Gear

GW: You play through Two Rock amps. Can you talk a little bit about that?

JM: It all started with this quest to find a great Dumble amp. I remember saying during the time of making Heavier Things, “God, if I could ever have a Dumble, I’d feel like that was the Holy Grail.” I mean, we’ve all read the interviews about what Stevie Ray Vaughan was using, and he’d always mention his Dumble.

So I came across a Dumble at one point, and I just got hooked. They are just the wide-open Ferraris of amps. I bought a couple, and then I discovered a Two Rock Custom Reverb at Rudy’s Music in New York, and I went, “Wow, this is a really cool amp!”

Later, I called the Two Rock guys, and they were so easy to talk with. So for the past five or six years I’ve been working with them, and we’ve designed a series of amps that fit my needs. I use these two signature model Two Rocks. They’re single channel, really clean, and have a huge amount of headroom.

GW: You’re primarily a Fender guy. You even have your own signature model.

JM: Yeah, I really stand behind them. Some of the best compliments I ever got were, “I’m not a Mayer fan, but that’s the right Strat.” So I use that onstage, along with several other guitars. I’m really into using the guitars that I used on the record when I play onstage. Every guitar has a unique harmonic fingerprint, and it plays a recognition factor in any given song. Also, playing the same guitar is sort of like bringing the studio out on the road. For example, I’m playing a 1961 Les Paul SG on “Friends, Lovers or Nothing.” There’s not really any other guitar that’s gonna deliver that sound.

MT: What are your other main, favourite Strats?

JM: I have the painted Hendrix Strat; the Monterey Strat. I have my signature mode, the green one, the cypress mica one. I have the signature model with the stripe on it…

Any one of those guitars could last the whole show. But I've just got very specific for one reason or another about playing certain guitars for certain songs.

So for "Vultures" [from Continuum, 2006], I have to play the gold-leaf Strat. That's what I wrote the song on, and that's got that incredible second position - what do they call it, the quack? That's the quackiest Strat of all time! "Vultures" does not work on another guitar. That weird, hollowed-out, out-of-phasey-type sound.

But there are some guitars that I have literally never played more than one song on. Like I've never taken that gold Strat and played any other tune on it than Vultures. Although I could - when I used to play Something's Missing [from Heavier Things, 2004], I had this Strat-Tele that [Fender Custom Shop master builder] Chris Fleming built.

It became the allocated guitar, with the tuning for that song [E B E F# B E]; it comes out of the coffin and I'd play it for "Something's Missing," then it went back in and stayed in that tuning.

Then when I stopped playing "Something's Missing", it was like, This is a great guitar for other things; tune it back into standard…

MT: Guitars really do put you in a headspace don't they?

JM: Uh-huh. Once I write that song on a guitar, it's very difficult to play that song on any other guitar.

MT: Back to electrics, you have your Two-Rock and your Dumble amps on stage - how do you use them?

JM: I use the same amps in the studio as I do live. The Dumble is incredibly chesty, and strong and open and singing. The Two-Rock is like the Dumble but a little more refined, and together I think they make a really good combination - it's almost like one amp.

The Two-Rock puts into the Dumble what the Dumble doesn't have, but man, the Dumble will SCREAM at you. The Dumble has this thing on top of it called a Smooth And Slim, I think it's called, and it's really sort of an attenuator, for the treble, and for the volume a little bit.

So I just gotta take off that really harsh, kinda' tinny… I mean it's great for recording 'cos you can kinda' take it off in the EQ.

So that's happening there, and then the Two-Rock is supplementing that to be a little bit smoother. It's sort of Fender-y, but I would also like to put a real Fender in there.

MT: Do you switch them in and out, and do your front end-pedals hit both amps the same?

JM: They're on the whole time: they're like one amp - I'm using those things as one device.

MT: Is there an overdrive pedal you wouldn't be without?

JM: Right now it's the Klon Centaur. It's the kindest, most satisfying distortion - it's the best 'loud' I've heard. And I've always used a Marshall Bluesbreaker from the early nineties. It's great… I mean for all the new, little boutiquey clean boosts [puts on pernickety voice], like a boost-drive… [Laughs].

For all that, the Bluesbreaker is still pretty amazing. And I use a Tube Screamer, but I use the TS-10, not the 808 or the TS-09.

MT: Is that modded by anyone?

JM: Nope. It's a pedal from the eighties that quietly came and went and they're on eBay for $65 or whatever. Most of those pedals are great - they're all based off the same circuit.

I can't even believe they're still putting out new distortion pedals - it's the same thing, different shell, different colour.

MT: What makes the dream guitar, then?

