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