Strat -O-Masters

GUITAR PLAYER, July 1999

[Equipment summary by Lisa Sharken.]

Yngwie Malmsteen's main guitars are heavily modified, 1968 to '72 Strats with deeply-scalloped maple fingerboards, Dunlop 6000 jumbo frets, and DiMarzio YJM pickups in the neck and bridge positions. (Like Ritchie Blackmore, Malmsteen doesn't use the middle pickup.) Additionally, the tone controls have been disconnected. His guitars are set up with high action, .008 - .048 gauge Fender Super Bullets, and tremolos armed with four or five springs and adjusted for both downward and upward movement.

His backline includes several early '70s 50-watt Marshall Mark II heads and late '60s Marshall 4x12 cabinets. Live, Malmsteen uses a CryBaby wah, a Boss chorus and flanger, and a Korg SDD-1000 stereo digital delay. He places stacks on both sides of the stage and uses the stereo delay to play counterpoint parts.

Inside Yngwie's Live Rig

GUITAR SHOP, Vol. 1, No. 4, 1995

[Equipment discussion told to GUITAR SHOP magazine by Peter Rooth, Yngwie's guitar tech in the late 90's .]

Shred may be dead, but Yngwie Malmsteen still packs 'em in whenever he hits town. Since the release of his latest Bach 'n' roll document, "The Seventh Sign," the Swedish superpicker has been taking his neo-classical bombast on the road, playing to audiences around the world, particularly in Europe and Asia, where his following is still rabid. To learn more about how he gets his trademark silky tone, GUITAR SHOP sent a photographer to capture the flash's gear backstage, just before another evening of go-for-baroque axemanship and fans chanting "Yngwie is God." So let's check out the high-volume action--and don't forget to bring your earplugs. . .

Yngwie's Amp Settings: VOLUME - 10, BASS - 5 to 7, MID - 2 to 5, TREBLE - 6 to 8, PRESENCE - 4 to 6.

Peter Rooth: "All of Yngwie's guitars are equipped with DiMarzio HS-3 pickups in the neck and bridge positions. The middle pickups vary from either Fender or DiMarzio units. All necks are scalloped and fitted with Jim Dunlop 6000 frets (1.47mm). Yngwie uses Dunlop 1.5mm picks and Ernie Ball strings. [Note: Yngwie has since changed to Fender Bullets.] Gauges are .008, .011, .014, .022w, .032w, .046w, except on the Gibson Flying V where he uses a .048w since it's detuned to D (actually, it's C# since all guitars are detuned a 1/2 step down to Eb).

He also has Samson Wireless systems on all guitars. From the receiver, the signal goes into a Bradshaw brain (built around 1984-85). The brain takes care of the effects that include Korg Digital Delays for delay and chorus effects, and a Boss BF-2 Flanger. There's also a Rocktron Hush II that he seldom uses. This feeds into one Marshall 50-watt Mark II head for club dates (more heads are used for larger venues). The amp's direct side (dry) drives two 4 x 12-inch bottoms at 8 ohms, while the "effects" side on stage right drives one 4 x 12-inch bottom at 16 ohms.

The amplifier settings are different on each amp because of tonal differences between the amp we use that night and the acoustics of the club/concert hall we play in. But generally the volume is always full up (if possible, it would be up to 11), bass is between 5-7, mid 2-5, treble 6-8, and presence 4-6. Finally, the Gibson Chet Atkins runs through a BOSS CS-3 Compressor/Limiter, and then into a DI box out to the PA."

Malmsteen the Magnificent

Guitar Buyer's Guide Magazine, 1987-88

[Equipment discussion by Ian Ferguson, former Ritchie Blackmore guitar tech and Yngwie's Trilogy/Odyssey guitar tech, as told to Joe Lalaina.]

Lalaina: The Swedish terror had just received his new Bradshaw box when we encountered him in our January 1987 issue. Guitar tech Ian Ferguson laboriously detailed Yngwie's signal-chain details for us then.

Ferguson: I'm in charge of handling all his equipment, not just his guitars. I try to make sure that all the settings on his amps and effects are exactly the way he wants them. He changes his mind just about every gig, so I work with him very closely. Yngwie doesn't just press a switch--he beats the crap out of it. He often breaks foot pedals because he steps on them so hard. He thinks the harder he presses them the better they'll work.

