It’s not too long now until Aussie heavy music legends Northlane and In Hearts Wake will be hitting up select venues in capital cities around the country, joined by their friends in Hands Like Houses and Ocean Grove for what’s sure to be one of the most talked-about heavy tours of the year.
As well as prepping for one of 2016’s biggest local tours Northlane founding member, guitarist, and serious gear head Josh Smith has also just recently teamed up with Bare Knuckle Pickups to create his own signature pickup – the Impulse Humbucker.
For anyone who admires Josh’s incredibly crafted playing style, he explained exactly what to expect from his signature pickup: “The thing about the Impulse set that I like the most is that they’re real players pickups and although designed for me, they don’t sway towards any particular genre of music.
“Just about anyone can buy these pickups and get a lot out of them in most applications. Whether you’re a lead player with red-hot chops, or the rhythm player holding down the meat and potatoes, Strat or Les Paul, or baritone 7 string like me, the Impulse set has something to offer to you.”
To celebrate the release of Impulse Humbucker, Josh has penned us a piece on the most important pieces of guitar gear he owns. Check out the list below and for more info on his new pickup visit www.bareknucklepickups.co.uk.
My Jackson Guitars
“I primarily use a few custom shop or self-customized B7 baritone 7 strings and I absolutely love them. They’re just absolutely rock solid, stable and fantastic playing and sounding guitars.
I have hipshot open gear locking tuners on all of them and Kalium custom strings, mostly 12-82 gauge which is big, but that’s how I like it. Kalium made me custom sets based on string tension so the way these things play is just unbelievable.
I also have two of the cheaper X-series soloists which I’ve spent a lot of time modifying and they’re great platforms for that, fantastic sounding guitars. I feel like the more time I spend working on a guitar the more attached to it I become, and the more fun I have playing it.”
Photo credit: Hysteria Mag and Cian Marangos.
My Signature Bareknuckle Impulse Pickups
I’ve said a lot about these things recently. For over a year I developed a dual humbucker and also hum/single set with Bareknuckle to suit the needs of an extended-range player.
The result is pretty astounding, they’re incredible articulate pickups and cover a huge range of tones without making any compromises. I like to think of a pickup as something that captures a tone, rather than creates it and these ones certainly allow the natural tone of the guitar to shine through. And they’re pretty forgiving to play on too!
My Strymon Pedals
I use the Timeline, mobius and bigsky, I also own an el capistan. There’s a reason these things are in such high demand, they just sound fantastic and they’re very user friendly.
My whole live rig is midi switched and has global tempo clocks etc and the strymon stuff can get that in depth with how you need to use it, but it’s also stuff that’s far easier to dial in than anything else I’ve used.
I would often struggle with other more comprehensive delay and reverb units trying to coax a certain sound for a certain part, but with these ones everything seems to sound good, it’s just a matter of it sounding how you want it to, rather than trying to get the pedal to work for the part.
My Free the Tone Solderless Cables
I was always skeptical and untrusting of solderless cables, but decided to give these a try because of a recommendation a friend gave me, and because of the ARC-3 switcher Alex got being so incredible.
I rebuilt our entire rigs with these in about a quarter of the time it would’ve taken me with soldered leads, and they sound cleaner! It’s also helped me shave a considerable amount of weight off our pedalboards, which is very important when you do a lot of flying, plus they’re easy to repair on the go if anything happens to break, it’s freed up space on our boards and the plugs have no weight in them so they never come out of the jacks they’re plugged into. Can’t say enough good things about these, I also have one of their red jasper overdrive pedals which is just delicious.
My Kemper Profiling Amplifier
A lot of people are using these now days, and for a good reason. They don’t break and they sound amazing. I think digital will never be what a tube amp is, but man do these come close.
We had a huge improvement switching to KPA from AxeFx a few years ago and for the first time in a long time, the tones we originally dialled in have remained relatively untouched. It’s the heart and soul of our live sound and I absolutely love it.
Northlane & In Hearts Wake National Tour Dates
Friday, 10th June 2016
Metro City, Perth
Saturday, 11th June 2016
Thebarton, Adelaide
Sunday, 12th June 2016
Festival Hall, Melbourne
Friday, 17th June 2016
The Tivoli, Brisbane
Saturday, 18th June 2016
Luna Park, Sydney
