The Dream Team – A Rendezvous with Dream Theater’s John Petrucci and John Myung

Buzzzz. Buzzzz. In case you didn’t know what that buzzing in the air has been lately, it’s the sound of people talking about Dream Theater, the art-metal quintet that’s fast becoming the talk of the town. What sets Dream Theater apart from other recent progressive acts is, in a word, chops. The early-’90s saw a number of arty bands who played good tunes with strong vocals, but Dream Theater’s ace-in-the-hole is a pair of Berklee-trained virtuosos: guitarist John Petrucci and bassist John Myung, both of whom can sight-read Bach or bebop with ease, as well as play circles around your everyday three-chord rocker. They do it tastefully, too. And in further contrast to many of today’s players, neither are remotely interested in vintage gear. As you will see, Petrucci and Myung’s taste in equipment is as high-tech as those blindingly precise runs they peel off night after night.

Although Dream Theater’s last album appeared over two years ago, the band has been slowly building up a cult following in the U.S., Europe, and Japan – so much so that they’ve recently had to release a live video and, import concert CD overseas to quench the appetite of their ravenous fans. As you read this, the band will be sequestered in the studio working on the follow-up to Images And Words, which may also have turned gold by this time. This is also serving as a well-deserved break from the marathon global trek that had them playing on three continents for well over a year.

Interestingly, Petrucci and Myung’s equipment never broke down once, largely because they brought a ringer along with them on the road to make sure everything stayed on track and plugged in. “We had Mesa/Boogie’s East Coast rep, Mark Snyder, as our tech, so it was great – we formed a great relationship,” says Petrucci. “Our tech left the day before the tour started, so Mark was nice enough to help. The guys from Boogie have been great for us since the beginning. Mark also built my rack and turns me on to new pieces. But mainly, I have two TriAxis preamps with five 12AX7 tubes each and I run them through a Boogie amp switcher, using two of them together to get certain sounds. That’s because the TriAxis has a Mark II sound and a Rectifier sound and I like mixing them together for some of the more beefy stuff. It’s called the TriAxis because it’s like having a three-channel set-up, but really, with MIDI, you can set an infinite amount of sounds. More than three channels, it’s more like three “modes,” the first one being clean, the second like a Mark II Marshall and the third a hot lead mode – but within each one, you have zillions of choices.

“The other cool thing is that the faceplate of the TriAxis is laid out just like a regular Boogie, but in digital form. So instead of having a knob, you have up/down cursors to adjust your volume, gain, and tone, but it’s still very straightforward. To top it all off, I have two 2: Ninety power amps. One of them powers the backline, which is four 4x12” Rectifier cabinets with Vintage 30 Celestions. And the other power amp powers these two monitors that the vice president of Boogie, Jim Aschow, actually built for me because I wanted a monitor system that I could run off the power amp. So he built me these two 2x12” Rectifier wedges that are totally cool. I also use the Rectifier cabinets because they have massive bass response and I couldn’t find any cabs that did that. I tried out all the Boogie cabinets when I was looking and the Rectifier had the sound I wanted.”

John Myung (pronounced “My-young”) is also a Mesa/Boogie convert though ironically he primarily uses their guitar amplification for his bass sound. “My bass also runs in to a Mesa/Boogie TriAxis preamp, but one that’s been modified for bass,” explains the agile bassist. “It sounds great, too. There are like 90 different presets and modes to choose from. I haven’t even begun to explore all the possibilities yet since I got a lot of the gear while on tour. The tones I like are really smooth and punchy with a lot of low end not click-y. I also had an Abacus pedal that I don’t use too much, except when I need a punchier lead sound. Then I have Boogie power amps: Two Strategy 500’s and a 400 Plus, that feed into Mesa/Boogie Powerhouse cabinets with one 15” speaker in the middle and then a 10” speaker at each corner. The way these cabs move air is amazing and it handles the low end with no problem; the 10’s give my clean parts about as much definition as possible, too.”