Yngwie has about 10 Fender Stratocasters and an Ovation Legend acoustic model 1767 on the road this tour. Like Ritchie [Blackmore], Yngwie cares more about what a guitar sounds like than what it looks like. Sometimes he'll ask me to change a pickup from one guitar to another less than an hour before a show, or he'll ask me to switch a neck from one guitar to another. I usually never know what he wants to do until the day of the show.

The pickup configuration on all his Strats is basically the same. The neck and bridge pickups are DiMarzio HS-3's and the middle pickups are disconnected because Yngwie doesn't like their sound. The DiMarzios, which Yngwie helped develop, are stacked so they fit in the Fender slot. Nine of the 10 Strats have stock Fender tremolos. Only one has a Floyd Rose. The Fender Tremolos are easier to work with and they sound very good. Blackmore also liked using Fender tremolos. I've never had any problems trying to get them to stay in tune, even though both Ritchie and Yngwie are two of the most violent tremolo users around.

I put a new set of strings on Yngwie's guitars every night. He sweats so much and plays so aggressively that by the end of the show the strings are pretty much dead and have lost much of their sustain. He's currently using Ernie Ball stainless-steel strings, gauges .008, .011, .014, .022, .032, and .044. Yngwie is using a Nady 701 Diversity System on tour. He used to use a cable as a whip and twirl his guitar around his head with it. But now that he's gotten used to playing wireless, he hates using a cable since it restricts his freedom. Blackmore was the exact opposite--he refused to use a wireless because he thought it altered his sound too much.

Yngwie's amp set-up varies from venue to venue. For the bigger shows we'll set up 28 Marshall Mk.11 50-watt heads with 31 Marshall 4x12 cabinets with Celestion G12 25-watt speakers. Basically, there's 10 cabinets on stage-left, 10 cabinets on stage-right, three cabinets under the drum riser and four cabinets on each side of the stage facing in. Not all the amps will be on at the same time, but we have the capability of using them all. A splitter box--which the amps are fed into--enables me to choose various amps at any given time. I plug all the amps into the splitter box and feed them into as many speaker cabinets as I want. No matter where Yngwie is standing, his sound will be there.

Yngwie is now using an effects rack designed by Bob Bradshaw. It includes a Korg KMX-62 six-channel mixer; two Korg SDD 1000 digital delays; a Korg SDD 2000 sampling digital delay; a Hugh II-G noise reduction unit; a Box Octave Divider; a Furman PL-8 light module; and a Marshall 400-watt power amp, model 6040, which is used to take a processed signal back to various cabinets on the stage.

Floor units consist of various Korg units, including chorus, graphic eq, Octave V, and noise gate, all of which are housed in a Korg PME 40X. Eventually, these will all be mounted into the rack. Yngwie also uses Moog Taurus synthesizer bass pedals. Back stage, Yngwie uses two Crate G60-GT amps with Celestion G12 M70-watt speakers to warm up with before a show.

An Yngwie Axology

Guitar World, June 1988

[By Matt Resnicoff, in an interview just before the Odyssey tour .]

For rehearsals and photo sessions, Yngwie Malmsteen still relies completely on the services of a vast collection of Fender Stratocasters and their care and reassembly by technician, baby-sitter, Bradshaw tweaker par excellence, Ian Ferguson. Ferguson maintains the frequently brutalized instruments, which he says include several mid-sixties models outfitted with scalloped fingerboards of either maple or rosewood and powered by DiMarzio HS-3 single-coil pickups. "He's got about 100 guitars at home," muses Fergie, "and so many Fenders that I can't even believe it. Those vintage Strats, though probably won't be brought out on the upcoming tour [Odyssey]. For that, he'll mostly be using his six to a dozen Fender Yngwie malmsteen models, which he really loves because he can just walk into a store and get one, plug in and play straight away; that the way he likes it."

According to John Grunder of Fender, Yngwie probably won't need to take the retail route to procure one of his own signature instruments; the company supplies the guitarist with specimens crafted to Malmsteen's own highly standardized specifications, which Grunder claims have been drawn from a 1961 candy apple red Strat with a maple fingerboard. "We'll be offering the guitars with maple or rosewood fingerboards," he says, "which, like Yngwie's, will be scalloped and fitted with 22 frets. The bridge is an American standard tremolo, which has a two-point pivot and is definitely the best of the non-locking systems."

