Technomania: John Petrucci’s Guitarama

This time around we have a piece dedicated to the magnificent JP, similar in format to the Mike Portnoy ‘Drum Theater’ features in recent issues, written in “bullet point” format, so it is kinder on the eye – I hope you enjoy it!

• John’s standard equipment for as long as I have been following the band, has centered around Ibanez guitars and Mesa (pronounced “May-sa”) Boogie amplification. This continues with the heart of his set-up being Triaxis pre-amps, Boogie 2: Ninety power amps (two – one for his monitors and one for his main rig), and outboard effects from Lexicon, DBX, Jim Dunlop and TC Electronics. Pick-ups are DiMarzio. However, as new products become available, things get changed and upgraded.

• JP’s guitars are indeed Ibanez. The most recent ‘FII’ tour saw him using more of the readily available Ibanez JPM100 models of which there are currently three, plus the ultra-cool “90th Anniversary” model: the JPM HAM90. This celebrates the Ibanez 90th anniversary year, (and there are similar models available for other Ibanez artists like Steve Vai). Prior to the ‘FII’ tour, John used more of the Ibanez USA Custom variants of these guitars which preceded the publicly available JPM models as they were used prior to/during “Images And Words” and up to “Awake” with them gradually being replaced by the standard Ibanez models, though you still see some of these USA Custom guitars in the set from time to time (these have John Petrucci on the headstock, as well as USA Custom above the Ibanez logo).

• The publicly available JPM100 guitars are universally recognized as being true professional instruments of exceptional quality, tone and playability.

• The majority of the guitars feature the famous “Picasso” graphic of various color combinations. The exceptions being the unique double neck in gold finish, which – though used on the “Fix For ‘96” shows, was present for the ‘FII’ sessions, and certainly appeared on a couple of Stateside shows on the ‘FII’ tour – rarely saw the light of day (John has pictures with this guitar at home in issue 12 of ‘Images And Words’). Also the latest 7-string variant (which also has appeared infrequently on tour), which is a beautiful blue/black faded plain finish, the stock Ibanez Talman and the acoustic/electro acoustics which are in natural finish.

• The original 7-string guitar constructed by Ibanez and used live by JP with the Picasso graphic was colored white/black – that variant still exists (in fact that guitar was first aired live at the Foundations Forum show in September ’94), but has since been joined by 6-string versions in the same color – these guitars were used the most by John during the November/December ’97 shows, but there is no set rule as John likes to vary the guitars he uses live.

• The black 7-string seen in the “Lie” video was a standard Ibanez model complete with center pickup as John’s custom 7-string was still under construction at the time.

• “Falling Into Infinity” saw John experimenting with other amp/effects set-ups and in the studio he had masses of options. These included extra outboard effects units from MXR, Lexicon (PCM70/80/90), TC Electronics (TC 2290 digital delay and 1210 stereo chorus/flanger), and the Roland VG-8 guitar synthesizer amongst others! He also had numerous head/combo/cab combinations from Boogie all assembled and watched over by his then guitar tech Mark Snyder (Mark also constructs JP’s racks).

• On the “Fix For ‘96” shows, JP trimmed his gear down (I think this did depend to some extent on venue size) but he was using two Mesa ‘Heartbreaker’ heads in addition to his normal rack mounted amps and only two 4x12 cabinets. You can see from the “Live In Tokyo” video that he was then using SIX Celestion Vintage 30 speakered 4x12 cabs! (He usually used four), but this changed again on the ‘FII’ tour when he chose three (two on the bottom, one on top) Mesa Boogie cabs which were a sort of brown/cream “retro” look. Also at some venues he has his rack twisted to one side of the speaker cabs, but this is often because of lack of room. The most recent European shows have seen JP revert back to the 4x12 cab set-up however, so like I said earlier, he likes to vary things.

• As many of you will know, the ’98 ‘FII’ shows in Europe at least saw John get his own lava lamps and TV like Derek! Though these were phased out by the time the band came back to Europe for the most recent leg!

• Some eagle eye readers may have seen on the ‘FII’ studio shots that John had his guitars strung with the string color ‘ball end” at the headstock (machine head) end (the D’Addario strings he uses are color coded) – this was unusual and when I asked him about it, he commented that it just happened to be how Mark Snyder strung the guitars at the time (it would be more usual to have the ball end of the string at the bridge end of the guitar).

• John’s monitors are crucial to his stage sound and are individually controlled from his rack, and contain Celestion Vintage 30 speakers like his cabs.

• In Italy for the shows in April ’97, John had real problems with his rack – it fused and melted some of the components, disabling some of the effects, which meant he had to play a couple of shows with very limited sound options!

• Finally, my personal favorite finish JPM100 is the ‘camouflage’ variant – this appears quite regularly and was used with the equally stunning Anniversary model when I saw the band in Brussels in February.

So there you have it! Hopefully this has given you a bit more of an insight into JP’s equipment, and I hope it has been an informative read!