Devin Townsend rig rundown, very interesting info

Lysander

Lysander

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Saw Devin just yesterday for his European Lightwork Tour 2023. Amazing show, off the bat - if you have never seen the guy live, you really should. He's an incredible frontman; the entire audience was eating from the palm of his hand just two song in.

Anyway, before the main act began i could swear seeing Dev cloaked in a hoodie, tweaking a couple of Helix Floors near the end of the stage. Was actually about to ask about that here... when this video dropped.



Some takeaways:
  1. Devin and Mike Keneally are mostly playing Axe-FX IIIs for the duration of the show. They sounded amazing.
  2. Yep! Devin is using two Helix Floors on stage for ambient sounds.
  3. He mentions in passing to be working on an Archetype plugin with NDSP (!!!), so i guess that's confirmed now.
  4. He also mentions to have tried the Quad Cortex and liking it quite a bit - the looper in particular. Which i agree, is probably the best floorboard looper implementation right now.
The man has some taste for gear too. I've been itching about checking out a Framus ever since i first saw that rainbow-colored Stormbender they built from him.
 
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Hahah funny, a couple years ago he was playing across the street from where we have a Jazz Brunch along the water in downtown Ft Lauderdale, I kept running over to see if I could catch him before the show just to say ‘Thanks’ for all his efforts and music. As I was walking across the street with about 15 other people I saw someone looking out of place among all the nicely dressed Sunday morning jazz brunch dwellers because he was in grey sweats and a hoodie, sure enough it was him.

I didn’t want to take up much of his time, he was clearly getting ready for a jog and I know personal time is limited on a tour bus so we shot the sh*t for maybe 2 minutes and I let him go.

I wonder if NDSP finally got him a PSU or if he had to buy an aftermarket one. :rofl He said on a livestream a while back he had the QC but lost the PSU for it and was waiting for one from NDSP. He’s certainly gear agnostic. On the Coffee With Ola he was talking about how he’s now working with both Kissel and Framus now.

I’d LOVE to try a Stormbender, that body looks absolutely huge when anyone but Dev is holding it, but I love the look of those guitars, especially knowing the basis of his intent was to recreate an LP Custom without it being an LP at all.

Lastly, any time Keneally joins someone I’m a fan of, I get stoked. Satch’s live band was my absolute favorite when he had Minnenman, Beller and Keneally with him, my favorite Vai eras were when Keneally was in the band, he tore it up with Dethklok and I caught him with Dev the 2nd to last show before Dev had to cancel his tour due to the pandemic. That was the tour he wasn’t using any backing tracks or playing to a click and that band was f*cking phenomenal!
 
DrewJD82 said:
I didn’t want to take up much of his time, he was clearly getting ready for a jog and I know personal time is limited on a tour bus so we shot the sh*t for maybe 2 minutes and I let him go.
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Man, that's awesome. I wish i could run into him off-stage someday.

One thing i can say, touring does seem to be taking a toil on poor ol' Dev. Don't get me wrong, the guy can put out a concert with the best out there, but the vibe i got from recent interviews, and even the show, is that he sees touring mostly as means to an end these days.

DrewJD82 said:
On the Coffee With Ola he was talking about how he’s now working with both Kissel and Framus now.

I’d LOVE to try a Stormbender, that body looks absolutely huge when anyone but Dev is holding it, but I love the look of those guitars, especially knowing the basis of his intent was to recreate an LP Custom without it being an LP at all.
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He played that weird looking Kiesel on that show, for maybe a couple songs - same for that Aristides "tele" shown in the video. Both sounded good, but those Framus man... there's just something to them. The show closed with Strapping Young Lad's Love?, and it was some of the thickest, most delicious high gain tones i've heard live in ages.

DrewJD82 said:
Lastly, any time Keneally joins someone I’m a fan of, I get stoked. Satch’s live band was my absolute favorite when he had Minnenman, Beller and Keneally with him, my favorite Vai eras were when Keneally was in the band, he tore it up with Dethklok and I caught him with Dev the 2nd to last show before Dev had to cancel his tour due to the pandemic. That was the tour he wasn’t using any backing tracks or playing to a click and that band was f*cking phenomenal!
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+1000. I actually got tickets to see Satch back in 2021 - they had to reschedule it twice because of the effin' pandemic, and the tour is rolling out next month or so. I really hope Michael is part of the band; it would make a lot of sense too since he's already in Europe touring with Devin.

He played electric, acoustic and keyboards for Devin, and was incredible at all three. A true musician's musician.
 
Lysander said:
Man, that's awesome. I wish i could run into him off-stage someday.

One thing i can say, touring does seem to be taking a toil on poor ol' Dev. Don't get me wrong, the guy can put out a concert with the best out there, but the vibe i got from recent interviews, and even the show, is that he sees touring mostly as means to an end these days.



