Paul Masvidal

"I pretty much borrowed the rig from Tosin [Abasi] and Javier [Reyes] of Animals As Leaders [laughs]. I actually used the Axe 2, which I also borrowed from a friend of mine. He had this cabinet set up with different things that were kind of interesting."

You’ve been around in the scene for a number of years. There have been advances in technology, especially in live performance. Has that aspect affected your musicianship in any way? I’ve always been a gearhead and a technology nut. So I did use the Ultra on this record for a lot of it. I also used some organic amps. I pretty much borrowed the rig from Tosin [Abasi] and Javier [Reyes] of Animals As Leaders [laughs]. I actually used the Axe 2, which I also borrowed from a friend of mine. He had this cabinet set up with different things that were kind of interesting.

Gear Gods: Whenever I get the chance to talk to bands that were playing years and years ago, I think about how the tones that were available then were so different, and so much more limited. Cynic was trailblazing the ability to jump between so many different genres, which was a lot harder to do back in the early ‘90s. What were you and Jason playing through on the Focus tours? And how difficult was it to achieve the breadth of tones?

Paul Masvidal: Was I running an MP-1? I think I was. Yeah, at that time I was a rack guy. I had a 15-space rackmount. My main preamp was an ADA MP-1 and I used an ADA midi controller. I had a Roland GM-70 guitar synth, which was really cool back then because it had Portamento [pitch glide between notes, instead of set intervals]. You could assign custom midi controllers to the unit on your guitar. It was just really hip for its time. It was very clunky in terms of a big, bulky thing, but what you could do with it was phenomenal. It just had this natural, flawed, organic kind of thing that was very cool at the time.

And I had a Digitech, and then a Rane: different EQs that were programmable. So the EQs were constantly changing the guitar synth. And then with the guitar synth I had a, I think, a Yamaha TX 81Z, which was an FM analog old-school synth module. And I think I was using a Rocktron Intellifex back then. I had a bunch of different stuff, and it was all interacting. It was kind of a midi nightmare, but it was functional.

Gear Gods: Whenever I get the chance to talk to bands that were playing years and years ago, I think about how the tones that were available then were so different, and so much more limited. Cynic was trailblazing the ability to jump between so many different genres, which was a lot harder to do back in the early ‘90s. What were you and Jason playing through on the Focus tours? And how difficult was it to achieve the breadth of tones?

Paul Masvidal: Was I running an MP-1? I think I was. Yeah, at that time I was a rack guy. I had a 15-space rackmount. My main preamp was an ADA MP-1 and I used an ADA midi controller. I had a Roland GM-70 guitar synth, which was really cool back then because it had Portamento [pitch glide between notes, instead of set intervals]. You could assign custom midi controllers to the unit on your guitar. It was just really hip for its time. It was very clunky in terms of a big, bulky thing, but what you could do with it was phenomenal. It just had this natural, flawed, organic kind of thing that was very cool at the time.

And I had a Digitech, and then a Rane: different EQs that were programmable. So the EQs were constantly changing the guitar synth. And then with the guitar synth I had a, I think, a Yamaha TX 81Z, which was an FM analog old-school synth module. And I think I was using a Rocktron Intellifex back then. I had a bunch of different stuff, and it was all interacting. It was kind of a midi nightmare, but it was functional.

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