Daron Malakian

The "Army Man" is a crusty old Western Electric frankenstein broadcast tube compressor I dragged out of an old radio guy's garage in Pasadena around 20 years ago. It has exposed wiring which I have not covered up, making it extremely dangerous when children or certain drummers are around. (hah!)

I have not done any maintenance to make this ancient compressor work properly. In fact, I don't want it to work properly because it makes anything you run through sound furry and explosive. For example, I'll route a mono drum room mic through it for extreme compression. Doing this makes the drums feel exciting without accentuating the high end on the cymbals. I might also go for the same effect on vocals and guitars, but in these cases it must be pushed to the absolute extreme to deliver the goods!

During a session, Serge from SOAD stuck a little toy army man in it, thus the nickname "Army Man" was born. That little toy soldier has has lived in there ever since and he must be doing a great job of guarding those precious components, it has never let us down.

This compressor was used all over the System Of A Down record, so much so that it probably would have been impossible to create the overall sound of that album without it.

Used by Daron since its release. Daron's tech is switching from clean to dirt tones with it at the side of the stage so Daron's doesn't have to care about switching amps on stage. Clean sounds come from a Marshall Plexi head or a Divided by 13 FTR-37 head and dirt sounds from a modded Marshall Plexi head.

Daron Malakian used a SGI 44 on his pedalboard during the System of a Down shows in May 2011.

An AmpRX Power Station 2400 - 1200W/2400W Rackmount Voltage Regulator can be seen in Daron's Rack (Live at Download Festival, June 2017)

In the video titled "Rig Rundown: System of a Down's Daron Malakian" by Premier Guitar on YouTube, at the 8:05 mark, an Akai Professional RED MPK MINI MKII can be seen attached to Daron Malakian's pedalboard.

At 33:26 in the Premier Guitar "Rig Rundown" video, Patrick Lachman, the tech for Daron Malakian, discusses the amp rack setup, where a Furman PL-Pro DMC Power Conditioner is visibly positioned at the bottom of the rack.

In a video by Premier Guitar titled "Rig Rundown: System of a Down's Daron Malakian," at the 33:26 mark, an MXR Smart Gate® Pro M235 rack unit is visible in Daron Malakian’s amp rack, confirming his use of this specific gear.

In the video titled "Rig Rundown: System of a Down's Daron Malakian" by Premier Guitar, a Radial Engineering JX44 V2 Guitar, Amp, & FX Signal Manager is visibly included in Daron Malakian’s amp rack at the 33:26 mark.

In this article detailing the production process for Toxicity (and by proxy Steal This Album, as the songs were tracked alongside Toxicity's tracks), Daron's guitar tone was ran through the Urei Universal Audio 1176LN "Blackface" Peak Limiter:

"Recording Malakian’s guitar tracks was relatively straight-ahead, because he doesn’t like to play through effects pedals. His signal went through a combination of Marshall and Mesa Boogie cabinets and heads. 'The Mesa gave us the teeth, and the Marshall gave us the body,' Schiffman explains. 'The two together made a big, full, nice sound.' He put a 57 and an 87 on each cabinet, taking care that they were phased correctly, and then ran them through a pair of black-faced 1176s."