As part of our sponsorship of The Legacy Tour, featuring Darkest Hour, Veil of Maya, Periphery and Revocation, one member from each band will be penning an exclusive blog entry for MetalSucks to run during the tour. The tour kicks off this Friday, November 12th in Worcester, MA and runs through the U.S. and Canada for a full month before wrapping on December 12th in Richmond, VA. Get a full list of dates here. Our first entry comes from Veil of Maya guitarist Marc Okubo:

What’s going on guys!? My name is Marc Okubo with Veil of Maya, and today I’m going to give you guys a run down of my live gear list, and let you know what’s “under my hood” if you will. I’m pretty picky about the gear I use simply because it’s part of my job to make sure VOM sounds 100% on stage and to make sure every single note cuts though live… being the only guitar player I must re-create live all the sounds that I used on the record. The gear that I’m currently using has been my personal selection of choice for quite a while now.

RANDALL V2 AMP

This is a hybrid head. It’s mainly solid state but with preamp tubes in it as well. There’s three channels including clean, solid state distortion and tube distortion. I use the solid state channel on this head with the added sustain switch on. I run my EQ levels all to about 5 or 6. My tone live tends to be a bit darker than on CD mainly because a lot of shows we don’t have our own sound guy and micing adds extra treble and gain a lot of times. I run my effects pedals through the effects loop of the V2 so that I can create loops with crazy effects on them and my tone isn’t heavily altered. I send my noise suppressor through the front of my head. This amp gives me that super balls out sound that I’ve always been looking for that perfectly matches my style and sound of VOM. I used it to record our latest album [id].

BOSS GT10

This is my multi-effects processor. I use this for all of my effects besides looping (even though it has a built-in looper as well). I use this mainly for creating harmonies live but also for vibrato, delay, volume pedal and tuner. The pedal has a pretty good smart-harmonist that I usually have set to diatonic thirds. I make different patches depending on the key I plan on playing in and essentially make harmonies to give the effect that we do actually have two guitar players.  I plan on using more of the pedal’s capabilities on our next album seeing as how there’s so many crazy effects that I can use to add layers and textures to our sound.

BOSS RC50

I use this for looping myself live, to create second guitar parts on the spot. The pedal also features a reverse loop option which allows me to play guitar
parts backwards and add a creepy vibe to our songs. We haven’t graduated to playing to a click track live yet so it can be kind of difficult to loop everything perfectly on time. If possible I like to record two bars of the same part so it stays on time for a longer period of time.  If it goes off I can always just stop the loop and start it over whenever appropriate. It allows you to tap tempo if you feel you are playing too fast or too slow

ISP Decimator

This is my noise suppressor. It is by far the best I have used.  It’s so strong that I usually only crank it to a little less than half way and I have virtually no feedback [depending on the venue]. If you are unsatisfied with your current noise suppressor and you have $130 laying around then you need this in your arsenal. It also comes in a cool metallic silver casing so its really shiny :).

IBANEZ RGD2120z

This is my current main guitar. I tune it to dropped B (B, F#, B, E, G#, C#). It’s different from every other guitar I’ve owned; the neck is 26.5 inches witch is pretty much a baritone guitar. It took a lot of getting used to but I’m starting to grow very used to playing it. The paint job is really interesting; it’s kind of like a silver guitar that someone shaved their afro on. its got crazy texture to it and you can never see my sweat on it.  I really like the fact that there is no tone knob on the guitar because I don’t think I have ever adjusted the tone knob of a guitar in my life. The bridge and frets are super smooth and comfortable for me. I’m not sure what pickups come stock with the guitar but I have an EMG 81 for my bridge pickup and an EMG 85 for the neck.

MONSTER CABLES / Mogami Gold Cables

These are some of the best sounding cables out there. Super clear and reliable and if anything ever goes wrong Guitar Center will exchange new ones. I haven’t transferred over to wireless yet but I plan on doing so very soon.

IN-TUNE GUITAR PICKS

I use .88 grip picks through these guys because they printed our logo on some picks. I’m currently out of VEIL picks so until I restock I will be using Dunlop tortex .88 picks. The green ones. If I keep my picking at the right angle I get the perfect amount of tone for the note and not for the pick.  I haven’t used a different kind of pick in years.

- Marc Okubo