JM: I'll tell ya' the number one rule about guitars for me is that, I'm so sorry you couldn't get the colour that you wanted, but if you pick up a guitar at a store and it's sunburst, and you hate sunburst, but it feels and plays great for you - lightning strikes - then that's your guitar!

As soon as you start getting greedy and you call Fender and you go, I want one like this sunburst, but can you make it blue? The blue one is going to sound and feel terrible. Never in my life has that ever succeeded.

Sterling Ball made me - have you seen the Ernie Ball 25th Anniversary guitar?

MT: Yep, we reviewed it…

JM: I love that guitar! Do you like it?

MT: Yeah, very much so…

JM: I really love that guitar. It's… why do those types of guitars… sometimes they don't commit to any one sound, but this one has some pretty cool sounds on it. He sent me one and it was the cherry red one. And I had a hard time with that colour and that quilted sort of, super-sleek sporty guitar colour.

So I said, Can you make me a black one? And they made me a black one and it wasn't happenin'. It was happenin', but it wasn't doing what this thing was doing. So they ended up taking the red one, sanding the finish off and repainting it black…

So to get into that stuff where you want the colour you want, and you want to be lucky enough to have lightning strike twice - it doesn't happen.

But [The Black One] just struck. All of a sudden this guitar started doin' it. And as the guitar started to age it got different; within months it started to sound different. So it was a labour of love and it's all of the Continuum record.

It's in a couple places on Battle Studies, but it really is the Continuum guitar - you know, it's just fucking great every time; it's the best feeling guitar I've ever played.

MT: Could you say why?

JM: Y'know, I still can't get a guitar manufacturer to explain to me why two guitars that are made in exactly the same way, why one of the guitars has more [string tension] slack than the other.

They will tell you like, No, the scale length is exactly the same. So why are these strings tighter? You know what I mean? And why do these ones go loosey goosey and all buttery?

But this one is the same guitar, and you're telling me it's the same specs, and I can't get the strings to have a swish to 'em, y'know? Who knows what it is? The infinitesimally small differences in tolerances of measurement between one guitar and the other?

But that one [The Black One] just has a little extra slack; like a little leeway. Some guitars you'll put 0.011s on, and it's like [makes abrupt noise] and you just can't move around.

What do you have done to all your guitars when you get them?

Hand them to Rene’. It’s not my guitar til he touches it.

Most people associate you with a Fender Stratocaster, but for the Dead shows you've been playing a Paul Reed Smith Super Eagle made specifically for that gig. How did that come to pass?

When I was asked to play with Dead & Company, the first thing I asked myself was, what guitar should I use? I had an Alembic, a brand Jerry used to play, but I thought it was a treacherous visual zone, because it was so closely associated with him. It was that "hat wearing a hat" problem. When I thought of who could understand the complexity of the situation, I thought of Paul Reed Smith. I reached out to him, and he said he had actually been thinking of reaching out to me. We talked a bit about what I might need and he shocked me by how quickly he went to work building the first prototype. It isn't a simple guitar, either. The Super Eagle has three coil splits, a custom-designed audio pre-amp, a treble boost-it's crazy!

It turned out the biggest thing was figuring out the scale length. The first version had 25 1/4 scale, similar to a Les Paul. It was easy to play, but it didn't have the sound I wanted. I also knew I needed a guitar with three pickups, because you have to be able to be out of phase when you want to be, and that didn't work because the scale length wasn't long enough. So Paul made a second at 25 1/2 scale length, but it was too tight. The third was 25 3/8 and it was joyous, because I was able to get the snap I needed, but it was short enough for me to bend the strings comfortably.

The other question was where to place the middle pickup to get Jerry's sound. Once we got that right, it got really fun. We put a preamp inside the guitar, which made it clean and hyper-dynamic. The Super Eagle was very different from what I was used to playing, and it was a little difficult to figure out. But eventually I got it and the relationship I have with that guitar is very special. It goes with me on my back, and it goes with me on the bed in the bus, and it goes with me on the bed in the hotel. Now, it's almost like my partner in the trenches.

[One page sidebar on the PRS J-Mod 100 head and cabinet]

When John Mayer wanted to create the ultimate amp, three names came to mind, Paul, Reed, Smith.

"The reason I love Eddie Van Halen and Jeff Beck is because they sound like themselves," says John Mayer. "What I wanted to do is get one amp that I can take anywhere, and sound like myself."

Mayer was almost legendary for having one of the most expensive rigs on the planet. On any given night, he would show up for one his shows with a backline consisting of rare boutique Dumble and Two-Rock amps that had guitar nerds genuflecting in the aisles. But those days are gone and, as far as Mayer is concerned, it's for the better.

