Crew: Matthew ‘Maddi’ Schieferstein

Finally, Matthew ‘Maddi’ Schieferstein, John Petrucci’s guitar tech, gives us the lowdown on everything in the bear’s lair...

John usually uses something like six or seven guitars per show. A lot depends on the songs and the tunings, although sometimes John will just want to switch guitars out just to have something different. On an Evening With show, it can sometimes get up to 18 guitar changes in a show depending on the set list.

In terms of tunings, there are guitars with standard tuning, the seven string, which is a standard guitar with a low B string added in, and then there are C, D, E♭, drop D, B♭ baritone, A baritone and then, of course, the fabulous blue sparkly double-neck with a 12-string acoustic on it, which lives in its own case and only comes out when needed, especially in a smaller place where there’s no reason to have it out.

The guitars themselves stay pretty stable once they get acclimated to the room. At the venue in Manchester, it was not ideal as the big door was right next to the stage and you could feel the cold air drafting in, which meant it was a battle to keep everything going all night.

There are constant things needed on the fly. Maddi has a little gauge that a friend of his turned him onto (String action gauge; www.stewmac.com). He uses this to measure John’s string action and neck settings, and knowing the sweet spot, he can use the gauge to constantly check the guitar settings throughout the show, which helps to keep things a lot more consistent when he hands JP his guitars. Maddi says that he has to order one for John, so he can have one at home. “It’s such a great little invention. I used to sit here with an old ruler and you’d be thinking ‘is it this line or that line...?’ and this just makes it easier to see on the fly and keeps things moving.”

John is using the new Mark V Mesa Boogie amp rig. He has three amp-heads, which equates to nine different pre-amp channels that John can select at will. He’s using seven different sounds and everything is pretty comfortable now.

He has a Keeley-modded tube screamer, an EVH Flanger and Phase 90. There’s an area for the pedal of the day as they carry a whole drawer full of different pedals, including some pedals that Maddi built for John that he hasn’t tried out yet. If John feels like, “oh, I wanna try something different!”, there’s a slot and a button on the pedal board itself.

John has an old Access FX-1 with the expander for the channel-switching and effects. One whole side of the pedal board just controls the amps, so he can select amp one, two or three and the corresponding channels within and then there are buttons for the effects, presets etc.

Back on the Train of Thought Tour, Maddi compiled a book with every song and every preset in that song and within that preset all the programming that went with it, but John has got away from that approach now. They have three banks of presets and a couple of song specific ones, like for ‘Hollow Years’, where he uses a couple of different lighter overdrive sounds. So, instead of John going “well, uh... amp two, channel one and this thing on...” Maddi suggested making a bank for that specific song. They agreed to lay those specific options out so John can tap through them and if he wants to change from them he can.

This all makes things a lot easier for Maddi and means he doesn’t have to program the pedal board every day. However, the Access stuff is really easy as there is a computer editing program and you just hook everything up via MIDI.

When you look at John’s rig, it looks like there’s a lot of gear, and there is, but it’s really simple. In terms of the signal flow, the guitar comes in and the signal goes through some pedals before the amp, then it hits the amp, then there are pre-amps and all the delays, choruses, harmonisers, reverbs etc. after the amp and all of those get blended back in, and then it runs out as stereo. John has a little monitoring cabinet that sits out in front of him, which helps him to get some feedback because all of the eight decorated cabinets on stage are not actually plugged in! The real cabs are sitting off-stage, mic’ed up and isolated, which has helped a lot, not only John but also the audio guys.

Maddi explains “The cabinets would scare the crap out of anybody! I certainly would not want to be next to them while they’re going full force. Normally, they are set-up towards the back of the stage on the floor and we keep people away from them. This means that when you’re standing in front of John at the show then your hair’s not getting pinned back by guitar all night and you can hear the whole band.”

In terms of general maintenance, the set-up of the gear, checking it all out and stringing the guitars can take three or four hours, depending on how many guitars need restringing. On top of this, things like line checks and sound checks are also needed.

