Originally published in Guitar Player magazine · January 1998
Dream Theater – John Petrucci’s Progressive Gear
InterviewJohn Petrucci1 min read
One of the striking qualities of prog mainstay Dream Theater’s latest Elektra opus, Falling Into Infinity, is the variety of tones coming from guitarist John Petrucci. It’s a change of pace for Petrucci, who in the past has always preferred recording his tracks dry. “We really customized the songs and designed the sounds on this one,” he notes. “We recorded one song at a time, playing all the rhythm tracks live for a real emotional performance, and then doing overdubs. When I got to the next song, I would start from scratch to make the songs personal and give them individual character. We never did the same thing twice, which was a lot of fun.”
Petrucci and his guitar tech Mark Snider brought close to 20 Mesa/Boogie amps into the studio – Mark IIs, Dual and Triple Rectifiers, and Heartbreakers. For guitars, he went 100% Ibanez, playing the JPM-100 Signature series models he helped design, with assists from a 7-string, an acoustic/electric doubleneck and a Talman, which he relied on for slide. No analog Luddite, Petrucci tweaked a rackful of digital processors including Lexicon PCM-80s, PCM-70s and MPX-1s, and a TC Electronic 1210 and 2290, all controlled via MIDI.
Petrucci’s sound sculpting and layering shines on the ominous verse figure of ‘Peruvian Skies’; he recorded a clean melody in the left channel, and contrasted it with flanged and delayed dirty tones in the right. “I took my rack apart to do this album,” says Petrucci, who creates stereo effects throughout the record. “I would put different effects on each amp head and split the signal so one head might have a delay on it and the other a flanger or phaser. By adding a volume pedal and a wah-wah to that, I’d get some pretty cool effects.” Petrucci’s shying away from MIDI program changes lately, opting instead to fade effects in with volume pedals. “I have more versatility over how those particular sounds are being processed,” he notes. “In doing that, I’m better able to emulate what we did in the Studio.”
—Bryan Reesman