"I wanted to get away from gear as a gallery," says the guitarist. "I just want a tool that allows me to get my sound quickly and easily. I had such a great experience with Paul Reed Smith making my PRS Super Eagle guitar, I asked him to make me an amp, too."

The result was the J-MOD 100, a hand-wired amp that Mayer describes as having the strength of a Dumble, the sweetness of a Fender and the power section of Marshall. A single channel amp featuring a switchable gain stage, and tone-sculpting features including a bright switch and presence control, it's simple to operate but versatile enough to recreate the broad array of sounds heard on all seven of Mayer's albums.

"We worked hard to create an amp that was an amalgam of all the amps I love," he says. "It has a lot of different spirits in it."

The J-MOD 100 features four 6L6 power tubes and four 12AX7/ECC83S preamp tubes plus five separate boards, all with over-sized traces for tonal integrity. Each board is dedicated to a particular part of the circuit: preamps section, power section, front panel controls, bias jacks and the effects loop.

At $5,990 the Mayer/Smith collaboration ain't cheap, but considering that Dumble amps are going for $70,000 it ain't bad either.

"Paul is as eccentric as all hell, but I love him as human being," says Mayer with genuine affection. "We talk all the time. I now know the more exacerbated and annoyed he sounds, the more fun he's having. I'll suggest something, and he'll grunt and groan, 'Aw, hmmm, errr, okay, just let me think about it.' I'll respond, don't worry, we don't have to do that. And he'll say, 'What, are you kidding, I love every second of this!' "

It certainly appears that it's just the beginning of a long and beautiful relationship. Mayer lets a bombshell slip that he and Smith will have a major announcement in the upcoming year. While Mayer has been long associated with the Fender Stratocaster, that could change. "You may soon see something with single coils come out of PRS," says Mayer slyly. "I'm looking at a prototype guitar on my couch right now that will occupy that space. I love Fender guitars, but I don't love the company. I can call Paul-the guy that started the company on the phone at any time of the day-and tell him what I'm moved by, or tell him what I want to change, and he'll fire up the troops and make it happen that day. He's interested in building guitars, not selling merchandise."

Question: Best year of strat ?

1964. Something about the neck profiles. You have a better shot at a magical '64 than any other year.

Q: Have you ever named any of your guitars?

The only reason I name guitars is so that I can request them from tech/storage. So they end up being really intuitive names. Black 1 is from my saying "Can I get the black one?" Other names: 64, 52 tele, Super Eagle Solid, Pink Jackson, Silver 594. But never been like "I'll name you 'Bruce Lee!'"

Q: Why vintage radius over 9.5 of compound?

I don't care all that much. Most players I talk to don't either. My two favorite guitars at the moment have a 7.25" and a 14-16" compound radius! I can switch between them and not miss a beat. I just found that I liked 7it .25" on more guitars than any other radius.

DD: Let's get into the Dumble stuff real quick and then we'll all ask you some other stuff here. But I was always fascinated with Dumble. I actually thought the guy died years ago. That was always the thought that he died years ago, but no he's in Santa Cruz or whatever right now, still with like a waiting list. Let's get into the history of the Dumble; you got Santana's right?

JM: That one is one of Carlos's yeah. The one that I used on this last tour.

DD: And how many Dumbles do you got?

JM: Several. My answer is always just "several." Yeah I actually don't even know, and it's just it would be designed to just make people go, "blah." There but look at it like this I'm the kind of guy who wants to buy three of a thing to find the best one

DD: I'm the same way. I am the same way!

JM: And then when you get the best one you sell the other two. But then it just so happened that selling them seems silly because they're so in demand. I don't like selling things. There's very, very, very few things out there that I have sold. Very few things.

But I knew Stevie Ray Vaughn had played one and god knows I was looking for that sound.

DD: I knew that too. He's what made it famous.

JM: He's what made it famous. Now before Stevie you've got Jackson Browne, you've got guys from Little Feat, got guys in Jackson Browne's band—I think Jackson Browne was probably the biggest "Avon Lady" for Dumble because anyone who played in his band got one. Danny Kortchmar had one, David Lindley had several of them. So it's from this era of California music. Kind of post, you know, sort of early 70s, kind of Southern California Eagles.

DD: Yeah, Troubadour.

JM: That Troubadour thing. Yeah exactly, I was looking for it, you found it. And so that world had him and then because Stevie Ray Vaughn recorded Texas Flood at Jackson Browne's studio he discovered this Dumble. And it was a Dumbleland Special. Big hundred and fifty watt thing, I think.

DD: God, super loud.

JM: Super loud. It will tear your head off, but the right way. Ever had your ears torn up the right way? There is a way to go deaf in style. I heard AC/DC play the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and I've never heard something that loud

DD: There's nothing better than that.