In terms of restringing, John only uses some of the guitars for a single song, so Maddi wipes down the strings after that song, puts the guitar away and it’s generally fine for another show. John doesn’t tend to rail into the strings every night. His main guitar is definitely restrung every day but most guitars are on an every-other-day rotation, which means that some days are ‘big string change’ days.

Maddi Schieferstein is John Petrucci’s guitar tech and he is a ‘rabbit’ fan of Dream Theater.

A Word Of Warning About The Pedal Of The Day:

Yep, it says ‘PoD ‘ (for Pedal of the Day), but just in case anybody gets any weird ideas that there’s a Line 6 product in here, there’s not! In fact, I’ve gotta come up with a different, cooler label for that. [The name of this pedal was subsequently changed to ‘Hit me!’]

The Drawbacks Of Being JP’s Tech:

With John, it’s about keeping it all running and being a step ahead. It’s not a nightmare – you just have to constantly be thinking. John knows what he wants. For example, sometimes he wants to try things on the fly such as changing string gauges in the middle of a tour which means that every guitar has to be re-setup. And it’s like, “well, okay... why don’t we try one just to see, and then if you want to switch everything, we’ll switch everything... “ ‘No, no, no... just do them all!” “Okay... “ and then it’s, “no! I don’t like it, put it back!” “Okay...” That’s a lot of undertaking! But, I do it, and that’s what the man wants. He’s not a difficult guy to work with at all. You’ve just got to be on the same page with him. He’s very focused and he’s very particular and if you’re not focused and particular with him, you can become lost and that’s when stuff happens.

Maddi’s Memorable Moment From This Tour:

A couple of months ago, on the Progressive Nation US leg, as Robert mentioned, the crew did a Star Wars skit. But I was sitting there going, “you know, I can’t get involved in a skit like that because John may decide that he needs a change of guitar or if something goes wrong, I have to be focused.” I thought, “maybe if I did something to the other bands...” So I decided to get an elephant costume ‘cause on the album, there’s an elephant, so there was a slight tie-in. But when we went to the costume shop, they didn’t have an elephant, so I said, “you got a bunny rabbit?” and they went. “yeah! Do you want the full bunny head or the open face with just the ears?” I said, “the open face with the ears, for sure!” So two hours later, this guy shows up with a bunny outfit and it’s this gigantic white fluffy bunny and the ears were all floppy, which was even better! So during the first band I just kinda walked out there and leaned on an amplifier while they were playing and just stood there and they turned around and were like, “Woah! That’s a little weird!” Bigelf was next so I took a drink out to the keyboard player! Before the show, DT does the platinum meet and greet thing, so I said. “I’ve got some stuff I want to get signed so I’ll go down there as the bunny.” I dressed-up as the rabbit and I got in line with everybody and I waited 45 minutes to get through the line, just wandering along, and some of the crew guys went with me and they were pretty good about blocking the band’s view of me – James saw me right away and he did this weird thing, but we all ignored it – so, I finally get up to the table and there’s Mike and JP sitting there and I went, “hey, how’s it going? I’m a rabbit fan.” and they just completely lost it! Then as the Star Wars skit was getting ready to happen, someone said, “can you walk out as a bunny?” John had decided right before the show that he wanted to do a guitar change right there and I wasn’t sure if I had time to put the bunny outfit on , but I said, “screw it!” and threw it on. So I go out as the bunny to hand-off the guitar and then the Star Wars thing starts happening and John’s going, “what’s going on?!” He was just cracking up! It was great, it was a really, really good moment! So now the big joke is the bunny needs to make another appearance. They’re trying to talk me into buying a bunny outfit because I rented that one so... maybe at some point you’ll see the bunny come back... *laughs* the return of the bunny in the Dream Theater lore of touring! You never know..

Besides thanking Robert John and Maddi for their hospitality, I want to thank Rikk Feulner and TJ Rodriguez for allowing us access to the stage and the guys, and all the other contributors to this article: Paul Keen, Tim Wilson, Greg Annandale and Mike Perry for their contributions.

Kerry Parker