Mikey Demus

An MXR Custom Comp from the personal collection of Mikey Demus of Skindred.

A Visual Sound Route 66 Overdrive pedal from the personal collection of Mikey Demus of Skindred.

An Electro-Harmonix Soul Food from the personal collection of Mikey Demus of Skindred.

A Digitech Whammy IV WH4 from the personal collection of Mikey Demus of Skindred.

A Digitech Whammy WH1 from the personal collection of Mikey Demus of Skindred.

A Line 6 M5 from the personal collection of Mikey Demus of Skindred.

An MXR Phase 90 from the personal collection of Mikey Demus of Skindred.

"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

this is Mikey's signature strap

he talks about his custom tele in this video

at 0:55, he states his guitar uses sperzel locking tuners

he is pictured with this guitar

this is his signature string set he uses

this pedal is part of his pedalboard pictured with him

this pedal is part of his pedalboard pictured with him

this pedal is part of his pedalboard pictured with him

this pedal is part of his pedalboard pictured with him

he plays this guitar in the video

Mikey Demus uses the Seymour Duncan STHR1-N Hot Rails Tele Neck Pickup, as noted on the Seymour Duncan website.

Mikey Demus is noted for using the Seymour Duncan SH-PG1N Pearly Gates Neck pickup, as highlighted on the Seymour Duncan website.

“I use Hot Rails for Tele in the bridge and neck of my main (silver/black) Telecaster, my other Tele (blonde/white) has a Hot for Tele in the neck and a Rails in the bridge too. Both of those are tuned to Drop C, the majority of our songs are in that tuning. In my Strats there’s a Custom 5 (which I’m looking to swap for a JB to try out) in the bridge of the one guitar and a Hot Rails in the bridge of the other two. My live Strats are tuned to Drop A# right now. The Seymour Duncans I use in all my live guitars deal with both of the lower tunings perfectly.”

"I’m the proud user and abuser of both the Seymour Duncan Pickup Booster & Shape Shifter pedals. The Pickup Booster gives any amp that extra gain (without thinning out the low end of your tone like some classic overdrive pedals do) meaning you don’t have to push the amp to trouser-flapping volumes, and is an essential weapon when flying in to hired-backline shows. You never know what you’re gonna get from some rental amps, this little box gives it that well needed surge, it’s like steroids for a tube amp. It’s saved my sound for two summers when flying into random festivals and such. The Shape Shifter is probably the most versatile Tremolo out there; the controls allow you to dial in some insane throbs and pulses, the rate and depth both feature a range that is far wider than any other I’ve used, and the shape knob is an ingenious first for me. The tap/ratio control is a benchmark that other brands should wake up and compete with. All that and they’re built like tanks that take an endless beating. Can’t say enough good things about ’em.”

"I’m the proud user and abuser of both the Seymour Duncan Pickup Booster & Shape Shifter pedals. The Pickup Booster gives any amp that extra gain (without thinning out the low end of your tone like some classic overdrive pedals do) meaning you don’t have to push the amp to trouser-flapping volumes, and is an essential weapon when flying in to hired-backline shows. You never know what you’re gonna get from some rental amps, this little box gives it that well needed surge, it’s like steroids for a tube amp. It’s saved my sound for two summers when flying into random festivals and such. The Shape Shifter is probably the most versatile Tremolo out there; the controls allow you to dial in some insane throbs and pulses, the rate and depth both feature a range that is far wider than any other I’ve used, and the shape knob is an ingenious first for me. The tap/ratio control is a benchmark that other brands should wake up and compete with. All that and they’re built like tanks that take an endless beating. Can’t say enough good things about ’em.”

This is the first one Manson made for me and the other one I play in drop C tuning. It’s a swamp ash body with a metal finish and stained flame maple neck. I wanted it to look like a piece of brushed aluminium like the Electric Guitar Company guitars. Tim Stark is the head luthier at Manson and he found a way to etch it so it looks like it looks brushed but it’s a piece of wood!

“This is the one that lights up on the body. I’m using that for one song [Sound The Siren] and it’s the artwork from that record. It’s kind of Tele-ish. It’s a fun one.

“I don’t think any guitarist sets out to do things digitally and I was old-school with a tube amp with pedals, but just for the effects side of things and having everything this is great.

"I’m using the Orange PPC 412s with Vintage 30s so completely stock. I’m using this SamSystems Integral close mic’ing. It’s a dynamic mic with a housing that lives over the speaker. After fitting it the mic is in the same position every time. It’s the same as the Kemper, you move to that stuff for consistency because you want it to sound the same every night.”