JM: When I heard Angus Young's guitars I said two things: I'm going deaf, and this is the greatest thing I ever heard. It's the right kind of loud.

So I'm making my second record and somebody brings a Dumble around. Some rental place. "Oh I got to try the Dumble. We got one, we got one." I tried it out. I don't remember how I felt about it. And then I found a guy who had an Overdrive Special from the early 90s and I bought it.

DD: In LA?

JM: No, this guy was from Kansas. He was a dealer. And I bought one and I used one on Chuck Berry's giant showman cab on my second record. And I kept renting it because they needed to keep it in case Chuck Berry—"That's Chuck Berry's"—when he comes through and gigs we need to have it for him. So I just kept renting this showman cab. Six tens in there or something.

DD: Six tens!

JM: It was like a big giant cab. And I remember the sound of that amp and I think I liked it more for being a Dumble than for being a great amp.

But it did kind of what I wanted it to do. And then I would kind of like want to buy a backup because I'm a backup guy. Everything needs a backup.

[40:20 - 43:27: Talk about buying backups of shirts, etc.]

DD: So you got you got the second Dumble and then when do you start chasing and realized I've got the great Dumble? Is that the Santana one?

JM: No, that's the Steel String Singer. 

DD: No shit. Cause that's a weird one they didn't even make that many of.

JM: You want to talk about the rarest thing that I've ever come across, it's the Steel String Singer.

DD: What they make like five of those?

JM: Five. Five maybe. And I had number five.

DD: How long were you chasing that?

JM: Forever. Because that's what Stevie had. It's all I wanted. And I finally found one and I had it delivered to me when I was making Continuum. It came in a Jackson Browne road case. When I was making Continuum, this would have been 2005 or really early 2006. I took it out and we started playing it and someone had sent me this Japanese Stevie Ray Vaughan Bible and in there is a photograph of that amp and it said this is the amp that Stevie Ray Vaughan played Texas Flood through. And I flipped out. 

I went, Look at every little scratch in this amp. "Rene this is the amp." Rene Martinez, who was Stevie's tech, "Rene, this is the amp, this is the amp." He went, That's it buddy, that's the amp.

And he wasn't saying it like he remembered seeing it, but he went, Yeah that's the amp in that photo.

And we thought the Japanese were never wrong about this stuff. I thought I had it. I couldn't sleep. And then I called Jackson Browne's gear guy, "Will you run this, will you check this with the serial number." And he goes, No this isn't it.

And that wasn't it, but that's the amp I took around forever. That's the ones still on stage. And then I found another one a couple years ago and as the backup .That one sounds cool, it was Henry Kaiser's. It was the one in the blue—if you ever saw the blue suede Steel String Singer—that's the one. And that was Henry Kaiser's. It was originally in a big combo and then he had it taken out and put in different— 

So the speaker for that combo for that head is the former combo so it's missing the top. The top is blacked out. It's got a panel in the front which is a weird little part of history.

So the thing about a Dumble, and I don't know that many people outside of guitar players will know this or understand this, is that they're really fast. Their response time is so fast and unwavering and they don't sag.

Sag is like this thing in an amp where you hit a note and it kind of takes a second. It goes through the tubes kind of has this natural compression and the transformer has to figure out what to do with it. And that's what people like about a lot of things, because it's kind of apologetic to your playing. 

DD: That Tweed Deluxe sags like crazy!

JM: It's kind of a compressor. So you start doing that Stevie Ray Vaughan stuff and you realize, Oh he liked this stuff because it was so fast. 

It's immovable and it's lightning fast and I love that. I love an amp that doesn't back down it just stays there. And so that's the Steel String Singer thing to me.

JM: The Europeans are disciplined designers. I think other designers tend to go like, "This time five wheels, and this time—" But to be that stoic and staid it pays off over time because you look at it you go, This is as cool as it ever was.

So I like rigs. I've got a 1940 triple-0 forty-five [000-45]. It's unbelievable. It's museum-quality. I got it and it didn't play. The frets were gone, the bridge was rising up. I was like, I want to play it. The thing was not cheap.   

DD: Oh no, Brazilian. Right? What do we do?

JM: Oh god, there's one owner. The guy had passed away, from Aberdeen Washington. Pictures of the guy. 

DD: With the green felt in the case!

JM: The catalogs are in the case. It was a hundred and eighty-five dollars.

DD: Oh man!

JM: I go, How do I fix this thing without desecrating it? And I think to myself, Send it back to Martin. Send it back to the company that made it. And I send it back to Martin. They cracked the thing like a lobster. [makes cracking sound] And put the neck back on the way it needed to be. I think they at least redressed the fret. They had to take the bridge off, put the bridge back on the right way. And now the thing plays like a guitar.

