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So , it ’ s funny I kind of must laugh and joke with him about that but anyway , that ’ s the Swiss Pick it ’ s amazing I love it . It ’ s got a great attack it ’ s got great tone . So , I use that and I ’ ve got my own signature model strings with S . I . T . Rusty Cooley 7 string signature set and it ’ s almost like I ’ ve got to go down the line . EMG pickups , Dean Guitars , the strings , Intellitouch tuners these little guys right here the clip on the head stock , awesome ! I ’ ve got my own signature model cable with Spectraflex and on my pedal board I use Morley wah ’ s and I use Maxon OD808 in the flanger and MXR . I ’ m not endorsing MXR but I have one of their gigs on my pedal board and I ’ m currently trying to hook up with TC Electronics so guys if you ’ re listening . I ’ m good friends with John Petrucci and John sent me some contact information so I ’ m trying to get in touch with them . John sent me one of his signature model pedals ’ s that they make called Flashback , no not the Flashback , it ’ s a modeling pedal that ’ s got like flanger and chorus and stuff like that on it and some different things but I ’ m using the Flashback delay and then I use , I just got one of these the new model of this , this is made by Radial Axis it ’ s the Switchbone 2 my pedal board has the original switchbone on it and they just sent me this one to try out so I use that and this is what allows me to go into two different heads . Once I plug-in all my pedals I ’ ll come out of my last pedal on my pedal board and plug it into this and then this will go out into two separate heads and it ’ s got all kind of cool features on it so I can just put an A / B box it ’ s got adjustable gain and mid features and like a mute function so that if I switch my guitars I just hit the button I can just unplug I don ’ t have to hit standby on both heads you know which makes it convenient with live performance and stuff like that so that ’ s really cool I love those and that ’ s pretty much it . I ’ ve got a little Voodoo labs power supply thing that power up all my pedals and I think that ’ s pretty much it . Probably forgetting something so sorry if I forgot you guys You hit on a topic just a few minutes ago , about the state of the music industry , YouTube was brought up by like Nikki Sixx and others that you guys weren ’ t being compensated fairly just like Spotify takes like 10,000 different people to listen to a song before it ’ s considered like one record sale
Right
How do you feel about that ? Yes , well we personally did not release our stuff on Spotify because of that . We did iTunes and Tunecore . Tunecore is a company that will take your stuff on iTunes and stuff like that . That was a better route to go financially because that ’ s just ridiculous you know , I mean really , it ’ s just hard enough to make a living you know and for somebody like that to just want to take that much of it and play the hell out of it and most of the kids aren ’ t even buying it anyway the music industry is crazy I don ’ t even know where to begin on it . It ’ s a whole new thing because with technology now you can record your album at home you almost don ’ t need a record label but at the same time that means you ’ ve got to get out there and do everything on your own financially you know which most of the time getting out on the road they don ’ t have the money to begin with so then that ’ s a whole new thing and when everybody is ripping your stuff off and you aren ’ t getting paid well how are you making money ? Well it goes back to completely making money off touring so you ’ ve got to have money to put into touring and when you don ’ t have money to put in the van or the trailer all that stuff so it ’ s crazy out there . I don ’ t know what ’ s going to become of it because you know I had some friends that are in big high-profile bands that the way they make their money is totally different from when they made it you know now because of the way things are . It almost seems impossible for a band to ever get to that level like Van Halen or Ozzy or any of the bands we grew up listening to like that massive level of where you ’ re playing in arenas and things like that . It ’ s almost impossible it seems nowadays . It is
You know what I mean ? Music has changed a lot too so . Is iTunes and Apple Radio that better for you financially than Spotify or Amazon ?
Well , I don ’ t know . I ’ m not doing the Spotify thing but if I ’ m on their it ’ s certainly not because I put it on their somebody else did and I ’ m not aware of it . So , somebody is making some money out there and it ’ s not me
In 2008 , you remastered your 2003 release ? Right . Yes , the 2008 release was different just a remix and remaster of the original release . We re-did the drums . The mix
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