John Dolmayan

Dolmayan's Starclassic Bubinga set from Tama.

Used by Dolmayan with his Tama kit.

Used by Dolmayan with his Tama kit.

Listed here as using this crash cymbal.

Listed here as using this splash cymbal.

Listed here as using these sticks.

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.

Dolmayan's pedal of choice.

in that photo it shows he is either using G2 or G1s and judging on the lightly used but cratery heads it makes me think its probably a G1, these are known for a very punchy sound.