And sometimes I wish this was my only guitar because I'd play the rest of my life on this guitar. Sometimes I don't like switching. Sometimes I don't like how many jackets I have, I wish I had one jacket. And at the end of my life this thing was the softest thing you ever saw.

DD: What was it like—two things: Wolf [Jerry Garcia's signature guitar] comes to Citi Field, you said a great thing, you said: I wasn't ready to play it until I was ready to play it. 
 
JM: It wasn't time until it was time I don't think. That's what I mean.
 
DD: I love that, it made me so happy. When the guitar shows up, I know somebody else owns it now, of course it was sold. What was it like when you grabbed it, was the action all—cause I know Jerry used to play the action like way high, I guess. Did you—I know your tech added up that day—was it a weird guitar to play?
 
JM: I played the guitar for a second at my house because I wanted to make sure that it was worth bringing out, cause they were gonna have to take it out of The Met [Metropolitan Museum of Art]. It was right before they brought it to The Met, and I played it and I of course lost my mind. I played it through a Deluxe in my house and I lost my mind. 

DD: Just a Tweed Deluxe?

JM: Blackface deluxe. Reverb deluxe.

And I just started playing. I was playing Wolf in my house. I was playing "Sugaree" and something happens when you play the same instrument —and the question was, is it the guy or is it the guitar? And a lot of it is the guitar. And I was surprised to break that down and I started playing "Sugaree," I started playing as many songs. I was so excited I couldn't remember all the songs. “Oh there's this song, oh there's this one!” And here's what changed me forever: the tone of this guitar was so good, obviously, it's the one that's married to those songs.

DD: Of course. 

JM: You don't even know if an EMI console sounds good or not, The Beatles recorded on it, it sounds good. We don't know. Because that board made Abbey Road so it sounds good because it sounds like Abbey Road. So this guitar sounds good because it sounds like Jerry right? And all of a sudden all I have to do is go [sings melody], single notes and I'm in heaven. And I realized, “Oh you got to get a guitar where the single notes make you happy.” Cause if you got a guitar where the single notes make you happy, you don't have to play that much at all. I mean, I've heard versions of Jerry playing "Tennessee Jed" playing one note for comping. He's playing just the F string, just one note: [sings melody] “Tennessee” [sings note], it's just one note. It's a tuba.

And so I was like, Oh, it was difficult. It was difficult to understand that this was gonna go away.

DD: Were you, in your mind, were you going, "What could I offer him to buy it?" Who owns that?

JM: Good questions deserve good answers and the answer is yes. Sorry. But I was—my feet came off the ground. And I'm not saying in any way this is a claim—this isn't sword in the stone stuff. I'm not saying like, I am— But how do you not go—like that was, that's what I've been shooting for, of course. It's like saying, “your wife is really pretty, I need to meet a woman like your wife.” And then being like, “Actually, it's your wife.” You know? You can’t do that. You gotta find someone like a person's wife. So I had to give the guitar back and I went “this is beautiful, this is great, let's do it.” And then I got it at Citi Field [June 23, 2019]. And here's the skinny on that guitar: The guitar needs upkeep, that it hasn't had.  

DD: Fret dress.

JM: Oh, it needs a refret. It needs a refret. 

DD: Refret. Cleaned. Probably a bunch of old mold on the pots. 

JM: The neck pickup is disconnected. 

DD: Oh, shit. 

JM: There's two cables that should go to the neck pickup and there's only one. And so it's about a quarter of the volume of a neck pickup. 

DD: And that's how you played it?

JM: I couldn't use the neck pickup.

DD: Oh, shit. 

JM: So then we start getting into the question—and it's a real age-old collectors question—what is more important: to keep the guitar in it's like DNA perfect form, or do you keep the guitar in good health?

DD: A lot like watches.  

JM: Sure. You know, like Rolex would say that the loom is cracked. We're gonna put new loom on it. You go “don't you dare”. But to Rolex, well you want the hands to light up!

So for me I go “well it'd be a lot easier to play if the frets were redone," but that's not up for me. That's not up to me to say that you should redo the frets, cause I think the guitar, it means something to people in its complete unchanged state. 

DD: 100%. As I stared at it at the Met, you know, you’re just looking at it. 

JM: I don't know, I mean that's up to the owner. You know, the owner gets the right to do what they want with it. And I think if you own that guitar and the world knew it, and you felt a certain stewardship it'd be really hard. I mean you could solder the neck pickup back, that'd be nice. But I don't think it's — right now—I know I'm not sure the guitar is meant to be played by a bunch of people, and that makes it more of an honor. And so here's what happens, I get the guitar and it's quite tricky to play because the frets are just worn down.  

DD: Right so you're gonna battlin’ it. 