He played that weird looking Kiesel on that show, for maybe a couple songs - same for that Aristides "tele" shown in the video. Both sounded good, but those Framus man... there's just something to them. The show closed with Strapping Young Lad's Love?, and it was some of the thickest, most delicious high gain tones i've heard live in ages.



+1000. I actually got tickets to see Satch back in 2021 - they had to reschedule it twice because of the effin' pandemic, and the tour is rolling out next month or so. I really hope Michael is part of the band; it would make a lot of sense too since he's already in Europe touring with Devin.

He played electric, acoustic and keyboards for Devin, and was incredible at all three. A true musician's musician.
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I’ve got a really funny story about Satch’s current keyboard player. They kicked the tour off down here in Ft. Lauderdale, my buddy Nacho hit me up at like 3AM during the week “We’re hanging out with Joe Satriani’s keyboard player! Get up! Come party!”, I figured he was drunk and someone was feeding him full of BS (it happens a lot, he’s very gullible). He started sending me pics and I initially still thought it was someone who looked similar to Bryan Beller trying to get one over on my buddy, but when I checked Satch’s IG I saw it was indeed his keyboard player.

They had quite the night, I think the dude is an Aussie and wanted to get the full Ft Lauderdale experience. He couldn’t have met up with a better person than Nacho for that. :rofl

And yeah, Dev has been saying for a while that he has a hard time with touring and the social aspects of it, his whole stage banter basically being a reaction to being really uncomfortable. I can relate. In my younger days I could turn social-me on or off, these days I need a kick start and a lot of motivation to bother. There’s also that divide between fans being grateful and fans being overzealous and gushing which he can’t handle at all. He‘s said he can’t see himself from a fan’s POV at all because it just completely f*cks with his head, which is why he can’t watch reaction videos of his own stuff.

I’ve wanted to try what he does with train videos; he has them playing on a tv above his computer in his studio the whole time he’s in there. I’d imagine that’s an extremely peaceful way to record and keep momentum going.
 
Interesting, at 23:55 he leaks that he has an Archetype model coming out, says Neural sent him a Quad Cortex as well, but likes the Axe FX more.
 
Desertdweller said:
Interesting, at 23:55 he leaks that he has an Archetype model coming out, says Neural sent him a Quad Cortex as well, but likes the Axe FX more.
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He’s been talking about that Archetype for a while now, he brought it up on the same stream where he said he lost the PSU for the QC. Initially, it was the reason he didn’t want to give out his IR, but he’s done that since then so I‘m assuming that’s not part of the Archetype. I’m sure another Dual Rec variant will fit along nicely in the Archetype family. :rofl
 
Lysander said:
Man, that's awesome. I wish i could run into him off-stage someday.
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Nicest and most humble musician I’ve ever met. He came down to meet the front row at a show in Denver. You could tell that he was very grateful for his audience and fans. A true class act!
 
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DrewJD82 said:
He’s been talking about that Archetype for a while now, he brought it up on the same stream where he said he lost the PSU for the QC. Initially, it was the reason he didn’t want to give out his IR, but he’s done that since then so I‘m assuming that’s not part of the Archetype. I’m sure another Dual Rec variant will fit along nicely in the Archetype family. :rofl
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The memes will write themselves when his NDSP Archetype are captures of his Fractal Audio Axe-Fx III :)
 
Found a pic. Incredible show! I’m the one with the Buccos cap and mountain man beard next to my bf in the red flannel.
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If I remember correctly, RVP took this as Devin made his rounds along the front row. The girl in the front center was head banging her ass off the entire show. Can you tell? 😂
 
Lysander said:
Archetype plugin with NDSP
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Oversaturating the market to make a quick buck is not very healthy for what's left of electric guitar in general.
What are they trying to do, kill electric guitar entirely?
Now we can't even search for "IIC+" on youtube without a river of shit forced into our eyes.
Neural DSP's trick is getting really fucking old.
 
Yeah, AFAIK Townsend used a 5150 on his earlier albums and Rectifier afterwards. So they are packing the same ol‘ amps in another plugin. Slap a wah and a delay module on it and Archetype: HevyDevy should collect some easy money. :sick:
 
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Lysander said:
I think he's been touring and recording mostly with AxeFX for some time now?

Having an Archetype based on Fractal models would be :chef though, ngl...

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He jumped around quite a bit in the last decade with the Fractal being one of the only mainstays. The EMGTV vids he did were around the last time he was using an amp live with that monstrous Dual Rec/Lonestar/Fractal/huge pedalboard rig. It took him a while to leave the GP-1000 at home but that’s been gone for a while now. I want to say the Empath tour was when he stripped it down to just an AxeFX and an expression pedal, but the dude has had so many combinations of rigs I can’t remember all the details.
 
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