Uli Jon Roth - GEAR MASTERS Ep. 634

Guitar is self-tuning, which for me is important because I hate tuning. I've always hated it. Nowadays, everybody's just playing fast, fast, fast. The faster they play, the slower I play. Hi, I'm Uli John Roth. I'm on tour in America at the Montserrat, beautiful theater, Des Plaines, Illinois. And yeah, I'm looking forward to tonight's show. We're here. We've just finished some soundcheck. I normally never do my soundcheck. I'm a little lazy, I guess. Also, I don't mind surprises. So when I hit the stage, it sounds a little bit different. Keeps it fresh for me as long as it doesn't sound too different, you know. We're doing two shows, actually, which are completely different from one another. The first show is like a solo show where I'm playing some classical stuff and some of my more recent things. And I'm playing them with an orchestra backing, which is computer and the big screen. That's one of my oil paintings there. I think it's called Pictures of Destiny, this tour. And for that setup, I'm using a very different setup from the second half because the second half after the intermission, we're doing a rock show with the full band. And this year, we're bringing 50 Years of Virgin Killer, which was an important album for me in the 70s, you know, exactly 50 years ago. And we're playing the entire album, which has not been done before. And it's working very well. We're playing it in exactly the right order. And not every album is suitable to do this, but that one is, you know, for some reason. And yeah, that's basically the tour. So in the first half, I'm tuned to constant pitch because I'm playing, you know, I'm playing. I play with a clean sound and everything is in constant pitch. And I have two sounds that I'm using, two main sounds, a clean sound, which is like this. Yeah. I'm controlling that with one pedal. If I want to bring in some more distorted singing sound, I use this pedal, which is basically just bringing in another amp. So I'm not playing a loud volume for this. It's, you know, I don't need any earplugs for this. And yeah, and then my main thing is really that I'm playing the Sky Guitar, which gives me the full spectrum. This is a copy of the first seven string, which is Mighty Wing. So this is actually Mighty Wing 4. There are several more. Most of them are in Japan because we're selling them also. And this is very similar to the original Mahogany Body. They all Sky Guitars have position lights, you know, and most of the time I'm not looking, but there are a couple of tracks, particularly when I play something as way out there as Vivaldi's Four Seasons, there are big skips. And then I look, and when they're not on, it's dark, I only see a blur. My eyes are not good anymore. And then here, it all looks the same, you know. So that's why I have these position lights, and I can dim them, make them brighter, you know. The guitar is self-tuning, which for me is important because I hate tuning. I've always hated it, particularly with a floating tremolo, you know. And here with this, I can tune down to E-flat in a split second, and everything is automatic at the same time, whereas if you do that by hand with a floating tremolo, it's quite a job. Basically a Tronical system. For some time they were on Gibson guitars, and I was the first endorser of Tronical, and actually the last, because the company as such doesn't exist anymore. Unfortunately, it was a stroke of genius. But then on Gibson guitars, a lot of Gibson players are more conservative. They don't mind tuning their guitars, but I'm not conservative. I love technology, and you know, if this does the job for me, yeah please, you know. I can talk to the audience while it tunes itself, and I don't even need a guitar tech, you know. So that's just great. We have quite a few Sky Guitar models, like some of them look like this. This is a Silverwing for instance, and yeah, it says here Silverwing. Most of the Sky Guitars, that one here is called Black Velvet Sky. That is a very early one, probably 12 years old, but still in very good condition. And they all have the same pickup system, or most of them. We have some that are not fully active. So the pickup system is, well probably, no, not probably, it is the most powerful guitar system in the world by a large margin. Because it draws so much power, I've got a power supply. This is 18 volt, and it feeds the whole guitar. I could run it on battery, but it wouldn't last that long. You know, maybe lithium batteries, and it would last probably a show or two. But this is completely reliable. It's a stereo cable feeding the guitar with both the sound, taking the sound, and the energy, the electricity. So this system is quite something, because it took us several years to build it. The original Sky Guitars had Seymour Duncan pickups, which he made for me, and they were of course excellent. But there came a time when I needed a seventh string, and Seymour was busy doing other things. So that's when I met John Oram, who is actually, I would say, a design genius. I don't use that word a lot with him. Full-on he was the person who designed the original Trident A80 series, which was in those days in the Trident studio. You found these mixing boards everywhere. They have fantastic sound. I have five of his mixing boards. I used to have five. Right now, I probably don't anymore. And one day he had his own pickup company called Reflex, and he came and said, what would the ultimate pickup look like? And then I thought, wow, that's like a dream question. And so I thought about it a little, and then I said, told him what it would look like, or sound like, or be able to do it. He said, that's