JM: I battled it for half the night and I think by the end of the night I got it to move the way I wanted it to move. But it was tricky because I also have this PRS 594.

DD: That plays like a mother fucker.

JM: That plays like a Ferrari! [Laughs]

DD: Yeah right behind ya!

JM: So this thing plays like a Ferrari, I'm playing Wolf, which—it was a molecular honor, like down to the molecule it was an honor. I mean, this guitar was animated, it was anthropomorphized, you know. And I sort of played—it was the lead singer and I was the guitar. 

We kind of switched roles for one night, you know. I was the operator but it was the thing. And by the end of the night I had made friends with it. I had figured it out. But that's the thing, I mean the guitar — I mean if you'd brought it to a luthier who didn't know what it was “well this thing needs a refret.” And the question going forward is how much is someone gonna play it and should it have a refret.

DD: Just keep it how it is, I think. Right?  

JM: I mean — but you're asking a guitar player though. 

DD: Did you make him an offer? 

JM: No! I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't do that. But, theoretically would I give a year's salary? Yeah.

DD: Wow! Wow. 

When you walked out with it I was fuckin floored cause —

JM: I also don't want to own it. I'll tell you why. Uh, that's too close for comfort. It's too close for comfort. It should be owned by somebody who wants to really think of it as a piece for everybody. And I'm not sure, Dean Delray, that I could own it and continue the stewardship of it as “well this does belong…” If you wanted to think I was an asshole again, I think I could get you to do that again if it turned out that I owned that guitar. That's too close for comfort. That should be owned by an independent sovereign collector who can loan it to people every once in a while to play it. It should not be owned by a player for fear that it would become — no one man should have all that power. 

For fear that it would be a sort of brand on someone that they are the next in the bloodline, and I don't think that's true. I think I'd have a really hard time relating to the rest of the world if they were like “ oh yeah, he has Wolf.” I don't think I want that in my house. 

But when I played it, uh, obviously the reasonable thought at that moment was well, I mean, how do I get this. But it doesn't take long to think about it, you go “I don't think that's a good idea.” Look at it this way, if I really needed it I could probably get my hands on it. And who could say that, I mean, that's beautiful. But I believe an independent sovereign nation should own that guitar and it should never be owned — no player on the Yankees gets the World Series trophy, right? The organization gets the trophy. And what would happen to a baseball team if one of the players on the Yankees owned the World Series trophy? What would happen between the relationship between that player and the other players on the Yankees? 

DD: [Laughs]

JM: I don’t want the World Series trophy. I want an exact replica that looks like a Heisman Trophy. 

DD: You know what I liked was that you'd never play it again because to me it's a solid, solid memory. 

JM: I agree. I agree.

So a lot of the first few tours were out of phase positions. That's what I thought they were. Well okay, I thought he must be playing out of phase. So there was the two and the four positions, but that's actually too quacky. So a lot of those early Dead and Company shows I'm playing middle/bridge. So I’m playing between the middle and the bridge, and I've got a preamp on—cause I thought he had a preamp on. Well he's got a unity gain buffer, not really a preamp. Well we had to learn that. We had to figure that out. I'm also not trying to like copy it. But what I need to get is a tone enough so that I don't have to overplay and that I can play that much without people fatiguing.

DD: When you start the Dead and Co. and you sit down and you think alright “what gear do I want to do," because when you're out with John Mayer your gear is so different. I watched a gear breakdown on YouTube from I think '13, but then you know last run it was—when you first were in Dead and Co.—you had that Paul Reed Smith amp and the guitar, then you just, it's so simple it's just a Dumble head. What is it two 12's?

JM: I ended up with a Dumble Overdrive Special 50-watt that I adore and [just like three petals] and that's it. The inspiration is a fixed-gear bike. You ever see a “fixie?" That's what I'm trying to be now. It's part of a deeper thing that might sound artsy fartsy when I get into it but, I want to only focus on my playing. I want to put the guitar out of the equation.
 
DD: So all you got to do is get the flavor the tone of say, the auto-wah. 
 
JM: Right. That's all I need, and an octave thing and a little overdrive and the rest of it is up to me. The rest of it is my intention. That's the gear. I can't stress this enough: the technology, the innovation—you know, I used to love getting a new pedal, plugging it up—“this one's green. This one I got a true tone.” Oh, you just sit at sound check Indian style in front of a pedal board, leaning forward still Indian style. Now the technology is “what do you have in mind to play?” All of the energy is now in, “are you in your right mind to play these notes?” So I have one guitar, I might take out, there’s a few surprises, I think.

DD: When you first went out you have that custom-made Paul Reed Smith and it had a tremolo, but you never use tremolo.

