the way it has for him . He has some really awesome guitar players , that I ’ m a huge fan of , playing his amps . And some of them even play the Chimera amp , which is cool to see . He ’ s just ‘ the man ’! He builds the best stuff . I almost don ’ t believe that it ’ s not a vintage amp . I don ’ t want to be that ‘ vintage snob ’ guy , and in a lot of ways , I ’ m not . But when it came to amps , I had a hard time finding anything that I connected with , other than old AC30 ’ s and old 60 ’ s Fenders . Everything that I found inspiring was all old stuff . It really wasn ’ t until I played his amp that I felt like I finally found something that had the mojo and the vibe of the vintage amps I loved , but it was a little more Hi-Fi . It just has that sound that I hear in my head . Chris comes out with new stuff that just sounds so good . That guy really knows how to build inspiring pieces of gear .
[ WM ] You may be the first worship guitarist with signature guitar pickups . How did that come together ? [ Michael ] It just kind of happened . Casey , from Veritas Guitars , started a pickup company ( Pioneer Pickups ) to make pickups for his guitars , which is a pretty normal thing for builders these days . He approached me about doing a signature pickup . We had talked about maybe doing a signature guitar , or something along those lines . But honestly , I just don ’ t feel like I need a signature guitar . I feel a little hesitant to put my name on one . But when he talked about pickups I thought , “ Hey , that might be kind of cool .” Not that it even needed to have my name on it . At the end of the day I just thought it be cool to collaborate and make a pickup that we would both be super into . That ’ s all it really was , so we started talking about it .
There have been two different versions of humbuckers that I have ended up liking over the years . The PAF style that every pickup company does , and then there are these new , lower output humbuckers that some companies are doing . They ’ re kind of for people who like single-coils and hate humbuckers . I wanted to marry those two ideas . I think a lot of
PAF ’ s can get a little muddy and woofy , and a lot of those low output humbuckers don ’ t have much punch , or the harmonic content that a great PAF has . I didn ’ t want to copy either one of those pickups , but really wanted to kind of meet in the middle as much as we could . I wanted the clarity and articulation behind some of the low output humbuckers , but with a little more output and a little more punch and harmonic content , like from a PAF .
Casey was like , “ Alright ! I think I ’ ve got an idea on how to make that .” He did , and honestly this kind of freaked me out , but the first set of pickups he sent me sounded unbelievable ! I thought , “ We can ’ t have gotten it right on the first version , could we ?” I mean , you hear about guys like Steve Vai coming out with a pickup , and they worked on it for three years or something . I couldn ’ t believe that the first pickups Casey sent me were really that good , but they were !
At Bethel , our Front of House guy , Chris , who is
38 June 2018 WorshipMusician . com