# Robert Trujillo's Studio Rig



## Screamingdaisy (Dec 5, 2022)

This was posted over on TB. Thought I'd repost for those who are interested.


----------



## cardinal (Dec 6, 2022)

Legit old Blue Line SVT. Looks loud


----------



## Crungy (Dec 6, 2022)

I wonder if they were using the 2 Pro as well? Either way there's a ton of tone there.... And about 250+ lbs of amp lol


----------



## TedEH (Dec 6, 2022)

I'm kinda surprised it's not all just Fractal stuff for the whole band at this point.


----------



## Screamingdaisy (Dec 6, 2022)

TedEH said:


> I'm kinda surprised it's not all just Fractal stuff for the whole band at this point.


I’m not. Most of the jam/rehearsal footage I see is with real amps.

From what I’ve read,

James used the Jose Marshall, a Diezel and a modded Mesa Mark II. 

Kirk used a modded Marshall, a Friedman and some Randall. 

On every track each usually was playing through several different amps, each with numerous mics placed in different spots. During editing and mixing they decided which to use and often used a mix of amps so a riff on the album might be 3 amps you are hearing. 

On several solos Kirk actually used a Fractal as they were all pleased with the tone and it made the process easier by an order of magnitude. 

Rob used Ampeg for most stuff and some Mesa.


----------



## TedEH (Dec 6, 2022)

Screamingdaisy said:


> on the album


I'm sure the band is "old-school" enough to still use stacks of amps like that for albums, but I was under the impression that for live situations they had mostly swapped to digital solutions. You never know these days whether an amp is real or digital anymore (save for posts like this with photos).


----------



## Crungy (Dec 6, 2022)

That's what I was thinking too, digital for live. Having less weight to ship gig to gig for their monumental stages has to save some money.


----------



## Screamingdaisy (Dec 6, 2022)

Crungy said:


> That's what I was thinking too, digital for live. Having less weight to ship gig to gig for their monumental stages has to save some money.


Honestly, based on what his sound tech has said, it seemed like they did it more for the consistency. With the old setup the A rig and B rig always sounded different and would need to be tweaked separately, plus having different rigs on different continents, and if they ever had to replace a tube it would change the sound. With the Axe, whatever they did on one could be saved and ported over to the others, which saved them a lot of time.


----------



## Screamingdaisy (Dec 6, 2022)

Crungy said:


> I wonder if they were using the 2 Pro as well? Either way there's a ton of tone there.... And about 250+ lbs of amp lol


 I think the BDDI is running into the 2 Pro.


----------



## HeHasTheJazzHands (Dec 6, 2022)

TedEH said:


> I'm kinda surprised it's not all just Fractal stuff for the whole band at this point.


They do use them live.
EDIT: Had to redo this because I was off.  All 3 of them use 3 units live. Kirk and James use one clean, one dirty, and one backup, and switch between the two mains like an analog rig so there's no gaps. Makes sense because even with scenes I was getting gaps on my 3.
I GUESS with Rob, it's a dirty "amp", clean "amp", and a backup. He used to run an Ampeg clean(ish?) and a Recto dirty for his recorded and live rigs.


----------



## CTID (Dec 7, 2022)

i'd have to imagine that the actual musical instrument/amplifier section of metallica's live show is probably one of the smallest and lightest portions of what they are shipping around compared to lighting, sound, pyro, etc anyway. consistency seems like the better argument for going digital for live when you have a legion of techs and roadies who are moving and setting everything up anyway


----------



## TonyFlyingSquirrel (Dec 7, 2022)

Road case after road case of power and lighting cables is what I remember from touring. Crazy how much those get overlooked in comparison to the equipment they connect to.


----------



## SCJR (Dec 8, 2022)

CTID said:


> i'd have to imagine that the actual musical instrument/amplifier section of metallica's live show is probably one of the smallest and lightest portions of what they are shipping around compared to lighting, sound, pyro, etc anyway. consistency seems like the better argument for going digital for live when you have a legion of techs and roadies who are moving and setting everything up anyway


Not sure what they were using then but when I saw them in 2017 the stage was empty. Again not privy to their rig but I can't imagine they're shipping the kitchen sink around the world at this point.


----------



## CTID (Dec 8, 2022)

SCJR said:


> Not sure what they were using then but when I saw them in 2017 the stage was empty. Again not privy to their rig but I can't imagine they're shipping the kitchen sink around the world at this point.


maybe. in all likelihood they probably have live rigs in storage across every continent so that they don't have to ship everything but i'm also just guessing. i'm sure things have tapered down a bit from 10-20 years ago but i would still wager that the actual "musical instrument" portion of their live show is probably pretty small compared to everything else.