JM: But I use tremolo as like shocks in a car. So when you bend a note, it comes up the slightest bit. 

DD: Right. It’s softer. It pulls a little bit.

JM: It's like an air ride—but the Paul Reed Smith—so the guitars kind of follow my understanding of Jerry's playing. And I think it's one of the hardest to nail down sounds because it's so complex, and it gets misconstrued and mis—in it's replication. It's so broad and interesting and vast that if you start listening to other people play it, it loses something in translation immediately because it's impossible to clone it.  

DD: Right, like [Steve] Kimock doing his dead thing, Trey doing his—all the different guys. 

JM: If you asked me what I thought Jerry's playing was like listening to the same versions of songs I would have told you well it's "pling pling pling pling pling," and then as I got more into it I'm like, it's actually kind of a Gibson PAF and a lot of that. 

DD: Right.

JM: And a lot of times we thought he was playing the bridge because it was really bright sounding—nope, it was the neck. 

DD: That's wild. I've noticed on your first tour your guitar was pretty bright, and on this last tour you went—I talked to your tech. Not Rene [Martinez], but the other guy.

JM: Jeremy. 

DD: And he said you just grabbed this time a stock Paul Reed Smith at the shop—you went “this is the one," and that fucking guitar and that amp—it was the best tone I’ve heard in years. And let me tell you this—and not to blow smoke up your ass—I've been to thousands of shows, I've seen everyone, and I thought it was some of the best guitar playing I’ve ever seen. At the two Hollywood Bowl gigs [June 3-4, 2019].

DD: You ever get burned?

JM: I've gotten burned.   

DD: I got burned recently selling a watch to a guy. A supposed friend. I sold it to him, he goes, I'll pay you the rest later and just said, No I'm not paying you. And I'll fill you in on that person later.

JM: It's funny because he was an instrument dealer, music instrument dealer, and he asked me—and I bought stuff from him before. And he asked me did I have anything that I wanted to let go of because he had a bunch of buyers. And I think he did for a time. And I started looking through what I had and I went, Well maybe it's time to start selling stuff off.

I gave him a Dumble Overdrive Reverb.

DD: Because you didn't like that one? We'll get into the Dumbles, you got a bunch. 

JM: I thought, You know it's not the one I've fallen in love with the most, and I really worked hard to track it down and it involved a relationship and somebody trusting me and seeing that I was gonna be the guy to own it.

And I remember driving off this guy's out of this guy's driveway with a Overdrive Reverb and a 410 EV cab. The thing was so preserved they took the road case lid off and the foam crumbled out. It decomposed. The thing was absolutely perfect.

And okay well I hadn't fallen in love with that one, and so I'm gonna weed and seed, make some room. A little more money back and just sort of start doing what most normal people do which is to don't own everything. And a couple of other things—and they were important things—and took them and ran.

Kept saying he would pay me, kept saying he would pay me. Filed for bankruptcy. Had to go to court, had to do all this stuff. And I think every musician at some point has to know that there's stuff out there that they got ripped off on.

Keith Urban came across the Dumble Overdrive Reverb and I think he bought it.

DD: Oh shit. 

JM: And so it's not his fault. Enjoy the amp. You bought it fair and square. You didn't get screwed.

DD: Is it considered stolen?

JM: That's a really good question. It's not considered stolen. The money that was owed to me is considered stolen. The item itself—this is where it just gets unfun right?

DD: That's brutal, man.

PRS: That had a whole lot of high mid-range. I would have liked to have played through, you know [sings melody of "Star Spangled Banner"], I would love to experience the feedback. He had the cabinet at his feet and it was making the guitar feedback, but there was a lot of high end — but it was so beautiful.

JM: It truly was.

PRS: You have one of those amps, you have one of those white backed amps.

JM: I have a JTM 45 MK II.

JM: Right and so who are the people—okay if you plug in a guitar with humbuckers and you go to the neck position and you start playing who are the names that come to mind when you play those?

PRS: Well the most recent name would be Slash because all those solos he played were on the bass pickup, but for me it sounds like every old record—Cream record, every old blues record, every BB King, all that stuff—that bass pickup was just magic and I've seen you pull up either a 594 or an SG or this or that and go, Listen to this tone and listen to that tone. You actually experience the same names when you're on that bass pickup.

JM: I guess you're right. But there are some names that are missing because I can't connect the dots because I don't know what they were playing and—it's funny, in some way the music you listen to is tied in both directions to the guitars that are being played in those music. So somehow or another falling in love with a certain guitar takes you to those guitar players. And I could also say growing up this might be—I mean, well come on let's have some sick fun, let's have an edgy discussion—you can also say that there is, on a behavioral science level, there are different demeanors of people. I've noticed between humbucker players and single coil players they're like—because they were into different bands which were from different cultures and they were different attitudes and different guitars, they're almost like different behaviors. Have you ever noticed this?

