Mikey Demus

Mikey Demus is pictured with a Gibson ES-335 Left Hand in a photo from Orangeamps.

"A lovely little acoustic guitar that has been by my side for years. It’s got a great vintage vibe, I wrote a great deal of tunes on this and played it live at our Acoustic set at Download in 2011. Also has a really good sounding Fishman pickup built in."

"Ok, so I’m really on the fence about saying goodbye to this one. I’ve had it since about 2006, and used it on just about every song we’ve ever recorded as a band. It has been my main go to guitar in the studio for over a decade; I must be mad to let this one go. Practically every rhythm part in drop C has featured this guitar, more or less. I went on to refinish this guitar myself, it used to be a kind of uninspiring wine red colour with gold hardware that quickly went grotty after being sweated on one too many times. I completely stripped the guitar by hand and changed it to a Goldtop with mahogany sides and back. It was a real labour of love! I replaced all the hardware with Tonepros nickel parts and changed the pickups to Seymour Duncan JB (bridge) and Pearly Gates (neck), which is my go-to humbucker choice. It plays brilliantly and stays in tune great, which is why its always been my #1 guitar for recording. I also toured it a few times in the last few years - on those bigger headline tours when I can justify carrying 12 guitars and use it for one song! I will probably kick myself to see this one go."

In a photo from a Sevendust concert, Mikey Demus is shown playing an ESP LTD EC Series EC-1000 Electric Guitar.

"They just sent me this. It’s one of their complete production models, I think it’s the anniversary version of the MA.

“That’s got the Benchmark in the bridge and a P-45 single-coil in the neck. They have also put locking Sperzels on it for me so it can handle the drop A# tuning a bit better.”

"This is what Mansons call their MA shape and I'm playing it in drop C."

"This is the one that lights up on the body. I'm using that for one song [Soundthesiren] and it's the artwork from that record. It's kind of tele-ish ..... This one has a Seymour Duncan Little 59 in the bridge and a Pearly Gates in the neck."

"A rare guitar to find in the UK, this one is a real stunner - amazing quilted top. This one went on the road with me for the best part of five years and was my #1 stage guitar between 2005 - 2010. Originally it was a Matt Black guitar, custom painted by the Ernie Ball factory and made to order after my original Axis guitars were stolen from our trailer in San Antonio, TX in 2005. After some serious stage time this guitar developed a lot of road rash, and I noticed it actually had a really beautiful quilted maple top hidden under the opaque finish. So rather than leave it covered up I had it professionally refinished to transparent ocean blue. It remained a studio staple ever since, but once again I decided it was too nice a guitar to bring out of storage once every year or so. It’s got custom PsycoPaf Zebra Humbuckers which are frankly brilliant - the guitar can do everything from a chime to blues to all-out-shred if you push it right. These Musicman guitars are some of the most incredibly engineered guitars I’ve ever picked up, if you’ve ever wanted to dabble on one you could do a lot worse than checking out this one!"

"This one’s seen a fair bit of action. We adopted a second tuning (drop A#, low and heavy!) to our arsenal on ‘Union Black’ and we’ve had it in the back pocket ever since. Around that time I had a hankering for writing some riffs using an actual whammy bar - I’ve always had a whammy pedal in my setup but wanted to try to factor those feels into the riff from the guitar itself. This is the guitar I used to write and record the songs ’Doom Riff’, ‘Kill The Power’, ‘Ninja’ & ‘Shut Your Mouth’. I also used it to record ‘Playing With The Devil’ & ’The Healing’ amongst a few others. Around the time we were touring ‘Kill The Power’ I decided to deck this guitar out with some spray paint customisation, so it features my go-to black and orange colour scheme with the ‘Kill The Power’ fist logo. It’s a total one off and one hell of a guitar."

pictured with this guitar

pictured with this guitar

he talks about his custom tele in this video

he is pictured with this guitar

he plays this guitar in the video