A video clip saw Metallica frontman James Hetfield helping a fan light up a Cigar.
James Hetfield helps fan smoke
Meanwhile, Noodles revealed James Hetfield’s guitar that he used on The Offspring’s new album, “Supercharged” that was released on October 11th this year. Apart from the band proving they’re as energetic as ever, it seems that there are a few interesting and somewhat unexpected facts about it.
During a recent interview with Ultimate Guitar, Dexter Holland and Noodles he revealed an instrument that appears on this record — an ESP prototype previously owned by Metallica frontman James Hetfield.
When asked what kind of gear is heard on this new album, Noodles said: “Well, let’s start with guitars. We have a bunch of guitars that we use, and we try different stuff out all the time. But the main guitar we used is an early ’60s Les Paul Junior, but it’s the old SG shape and it’s just one single P-90 in it. We put a tunable bridge on it, and it just sounds great. That’s our go-to guitar.”
“One of the fun ones we got to use was one of [James] Hetfield’s first ever [ESP Guitars], he got like three prototype Explorers [EXPs], and Bob [Rock] has one of them, and he brought it out. So we used that on ‘Come to Brazil’ and a couple of things and that was really cool.”
Dexter: “It’s not actually an Explorer, right? I think it’s an EXP from ESP. And we play old stuff too, tell him about the old stuff… Bob likes the idea of playing old beater guitars.”
Noodles: “Totally, yeah. So, for some of the twangier or clean stuff, we have a ’56 Gretsch Sparkle Jet that we keep at the studio. Did we use the Rickenbacker on any of this stuff?”
Dexter: “I think so. Well, my workhorse is the SG Junior. That’s the main ’60s one Noodles was talking about earlier, and it’s all beat up. I don’t know if it’s even collectible, but it sounds just like all the great, pristine ones, but we call it a beater. So we’ve got a couple of those.”
Noodles: “Didn’t you buy one from Ron [Emory] from TSOL, too, that’s lying around?”
Dexter: “Yeah. I did, and then the ES… I’m not good with the names; it’s an ES-355, and we’ve got one of those. Bob is a real gearhead, so we keep on accumulating gear. He’s always like, ‘Oh, try this one!'”
Noodles: “For amps, we’ve got a bunch. We’ve got Marshalls, Hiwatts, Diezel, a Vox AC-30, and a couple of Fender combos. So we blend them all in. We’ll also use Fractals and Kempers for some of the clean or more modulated stuff. What are the boxes he was using? We always have a tube screamer, but he’s got a modded tube screamer that we used.”
Dexter: “The main thing was blending three main amps. And I think mostly on this record, one was a [Mesa] Boogie.”
Noodles: “Oh, that’s right, we brought back the Mark IV.”
Dexter: “Then a Hiwatt and a Marshall.”