“I recently converted to six-string basses, too. My main bass is a Tobias six-string that’s tuned in fourths: B-E-A-D-G-C. I’ve been playing it for a year-and-a-half now and it was something that I naturally gravitated towards. Before that, I was playing four-string for a long time on a Fender ‘62 Reissue Jazz bass, a Music Man Stingray, and then I used a Spector on the record. But it got to the point where I needed something more substantial, so I began eyeing six-strings. Then Tobias approached me and I tried their bass and liked it – as of now, I’m definitely hooked on six-strings for life. I can play chords now and there is room for musical exploration. So if you’re playing some cello pieces, positionally, it’s easier to do since you’re not compensating for the lack of low and high ranges. Right now, I’m learning some cello pieces and reading through a book of [be-bop sax pioneer] Charlie Parker solos transcribed for bass. But it’s a basic model with a swamp ash body, active electronics and two Bartolini pickups. It has a pickup blend control too, and I like to set that all the way to the neck position. For strings, I use the D’addario six-string set that goes from about .130-.35.”

Where Myung goes for stock basses at this point in time, Petrucci goes the custom route, choosing guitars that will give him power for his incendiary solo section and power riffs, as well as crisp cleans for the lighter side of Dream Theater’s music. In his mind, the axes that satisfy these needs come from Ibanez: “I use Ibanez guitars exclusively for my electric work. Mace Bailey built me two custom RG guitars over the past few years in the company’s custom shop – one of them has a cool Picasso graphic on it. They have 24 jumbo frets, Gotoh tuners, and rosewood fingerboards with offset fret dots and it’s basically a standard neck from the USA Custom series. It’s beefier than some Ibanez necks, but not like a baseball bat. The guitars also have Low-Profile Edge tremolos and for pickups, a DiMarzio Humbucker From Hell in the bridge slot and one of their Tone Zones in the neck. The controls are pretty basic: Just a three-way toggle, one volume, and one tone.

“Over to effects, all of that is channeled by a Boogie MIDI Matrix, which is the brain of my rig – it’s sort of like Grand Central Station for the rack – and there’s an Abacus pedal to control the effects. Onstage, there are two only volume pedals: One runs through a VCA box that controls the voltage after the preamp and the other one is a parameter controlling pedal, so you can go from a dirty to a clean, while also changing the effects levels. That’s also the MIDI controler, so that’s the one that sending messages to all the effects – it can even control a little footpedal, like a BOSS Chorus. So the Boogie gear gives me such control over my sound, like driving a stick shift with two pedals. You can really shape the sound. I used to use a lot of effects, but I don’t need as many with this system. In fact, my set-up is fairly basic. I have a Lexicon PCM 70 digital effects processor, an SPX90, a t.c. electronics 2290 delay, and a really rad Sony wireless. But that’s it really, even though people tell me I have a pretty high-tech sound.”

Petrucci’s bass-frying sidekick also uses less effects sound processing than you’d think for such an aurally-stimulating band. But like any good bassist, Myung just wants a good, meaty bottom end above all else. “I don’t really use any effects onstage,” he admits. “It’s pretty much a dry signal, aside from a little compression from a dbx 166X. I might get into effects processing a little bit. Maybe one of those t.c. electronics 2290’s to get clean delays to double up my sound and some chorus to add some life to the sound. I have a MIDI hook-up to my volume pedal, so that when I use it, instead of just cutting my signal, I have it change the settings on the TriAxis. For example, if I bring it down to a certain position, the volume level will go down, but the gain will go up, so I still have sustain at a low volume. As I go even lower, it’ll bring out more treble and perhaps even more sustain. Then, if I go back up, all these things will decline. When you push the pedal, all you see is a stream of numbers running across the preamp and it’s all done electronically via MIDI. And fortunately, my rig is very reliable. We’ve toured the U. S. three times and Europe and Japan each twice and nothing has gone wrong. It’s just an incredible system.”