Nuno Bettencourt

Nuno talks about his Original N4 Guitar and how it was custom made for him, while using it in the video.

According to this rundown, done with Music Radar...

"I have a six-string solid [mahogany back and sides] guitar that I’m using for Midnight Express and More Than Words as the acoustic on this tour.

"For Midnight Express, especially, it’s a little bit faster. Also, it’s what I wrote and recorded Midnight on, so I just wanted to use the same guitar.”

In this photo, Bettencourt is visible playing ESP George Lynch Kamikaze 1.

Nuno plays a Washburn N7 when he is touring with Rihanna.

Washburn Guitars and world renowned guitarist, Nuno Bettencourt, introduce the EA20SNB Signature stage ready acoustic/electric guitar.

Best known for his ground breaking work in Extreme and currently touring with Rihanna, Nuno Bettencourt is truly a guitar hero, inspiring millions of guitarists around the world. While primarily know for his electric work on his Washburn N4 Signature guitar, Nuno and Extreme came to prominence with the acoustic hit, "More Than Words", which featured the guitarist playing a Washburn Festival Series acoustic/electric guitar. Nuno has continued to feature Washburn Festival Series guitars in his acoustically driven songs to this day.

Nuno playing "I Wonder" with a P4. The writeup below is from Washburn on the P4

Chicago, January, 2013 - Washburn Guitars brings back an old friend with the re-release of the P4, one of Washburn's popular models from the '90s.

Built in the USA Custom Shop, the P4 features a solid mahogany body with a carved, bound maple top, and a mahogany neck with a bound ebony fingerboard and pearl teardrop inlays. The top shelf hardware includes a chrome TonePros® tune-o-matic style bridge with Schaller® fine tuning tailpiece. Premium Grover® 18:1 chrome tuners are utilized to ensure micro fine tuning stability. Seymour Duncan '59 pickups are controlled by 1 volume and 1 tone knob and chosen with a 3-way toggle switch. The Buzz Feiten Tuning System® ensures accurate intonation all the way up the fingerboard.

The Custom Shop has gone to great lengths to make sure the current P4 is a faithful recreation of the original P4; producing thick, meaty tones ideal for classic rock, blues and jazz. The P4 is available in Tiffany Blue and Silver Sparkle.

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Nuno Bettencourt in Monster Of Rock Cruise plays with The Atomic Punks

PRS CE 24 Maple Quilted Red

He can be seen playing the guitar throughout the video starting clearly at the thirty seven second mark

For almost 3 decades, guitar virtuoso Nuno Bettencourt and Washburn have paired up to design and craft the thrilling guitar players main axes. His celebrated N4 and the special variations of this revered instrument have been on stages all over the world. From his time as lead guitarist for the Platinum selling band Extreme, as an acclaimed solo musician, as Musical Director for the multi Grammy Award winning songwriter Rihanna or as a member of Steve Vai’s touring super group of guitarists Generation Axe, Nuno’s N4 has been there. But in the last several years, it’s not just the N4 that has joined Nuno on these incredible adventures and now, Washburn and Nuno are pleased to present the companion axe to his beloved N4; the 4N.

The Team at the Washburn Custom Shop went to painstaking lengths to capture the uniqueness of Nuno’s 4N. Chris Meade, the Head at WCS not just studied the instrument in hand but also designed and made a set of custom tools so he could accurately measure the neck! From that point forward, every effort has been made to get the feel and look captured expertly; the results of which are obvious with instrument in hand.

Crafted with an alder body, ebony fretboard and birds-eye maple neck; the 4N features the Stephens Extended Cutaway, a Seymour Duncan ’59 pickup in the neck position and Bill Lawrence L-500 in the bridge. A Floyd Rose Original Tremolo unit is paired with a Kahler nut and a single volume control and three-way selector switch round out the electronic setup.

Whether you’re one of the hardcore Nuno fans the world over, or an accomplished musician looking for a unique and finely crafted instrument to compliment your playing style; the new Washburn 4N Signature Nuno Bettencourt guitar is an excellent option to add to your collection.

The Washburn Nuno Bettencourt Nele Standard is the latest collaboration between Nuno Bettencourt and Washburn. This bold instrument is inspired by some great vintage instruments, but it’s far from traditional. It delivers more tonal options and a feel that is far faster and enticing than its forerunner. The Washburn Nele Standard features a natural-grain swamp ash body, equipped with a Seymour Duncan Vintage Stack in the neck position, a Bill Lawrence L-250 bridge pickup and an innovative 6-way “Freeway Ultra” switch. The new tone switch gives players access to the three common settings and then three additional hot-rod options. Each Nele is custom-built in the Washburn USA custom shop.

“I’m excited about the Nele and its multitude of tones. Not only the traditional approach to the single coils, but the six position switch opens up new creative possibilities. I’ve already used it in the new Extreme album. ” – Nuno

Nuno talks about his amp and how it was made.

Nuno talks about his amplifier and how he uses it.

In this Gibson guide how to get the tone of Nuno Bettencourt, it was mentioned that he used more Twin Reverbs.

"Of course, being a rocker in the ’80s and ’90s, Bettencourt had a nice complement of Marshall amps backing him up on stage every night. But Marshall wasn’t the only amp he relied on; he also had some Fender Twin Reverbs for those softer moments."

Nuno used to play with an ADA MP-1 as pictured.

We can see the wall of marshalls behind nuno (which probably also are used by yngwie and zakk) as part of the SuperGroup Generation Axe Tour. Traditional Hard rock sound through the marshall jcm 2000 stack in this video

The Hughes and Kettner TriAmp is a 3-channel, 150-watt valve amp head with 2 voices per channel (1A: 50s Californian Clean, 1B: 60s British Clean, 2A: 70s British Lead, 2B: 80s Brown Sound, 3A: 90s Californian High Gain, 3B: Modern-Day High Gain).

Subsequent versions include the Mk2, the Mk2 Alex Lifeson model, and the current Mk3 version (http://www.musiciansfriend.com/amplifiers-effects/hughes-kettner-triamp-mark-3-150w-tube-guitar-amp-head).

In interview done with Music Radar, Bettencourt says.

“The pedalboard that I’m using... well, I’m not much on effects anyway, and with Extreme it’s always about the real minimalistic approach.

"Even though it’s a multi-effects unit, I use four patches for 90 percent of the songs. There’s just a plain one, then a little bit of chorus on another one for all the chorus hooks that I play on.

"The third patch is like a solo boost - more for the volume and adding delay for the solo. The fourth is always a flanger. I just use that to go to for ‘vibe’ when I feel like that. That’s all that I really have on there. other than a few delay changes, that’s basically it.”

In interview with Music Radar, Bettencourt says about his OC-2...

"There are songs like Comfortably Dumb and stuff off of [2008 album] Saudades De Rock, or whatever, that I’ll use it for if the songs were written that way.”

Although he didn't mention anything about this tuner, it is still visible in his photo in interview done for Music Radar.

He said this about his noise gate pedal...

"Other than that it’s just a noise gate and I think that’s it. Yeah, I think it’s just the noise gate there.”

This selector is another pedal (sort of) that he uses according to his interview for Music Radar.

Nuno played with two Boss DD-3s (DD-3 was the latest Boss Delay pedal at the time).

Nuno used to use a Boss LS-2 with his two Boss DD-3s as pictured.

"I used to use the RAT pedal back in the day but I put what it did in my signature amp at the front end. If I use a Marshall amp, I still use the RAT." - Paraphrased from the video at around 4:30