Yngwie's choice of electronics have also been duplicated for the production Malmsteen model. "We're using DiMarzio HS-3's in the neck and bridge," grunder continues, "because they're quieter and maintain a high output. We've put an American Standard pickup in the middle, which is smacked down flush with the body since he never uses that position.

Yngwie is still using very light string gauges, despite their tendency to bend out of tune in the scooped fret spaced of scalloped fingerboards. "I use.008's," he explains, "but the bottom E string is a .046. Everybody who plays my guitar usually goes out of pitch, but I seem to be able to avoid that. I don't need it that light, but I play a lot on tour and I do a lot of real heavy bending; sometimes from the high C# (E string, ninth fret) up to F# (fourteenth fret), stuff like that. I could do it with a .010, which I use sometimes, actually, but after awhile, if you sweat and you do these kinds of bends, your callouses just kind of die."

Yngwie recorded the acoustic portions of Odyssey with an Alvarez-Yairi DY-92 luteback steel-string, and a CY-127CE nylon string thinline classical guitar, which features a cutaway and a built-in Alvarez pickup system. The guitarist also remain faithful to his custom-designed effects switching system built by Bob Bradshaw, which he's been experimenting with to create long, sweeping repeats to add lushness and dimension to soloing. "It's incredible," he remarks. "I can't believe I've gone so long without it. It's so quiet--no noise whatsoever. I love it."

Yngwie's Axology, 1986

Guitar World, January 1986

[As told to Joe Lalaina.]

Yngwie: I have about forty guitars and most of them are Fender Stratocasters-- I have excessive amounts of everything I like. I've been playing Strats ever since I was about twelve years old. They're the best sounding guitars I've ever played and they look great. A Strat is like a perfectly-shaped woman-- nothing could be better on it.

My favorite Strat broke on stage when we played Denver in June-- the cream-colored one that's on the cover of the Rising Force album. I threw it up in the air and when it was coming down the lights on stage suddenly disappeared. I managed to catch the guitar perfectly, but it slipped out of my hand and smashed onto the floor. The body broke in three pieces and the neck and headstock came off. It really bummed me out. Fortunately, the neck wasn't damaged much; I took it and put it on a '68 sunburst body.

At the moment, my favorite guitar is a '56 baby-blue Strat with a scalloped maple neck and a '54 pickguard. It's got DiMarzio HS-3 pickups in the front and back positions and a Fender '61 pickup in the middle. Onstage I alternate between this guitar and a '61 cream-colored Strat, which I recently got in Los Angeles. I fell in love with it when I saw it. I swapped three of my Strats for it. It's got a mint-green pickguard, a scalloped rosewood neck and the pickup configuration is the same as the baby-blue Strat. Both guitars have stock Fender tremolos.

I have Floyd Rose tremolo units on some of my other guitars, but I prefer Fender tremolos. As long as the strings are stretched out real well, a guitar with a Fender tremolo should stay in tune.

I've recently started using Schecter guitars. Schecter is the only guitar company apart from Fender that I have an endorsement with. Schecter just finished making a couple of special Yngwie Malmsteen models. One of them has a beautiful burgundy-mist metallic finish with a scalloped 22-fret maple neck, a left-handed headstock and three DiMarzio HS-3 pickups.

All my DiMarzio pickups have been modified. They sound a lot like the old Fender pickups, but they don't hum. I don't like to hear a lot of noise when I play. I want my sound to be as clean as I can get. I don't like the sound of the double-coil pickups-- it's hard to get your own, unique sound with them. Besides, double-coils don't cut through as good since they have larger pickup windows, so to speak. They give a split kind of tone, which I don't like.

I use Ernie Ball stainless-steel strings and Fender extra-heavy picks. I usually put a .010 set of strings on a Strat with a deeply scalloped neck. New strings are put on my guitars every night [during the tour].

But I do use the same Marshall amps that I've been using since I've come to America. I got them in Sweden years ago. They sound a lot meatier than the newer models I've tried. If I plugged one of my Strats into a brand-new Marshall, it would sound too thin. The new Marshalls don't have two sets of preamps like the old ones do . . . they took away the bass channel. You can get a better sound with the older ones. When I hit a chord I can hear all the notes, but it's still very dirty and aggressive. And when I play fast my sound is clean. If there's one thing I really like, it's my sound.