RIGGED: ALL SHALL PERISH’S FRANCESCO ARTUSATO ON HIS ROCKSTAR ENERGY DRINK MAYHEM FESTIVAL GEAR SETUP

August 4th, 2011 at 5:00pm
MetalSucks

As part of our coverage of this year’s Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival – currently winding its way through North America — we’re bringing you a series of “Rigged” columns in which several of the tour’s musicians take you on piece-by-piece guides of their current live rig setups. Check out the guitar rigs of Machine Head’s Phil Demmel, Unearth’s Buz McGrath and Ken Susi, Hatebreed’s Wayne Lozinak and Dethklok’s Brendon Small. For you bassists out there, have a look at In Flames’ Peter Iwers‘ and Red Fang’s Aaron Beam‘s rigs. To conclude our Rigged coverage of Mayhem, here’s All Shall Perish shredder Francesco Artusato:

What’s up MetalSucks readers! Francesco Artusato here. I’m going to talk a little bit about my live rig with All Shall Perish that am using at the Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival this summer and will be using for future tours.

Let’s start with the guitars. I am using three of my favorite Ibanez models: RG 2228, RGA 7 (pictured above) and a brand new custom RG 7-string that features 30 frets, a very unique and special guitar. Overall, three very comfortable, well-built guitars, each with a very distinct personality, that I love playing live and in the studio.

All my guitars feature Seymour Duncan pickups. I use Blackouts for 8 and 7-strings and sometimes I also use the SH5 or the SH6 mostly in the bridge position. They are just great pickups in general that sound very consistent and solid. I love their dynamic response and the fact that they keep the authentic human touch in every situation.

I use Ernie Ball strings on all my guitars: I use .10-.46 for standard E tuning, .10-.56 for 7-string standard, .09-.52 for ASP 7-string tuning (the guitars are basically tuned up a whole step with a drop B: 1F# – 2C# – 3A – 4E – 5B – 6F# – 7B) and we add a .70 for the 8th string tuned to F#.

I’ve been using Dunlop Jazz III guitar picks since I started playing.

Ben [Orum] and I just started playing the Fractal Axe-Fx live, a great piece of gear with an incredible potential. We go direct into the PA and it works really well. We used tube amplifiers for a long time but this new setup makes the most sense right now due to its reliability and versatility. I control the different sounds that I need with a Tech 21 MIDI controller called Midi Moose, a simple but effective controller.