Metropoulos Forum

by jtm-45 on Tue Jan 13, 2009 6:45 am

Hey Guys-

Looks like MK has it pretty much right. I just took the complete tour when they were playing the Forum.

Here's the basic rig layout:

Malcolm has two heads onstage - a 70's Super Bass and a JTM45-100. Those power four cabs on his side of the stage. The one they are sitting on, the one immediately to his right and then two on top closet to him. Behind that cab line are two more racks containing three Marshalls each. Most are spares, but a couple are running the remaining cabs on his side, a pair of cabs on Angus' side and an ISO cab under the stage which is miked up with a Beta 57 inside a closed box. He's using Lectrosonics wireless to a custom splitter that sends his signal to the heads. Very straightforward and super clean sounding. Cleaner than most guys could stand it. The other thing is that he uses Vintage 30s in all of his cabs if I recall. Angus uses the Greenback G12-M reissues. That helps them to stand apart tonally, also. Four of the cabs on the bottom on Mal's side are powered by Angus' heads, so when he goes over there he can hear himself.

Angus has all of his amps offstage as MK mentioned. There are three racks of four heads if I recall. One has a Wizard in the bottom but it is rarely used. The onstage cabs are all on and each of the seven heads used powers a pair of cabs including his ISO cab under the stage which is identical to Mal's except he is using the Greenback RIs in his. There are a pair of mics up on each side of the stage which the FOH guy moves at random. The sound coming out of the PA is a combination between those onstage mics and the ISO cab under the stage. Angus has a very light touch and uses a similar setup of a wireless going to a splitter, with no other signal processing at all. He even plays with the same pick all night long which he picks up if he drops it (funny). He turns his guitar up to 10 and when he hears the pot click at the end of the rotation, he backs it off to about 7 and that is his rhythm tone. For leads all he does is turn it up to 10. That's it.

The rig is so straightforward it's actually kinda refreshing, but every cabinet onstage is on and when you add in the drum sidefills onstage (right next to the 4x12s) it is absolutely deafening onstage...but because he plays so clean, you can hear every note. The heads are all turned up to around 6-7. All 100-watters. Rick (from Wizard) is on the road with them and fixes any heads that break. He also has two racks of Wizards on standby if there was a need, but there are numerous Marshall backups in each rack. The Wizards were used a bit on the album (Black Ice) but they aren't really being used live, much to Rick's chagrin. They are Marshall guys through and through....and who can blame them?

There you go....

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Re: Which Marshalls do AC/DC favor??
by jtm-45 on Tue Jan 13, 2009 5:52 pm

No problem. I checked my notes and I got the speaks backwards. Angus is using the Vintage 30s and Mal is using the Greenback RI. So there!

If you're interested, Mal uses Gibson 12-52 strings and Fender Heavy Picks. Ang uses Gibson 9-42 string and Fender Extra Heavy picks.

There will be an article and photos of their rig in the next Guitar Edge Magazine which comes out in a couple weeks. Check it out!