RIGGED: TEXTURES GUITARISTS JOCHEM JACOBS AND BART HENNEPHOF

Dutch progressive technical metallers Textures just released their new album Dualism last week; you can still stream the entire thing over at Guitar World. They’re currently touring the U.S. with Periphery, The Human Abstract and The Contortionist so we thought it’d be a good time to check in with guitarist (and producer!) Jochem Jacobs about the live rig he’s using. Turns out his fellow axeman Bart Hennephof uses the exact same rig, which not only makes setting up a breeze but gives us two Rigged features for the price of one. After the jump, we hand it over to Jochem to tell you guys about his and Bart’s rig:

Let’s talk about some Textures gear.

While we use truckloads of gear in the studio, we try to keep it simple live, at least nowadays. In the old days, we used to have big 19″ racks with Mesa Quad and Peavey Rockmaster preamps blended, but that was too vulnerable in the end, so we chose to have a more simplistic setup instead. This way when anything breaks it is easily replaceable.

Both guitarists (me and Bart Hennephof) have the same setup and we also have spares with us on tour. We use one rack with everything for both guitarists in it, which increases the speed when setting up for the show.

We both use Mayones Textures Regius 7 string guitars. These are the bomb! We have four of ’em with us on tour. Two are made of Aash and two are made of mahogany wood. They’ve been custom built for us and they are just great; the guys at Mayones are really nice and helpful and that feels really good too. We use Seymour Duncan SH-5 and SH-6 pickups and we use SH2 and SH4 at the neck position. Great tone, great materials, great feel, not even a single negative remark. We mute the strings on the headstock with a small piece of foam… actually, we mute anything that buzzes on guitars to make them more tight… we need a duct tape endorsement!

We use the Peavey 6505+ head, or a 5150 II in some cases. Great head, pretty standard within the metal genre. Relatively cheap and the tubes are easily replaceable. We run these through a 4×12 cab. The type of cabs actually varies, but they just need to be the “good enough” type for live shows. That means Mesa, Engl and Bogner which we especially like. We use Vintage 30 and Greenback speakers. I personally prefer Greenbacks; they’ve got great upper-mids.

The effects unit we use is the TC Electronic G Major, and we run it in the FX loop of the Peavey. Our standard riff sound uses a small noise gate and the TC EQ cuts 3db around 250hz to make it more steady. We also use the modulation, delays, etc for other sounds. We use the relay switch output of the TC to switch channels on the 6505+ with a DIY 7-pin DIN cable.

Roland FC-200 midi foot pedals are relatively small and easy to setup, so we use those to control the G Major. We run phantom power through pin 1 and 5 of the midi cables, also DIY, so we only connect the midi cable, and the pedal has power instantly.

Finally, we use a Sennheiser wireless system… that explains itself.

See you out on tour!

– Jochem Jacobs / Textures