Rigged: TesseracT Guitarist Acle Kahney
TesseracT’s new album Altered State is out now via Century Media (order here). One half of the band’s double guitar attack, Acle Kahney, was kind enough to tell us all about the gear he uses, from the guitars, amps and effects he plays through live to his recording studio setup. Here’s Acle:
Guitars
At the moment my main guitar is a 7 string Mayones Regius. It’s a through neck 27″ scale, swamp ash with Bareknuckle Aftermaths in both the bridge and neck. Mayones also made some string “socks” made of heat shrink material which fit in the bridge. It keeps everything super clean and quiet. I intend for this to be my recording guitar and I won’t take it on the road once I have another guitar to take its place live.
I also have an Ibanez RGD 2127 which I just use live now for the songs from One This one has a 26.5″ scale, a Lundgren M7 in the bridge and a stock neck pickup.
All of my tunings are based around DADGAD but in Bb (Bb F Bb Eb F Bb Eb, and I drop the Bb to Ab for a couple of songs). The new album Altered State is the same thing but in A (A E A D E A D). I havn’t played a guitar in standard tuning for about 10 years.
I have an Ibanez RGD 1527 which is now my backup gutiar. It’s basically an older version of the 2127 but mine is pretty beat up after so much touring.
When it comes to Bass I prefer to borrow Amos’ Warwick. It sounds great. Pure note.
Amps, Tones, Effects
For a long time I used the POD XT Pro for recorded tones. I still use it now for that signiture “Milton Cleans” sparkly, glassy, sterile clean tone which I’ve used since the Fell Silent days. When we first started jamming we’d use a Sound Sculpture MIDI “AB Cadabra” to switch between using a POD for the cleans, direct to the PA, and a Mesa Boogie Dual/Triple rectifier for rhythm through a 4×12. We’d usually run a Boss G-EQ7 and an NS-2 before it to tighten it up. In the US and on the DVD we’d replace the Mesa with a Peavey 6505+ which sounds great. Love the sound of them.
Now we use Axe-FX Ultras. It keeps the tone consistent between recordings and live and it’s a hell of a lot easier and more reliable. To the inevitable “Mahhh another djent Axe-FX band” comment … well, deal with it unless you wanna carry a load of heads and 4x12s for us. Bands are using them for a reason! I tend to use the FAS Modern amp model with PEQ block before it to remove some sag and boost the gain. Not a fan of the drive block. I think I’m using the stock V30 cab with a mix of the Royer 121, U87 and SM57. My clean patches are a bit of a mess with blocks all over the place… they tend to have the cab sim disabled and use the USA clean and Fender models.
At the moment we bring our own HH Tessen monitoring with us since most venues monitors are fucking shit. We hoping eventually to upgrade to the in-ear monitor route.
Our Axe-FXs are chained up via MIDI into an RME Fireface 800 and into a laptop. Our drummer plays to a click and we run a backing track for all the guitar layers/synths/noises/etc. The laptop controls all our patch, delay and tempo changes and vocal FX changes.
Kemper Profiling amps also sent us a Kemper to try out halfway through recording, which sounds great. We used it for the rhythm sounds on one of our new songs “Eclipse.”
Studio
I also do a lot of mixing and mastering work at my studio www.4dsounds.com. My main interface for the past eight years or so has been an RME Fireface 800. They sound great and they’re the most reliable interfaces I’ve used. I recently upgraded to a Prism Orpheus which has amazing AD/DA but the drivers are not quite as great as the RME. For monitoring I use the sE Egg Munros and some M-Audio BX-5s which I’ve had forever.
As for some of the other gear and outboard… UBK Clariphonic parallel EQ and an API 2500 for the master buss. SSL X Desk for summing, Avalon 737 channel strip, Axe-FX 2, Kemper Profiling Amp & ISP Decimator Pro Rack G.