impossible. You know, it's impossible. And then three years later, he made it happen. He was jumping through hoops, and it wasn't easy because of the limitations and physics, you know, which I understand. But I think I pushed him to the limit, and he gave me an amazing system. The heart of it, we call it Mega Wing, because there's several pickup configurations in one. In fact, the original first one had like no four, then less four coils. And they're all perfectly switchable from single coil to humbucking, power humbucking, and in between. But the driving force is a gain stage. So when I play the guitar, if I play, go to my clean, that's a clean, yeah, that's clean. Now that's the output of a normal strat, if you plug it in. It's not turned up full, but now, see what happens. And that's a tiny little amp on one. And I can do the same on a Marshall or whatever. I can make any amp sing just from the guitar. And because it's fully integrated, it's much better than any foot pedal you could use, you know. I am also, for extreme moments, sometimes using the King of Tone, which is absolutely the best one on the market, as far as I'm concerned. And it does something, it's got a slightly different overdrive, and we're probably going to put one into my guitar. And the guy who designed it in New York said he's going to send me a microchip, because then this guitar is already singing or dancing, then it'll take it to another level. So this gain stage is really, I'm constantly riding it, because I don't like on-off switches. I always want a totally organic flow between pianissimo and fortissimo, and I'm constantly going between these worlds, you know. So, I'll wait. Yeah, that's only the beginning, because I've got three extremely sensitive EQs, studio EQs, just like on the big mixing board. And we found the sweet spots for all three of them. So I've got mid-range, I've got the treble and the bass. And depending on whether I'm playing single or single chord, this is a mahogany guitar, but I can make it sound kind of like a Strat, because of the EQ, you know. It'll never sound totally like a Strat, it's more a little bit of a hybrid. But it can certainly sound very much like a Les Paul, although it doesn't sound exactly like a Les Paul, because it doesn't have the same scale length, and it has floating tremolo, you know. Some of my Sky Guitars are more like a Les Paul, because they have a mahogany body and the maple quilt top, you know. This one is just pure mahogany. Then I've got Sky Guitars, which are all older, they are more Strat. But all of them are able to do this, like if I... It's pretty much kind of flat. If I put in like my... I was just doing a Les Paul thing, but I can also, in the split open, I can do half like a Telecut. I'm just rolling off mid-range. I've got 20dB plus and 20 minus, the same with the bass and the top end, you know. So I constantly use these, they're not marked, I always do it by ear, because every gig is different, every stage. I'm always playing everything by ear, I don't look, you know. And then of course I've got these. On some Sky Guitars, I have a bunch of effects here. I've got Echo, Looper, even... I mean, I've got electronic wah-wah, anything, phaser, flanger, you name it, it's all in this guitar. But I don't have it with me, because this is mainly like a Scorpions show, and I'm keeping it authentic in the Scorpions show. For the Scorpions show, I'm going towards a Blackstar, which is kind of based on the original Superlead, which I used to play for many years. And of course, because of the output of the guitar, I'm just turning it to two, and it has tremendous headroom then, you know. And it's loud. But that's when you play Scorpions, early Scorpions, we were loud, you know. I still have that, an old Superlead Tremolo from 1970, built by Ken Brand, who was the master of these things back then in the martial days, and we call it the beast. When you measure it, it has like 150 watts before it even clips, you know. And we used to drive it with caps like this, that's a very antique 1970 cap with original green backs, that's 25 watts. When I play some shows, I have 300 watt cabinets, they're much more, how shall I say, they're harder in sound. This is very sweet, quote-unquote sweet. It's not really sweet. When I used to play the Strat, people say, yeah, it sounds great on an album, but in real life, because it didn't sing so much, we cranked it, and it was quite shrill, particularly with the Volvo pedal, you know. Sounds great on an album, but in real life, we damaged a lot of people's ears, you know. Not exactly mine, because I was always playing with cotton wool from the beginning. But yeah, nowadays, it's still loud, but not nearly as loud as it was. And normally, I also have like a plastic shield in front, and when the place needs it, we will turn these amps away from the audience. But in this place here, I don't think we'll have a problem, you know. I play the 7-string in the first half, tuned to concert pitch. In the second half, I'm starting with this guy's Super Strat, which is based on the original Strat, because I used to have my white Strat, which I still have, you know. And this basically can do what a normal Strat can do, but it can do more. It has the same pickup system as this. So, you know, you can push it to 11 and beyond. Actually, more like 20, you know, if I have to. It's the same pickup system, but here, these are Push-Pull, Humbucker, and it sounds more like a Strat, because it's an older guitar. I think this should do something. let's keep talking. So, it's an animal, but at the same time, it can be very sweet. This is just a standard Whammy pedal, which I've been using for many