whether it's acoustic or electric I'm always holding it here and playing it like... You know. And I actually really like how the grip separates the transient of like the attack. So even when I'm playing lead it just it kind of helps to soften the attack a touch but I can still kind of dig in if I want to. And just no matter how... No matter what pick I have on stage this is how I end up holding it. So we have standard picks and we've branded them with the Paper Airplane and they're really cool. But this just ends up being the one I always have one in my pocket whether I intend to or not. I can find them in every jean pocket. So I kind of go back and forth between this and the Dunlop. I can't remember what millimeter we're on right now but we went with a thicker because I end up playing really hard and I want to make sure that when I go for... When I go for something especially on like, you know, tens I want to feel it, you know. So yeah, last year we started using the Mojave MAD Capsule. I loved it. And for some reason when I was at home running this show by myself in my studio which I did for two months before we started rehearsals. So I tried, I just... This was the only capsule I had in my little studio and I fell in love with it and I got really used to it because I didn't have to do a lot of EQ. I end up doing a lot of specific EQing on my vocal. Most of the time that I spend with Z side stage he's just got my EQ pulled up for my vocal mic and we do a lot of crazy stuff. A lot of like dynamic EQs especially with the Waves consoles but I liked the top-end presence. I liked that this didn't have too much... For my voice there's like a relationship between like the 1k area and the 3k area and if that relationship isn't right I'm miserable. And so I liked how this was just... It had a nice presence. It was great in the mid-range but it wasn't aggressive but I didn't have to like carve out a ton of 3k and the low-end was sculpted. It's not too boomy. It's not too low-endy but it does have a nice... It has a nice low-end whereas the MAD capsule what I loved about that capsule is the low-end. It has a really really smooth low-end that we can actually do a lot with so it kind of depends on the stages too that we're on, you know, and the room. But we go back and forth and I love both of them. We have a lot of fun stuff on stage. Michael's doing a really cool main stage setup. It's insane the amount of like sound sculpting that he's doing with his world. Alex is also using a quad cortex over here with some other things as well and obviously he's running the whole show. We've got like an able set kind of situation you know because we're time-coded with lights. We have a lot of very specific arrangements so to make it easy on lighting we do time code because you know we have a lot of very specific arrangements and then yeah we're actually doing a really fun thing on this run. I've wanted to do some version of 5.1 for a long time. Very difficult to do in a room like this and it's not for a delay tower. The whole goal with it is that it does the opposite of what we're doing. So we run a stereo set of speakers on the outside of every room and obviously you'll notice this is a three-story room. You know we're not trying to get it in every story. The goal is for sound to come from a place you don't expect it and it's got nature. It's got, you know, ambient sounds. We do a lot of transitions flipping the room upside down so when we finish a song it pulls your attention to there's an orchestra in the back corner the pre-show changeover flips the room so we don't run our pre-show playlist on the traditional left right. We run them in the back of the house. We do ambient stuff from the stage and you know nature stuff from the stage and we've been having a lot of fun with the I use a lot of wave stuff in the studio so to have the waves consoles out on the road it just my brain works well. It just works better because I use a lot of wave stuff in the studio. So it feels like home out here. This is my desk. Yes I like a piano shelf better than just a traditional piano stand unless you're cool like Michael and you just look cool behind the piano or keyboard but this has been with me for years. I mean it's been taped up and it's been beat up but it's just the Nord Electro 3 man. This is the keyboard that I bought to go on the road with Taylor Swift for the Speak Now Tour back in whatever that was 2011 and this shell is something that a buddy of mine made in literally a day. Texted him and I was like hey is there any version that folds flat tucks away and my favorite part about it is that it's my desk. So like whatever I need during the show is going to be here. Water, picks, sometimes I have airpods for like rehearsals for soundcheck or whatever you know cough drops, throat sprays. My set list will go back here. I got a little light on it. It literally acts as my desk. I can sit down here and it's kind of like my mission. Yeah thanks for walking around the stage with me guys. It's good to have you. Thanks for letting me be a little bit of a nerd for a minute. Shout out to our incredible crew by the way who's not featured on this video but I want you to know how much I appreciate them. Yeah come see us. The Evergreen Tour will continue. So check out HunterHayes.com find me on socials under just Hunter Hayes H-A-Y-E-S and come hang out with us at a show. I think you might have some fun even if you don't know any of the music. Hopefully you'll leave with something that feels like it's yours. All right take care of yourselves. Be good. Be good to yourself. Be good to the world around you. Cheers.