PRS: Yes and it's really hard to get a bass pickup a single coil bass pickup to sound extraordinary if there's too many people in the band. You've got to have less people in the band.

JM: You said to get a single coil […]

PRS: Bass pickup solo to sound beautiful the band's got to leave you a lot of room.

JM: Hence Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble, Jimi Hendrix experience.

PRS: But you know we pride ourselves in trying to take care of our artists, anyway so then—the way I tell the story—is that you needed a tool to do a job and you showed up several times to look at all the neck shapes, all the scale links, every different pickup we made, you tried everything in every position—you started to rearrange the legos until we started to hone it in and make prototypes. And what you needed was a tool to do that job and the first time I walked on the stage and you had that those two tops and those two 410 cabinets and that guitar, and it sounded exactly like you needed it to to get that whole ball rolling. I was—oh my god John thanks for giving us the nod and the chance to do it because I never had the chance with him.

JM: Yeah well yeah, and thank you for helping me kind of carry a thing forward without—I just didn't want to be holding a guitar that looked exactly like it, you know the one Jerry was playing. You know, I mean, that's been the whole puzzle is how do you pay respect to it without standing too squarely inside of the silhouette of the thing. And the really fun part of that for both of us was figuring out well what makes that sound what are the variables that contribute to that sound sounding like that: scale length, [...]

PRS: You don't know this—I called Jimmy Herring and we both went: “middle pickup."

JM: Middle pickup, that's right. In fact, on the middle pickup, when I played Wolf the only pickup that was really working was the middle pickup. And when I say working, I don't mean working for me, I mean like operational. So the neck pickup—how to shorten it—I think it was only one wire was because, you know, obviously nobody wants to sort of touch it and the bridge pickup was I think a little kind—of what you call well it was a little bright—you call it ice picky. And the middle pickup—now I'm not a middle guy. My entire life has been about taking out the mids and you actually turned me on to musical mid-range. And I had never experienced. 

To me—and I think a lot of guitar players—mid-range is kind of like this scientific kind of spike in a thing that you're supposed to need. Because I guess it like helps everything else around it move forward, and you turned me on to the idea of mid-range being a musical thing. And now with Dead & Co, at least, I spend most of my time on the middle pickup. And now I'm, you know, recording guitar on records where I could give me the middle pickup right because the middle—and help me with this on a scientific level because I'm not an engineer on this level—the middle pickup is like the truest pickup, is it not?

When it came to actually laying down the sounds in the studio, did you change up your gear at all to be era-appropriate?

It's mostly the same gear. Although we certainly tried. Don Was has said he wishes he could've sold tickets to the recording of this album, just for the guitar parts. Because the guitar parts, some of them that never made it to the record, it was just so funny to hear that sound revived. There were times where I would take a Jackson and run it through a Rockman, which is as Def Leppard as you can get. It'd be a Jackson through a Rockman with, like, a [Marshall] JMP, and I'd start playing these kinds of Hysteria lines. But then you hear it back and you go, "I get it, but that's not me. That was so much fun, but that's not convincing and that's not sincere.'' So in the end it became this blend of my gear with the intentionality of the music of the past.

I'm assuming that means, at the base level, the Silver Sky through a variety of tube amps.

We used different amps all the time, and amps are tricky for me — I think the same amp sounds different on two different days. So we sort of used three amps as one. It's like, what serves as the woofer, what serves as the crossover and what serves as the tweeter? It's really fun to build an amp sound that way. And interestingly enough, the Dumble really intersects with early Eighties session work, right? Like, Stevie Ray Vaughan was kind of an anomaly in that Dumble world because almost everyone else using a Dumb e was kind of doing really clean stuff. I mean, I know guys like Larry Carlton and Robben Ford were making it sing with distortion, but it was mostly clean tones you were hearing with that amp.

And so it worked really, really well to take a Silver Sky, which is already kind of hi-fi, and run it through a Dumble and a direct, and then maybe an old Fender combo for the softness. Because those old Fenders apologize really well for the notes. But for that kind of session-player, speed-of-note thing, that picking response really comes from direct input or a Dumble amp, which, really, is a direct-input amplifier. Even though it's coming through a speaker, everything in those amps moves so fast, and in the best, cleanest way, that when you pick that single-note stuff, you're just in heaven because the notes are so crisp.

And then we actually used a Fractal in some places, too. Because as much as I was thinking, "What would I have done then?" I was also asking, "What would they have done now?" And if somebody had walked a Fractal into the Thriller sessions? You would have heard a Fractal all over that record.