years, but that's just a normal delay. I have delay in this kind of guitar, but not in this one. So, let me turn this amp down a little bit. So, you see this guitar, you can do all the Strat sounds. This has a very deep scallop, and I usually have very high action. And because of the high action, I can really lay into the string, it sings more. My Scorpion Strat was that high. It was completely unplayable for most people, and even I struggled, you know. But for me, the sound was always the most important aspect of it, and then I don't care if it's harder to play. Because I don't have to play like these fast kids, you know. Nowadays, everybody's just playing fast, fast, fast. The faster they play, the slower I play. I played fast when I was a kid, you know. Now, I'm more interested in just every note has to mean something, you know. No typewriter stuff. But, yeah, that's why this guitar is not set up to be played very fast, you know. It's really all about sound, and tone, and color, and all of them. This is my original Flight of the Rainbow Strat. I got it back because it was an interest for many years. It was re-sprayed by an unfortunate... It was originally sunburst, but it was better than this, you know. But, yeah, that's the original. My Super Strat has 23 frets. All my, even my big, my white, old, my white Strat, because I always ran out of frets. And then, now I can do this, you know. So, it gave me two extra notes. That's how the idea came to do Sky Guitars. I've never played it since 50 years, or probably even longer than that, because it was phased out in 1975, mainly. But, I will tonight, probably for the first time ever, play a couple of songs. It doesn't have a Megawing, but it plays, it feels like a real Strat, although the action is very low, and the strings kept slipping, and the sound checked. So, it really needs some treatment, you know. So, yeah, that's pretty much what I'm doing at the moment. When I play my solo shows, normally my setup is more elaborate. I also have a nine strings Nylon Sky Guitar, but I didn't bring it for this show, you know, because three hours is quite long enough, isn't it? I only use these for the intro, because when you're playing with the orchestra, actually, I'll show it, I'll show it to you. So, I'll use this one for the first show, and then I play some classical pieces. Now, for instance, you see, when you play an amp like this, it doesn't blend with the orchestra, it destroys the orchestra. Orchestras, they're very quiet. When you stand next to a violin, you can hear a needle drop. So, it took me years to find a good way. Actually, these guys, although they're just extremely cheap little contraptions, there is one sound that I can use, which kind of emulates what I'm trying to do at very low volume. One sound only, there's like a hundred in it, you know. So, it enables me to do that. Normally, I have three pedals and an AC-30. I don't know if the AC-30 blew up, but yeah, the AC-30 is one of my favorites for the tone, but it's very unforgiving, you know. So, when I play this classical piece, I'm constantly alternating between clean and I'm fading in. Oh, sorry, I still have this echo running. So, if I play something like a Mozart piece, can you play the Queen of the Night? That's from one of his operas, you know, and then you can see what I'm doing. The orchestra is there on the screen, by the way. I played that some years ago. There she is. Oh, we don't have a sound because our sound man is having dinner. Sorry. These are Ulrich and Roth. They're very, basically super heavy, super, super heavy. I don't know, maybe 1.3 or 1.2. Sometimes, I do hands. Strings are usually D'Addario, you know. My top strings tend to be rather light and then they get heavy. I've always had it this way, you know. So, my top string very often is actually an eight because they have the nicest shimmer, you know. And the only guy I was able to tell was Yngwie. One day, he said, you play an eight string. I said, how do you know? He could actually tell the sound, you know, because the bigger strings, they're great for rhythm. But in the Scorpion stuff, I don't really need to play much rhythm. It's more single string and power chords. So, the eighth string has a certain shimmer to it and it reacts so nicely to the vibrato, you know. If the string is too hard, even when you have strong hands, I can always tell if a player is playing hard strings because the vibrato always sounds a little bit, maybe not clumsy, but effortful. And I don't want that, you know. So, my bass strings are thick. I've got thick bass strings, like 40, 48. In the Scorpions or in Electric Sun, my bass string was a 52, you know. And yeah, so they get consecutively harder and I like D'Addario because they're the most reliable, I find. They never seem to break. I can play half a year without breaking a string, you know. And I do. They break during the concert. Let's hope that doesn't happen today because I don't have a backup for this one, you know. Then I'll be in trouble. Well, thanks for watching my little excursion here and, well, you put me up to it. You asked all these questions. Normally, I don't really think about gear a lot. I'm not really a gear person, although I, you know, when I like something, then I like it, you know. And I tend to use the same stuff. But I'm always open to new gadgets or whatever, you know. Basically, I play with very little effect. Most of it is just direct playing. For the Scorpions, very often, I use the wah-wah pedal. But for my solo show, the classical stuff, I hardly ever touch it. And that's it. I have a little bit of delay. All the rest is the guitars and the fingers, you know. And yeah, that's my sound.