John Petrucci interview (excerpts)

During a conversation with Premier Guitar, Dream Theater guitarist John Petrucci talked about the BFR6, his signature baritone guitar from Ernie Ball Music Man. A baritone guitar features a longer scale length, often a larger body, and heavier internal bracing, allowing it to be tuned to a lower pitch. Explaining how BFR stands for Ball Family Reserve, John said (transcribed by UG):

“They started coming with BFRs at some point several years ago. The idea was that the tonewood combination that made sort-of deeper, richer-sounding instruments; kind of like reserve wines and stuff like that. A while back, I started sort of getting into the sound of the baritone guitar – you know, guitars tuned to B-flat, tuned to A, and that sort of sound. Instead of tuning a seven string down, I felt that a baritone was the way to do that best. And they had come out with one that was just tuned to standard. I’m not remembering the name of the top of my head – it was Silhouette – basically, it was a six-string standard-tuned guitar, but all the strings were an octave lower. So it sounded like bass but played like a guitar, and it has the extended scale neck.

John added about the guitar:

It’s a different sort of wood; this is a bolt-on. The Majesty is all really sleek, so the Majesty has the recessed controls and stuff. This doesn’t have that, this is more like the original one that I had. This was the original bridge design, the edges are still rounded, but it’s a little more squared off. The Majesty bridge sort of adapts to the shape of the guitar, and this is a Tobacco burst, and stainless steel. A beautiful instrument. On the new album ‘Distance Over Time,’ I use this on two songs.

Which two songs are those?

‘Paralyzed,’ that we’re playing live in this current show, and a song called ‘Out of Reach, which is the only ballad on the album. And it was written in a very spontaneous way one day between Jordan [Rudess, keyboards] and I, and you can hear that on ‘Distance Over Time’ as well.