----------



## SCJR (Dec 8, 2022)

Wow, yeah I never even thought of them just having rigs in place wherever they go


----------



## HeHasTheJazzHands (Dec 8, 2022)

CTID said:


> maybe. in all likelihood they probably have live rigs in storage across every continent so that they don't have to ship everything but i'm also just guessing. i'm sure things have tapered down a bit from 10-20 years ago but i would still wager that the actual "musical instrument" portion of their live show is probably pretty small compared to everything else.





SCJR said:


> Wow, yeah I never even thought of them just having rigs in place wherever they go


I think I recall Cliff one time saying they had Metallca (or hinted at them) order like... 14 Axes at once one time? So yeah it could be a case of them having already-made rigs for multiple regions.


----------



## Screamingdaisy (Dec 8, 2022)

SCJR said:


> Not sure what they were using then but when I saw them in 2017 the stage was empty. Again not privy to their rig but I can't imagine they're shipping the kitchen sink around the world at this point.


They started using AxeFX in 2013 for the Antarctica gig.

There was an interesting series of threads on the Factal forum and elsewhere as Metallica’s techs were looking for experience, took a fan generated set of presets, then reworked them so they would work live.

It was enlightening the different level these guys were working at when it came to dialling in live sound. Just the sheer amount of analysis to compare and align signals while most regular joes can’t even get two patches to volume match.


----------



## RevDrucifer (Dec 8, 2022)

Screamingdaisy said:


> They started using AxeFX in 2013 for the Antarctica gig.
> 
> There was an interesting series of threads on the Factal forum and elsewhere as Metallica’s techs were looking for experience, took a fan generated set of presets, then reworked them so they would work live.
> 
> It was enlightening the different level these guys were working at when it came to dialling in live sound. Just the sheer amount of analysis to compare and align signals while most regular joes can’t even get two patches to volume match.



Yep, it’s eventually how we ended up with the IIC++ model, it was a request of James’ tech. (Which I’m thankful for as it’s one of the main amps I use).

What’s been pretty funny is seeing people toss up a video from 2015 and say “Listen how much better they were when they were before the Fractals”…..and they’re playing through Fractals.


----------



## Werecow (Dec 8, 2022)

They had amps and cabs again all over the stage recently. Maybe just for their own personal feeling though, and the rest of the stadium AxeFX?


----------



## RevDrucifer (Dec 9, 2022)

Werecow said:


> They had amps and cabs again all over the stage recently. Maybe just for their own personal feeling though, and the rest of the stadium AxeFX?




Yeah, a bunch of people dissected this when it happened. Those are the same amps they wheel out for the fan club shows in San Fran, they’ve had a those since the St. Anger days with the green LEDs in the amps. None of the cabs are mic’d onstage and overall, the amount of routing + iso cabs offstage they’d need to pull it off seems like quite the amount of effort for a one-off show, opposed to wheeling out a bunch of dummy amps and plugging into the same rig they’ve been using for nearly a decade. 

Didn’t stop the tone comments though, “This is what it’s like when they play with tooooobs!”


----------



## Shawn (Dec 9, 2022)

Nice rig he's got there.


----------



## Andromalia (Dec 10, 2022)

Screamingdaisy said:


> Just the sheer amount of analysis to compare and align signals while most regular joes can’t even get two patches to volume match.


To be fair, the analysis tools probably cost more than the axe fx themselves.


----------



## TonyFlyingSquirrel (Dec 10, 2022)

For all we know, these are all prop heads & cabs even with the lights on. The consistency for live shows that they get with their Fractals will likely trump any reason to tamper with that by going back to the older tour racks and actual amps to maintain.
Regardless, that is a monster tone in that vid, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if it was 100% Fractal.


----------



## tedtan (Dec 10, 2022)

Screamingdaisy said:


> They started using AxeFX in 2013 for the Antarctica gig.
> 
> There was an interesting series of threads on the Factal forum and elsewhere as Metallica’s techs were looking for experience, took a fan generated set of presets, then reworked them so they would work live.
> 
> It was enlightening the different level these guys were working at when it came to dialling in live sound. Just the sheer amount of analysis to compare and align signals while most regular joes can’t even get two patches to volume match.


I looked for the old thread, but couldn’t find it.

Any chance you remember what kind of analysis they were doing?


----------



## HeHasTheJazzHands (Dec 10, 2022)

Yeah not a single cab is mic'd on that backline. As said before, those Rectos are definitely St Anger-era dummy cabs. Probably a bunch of other dummy cabs as well.


...I don't get the aesthetic though. 

EDIT:... Actually thinking about it, maybe it's some kinda gear nerd insider thing? I just realized it's every amp that Metallica has used in the past (JMP100, JCM800, Mark IIC+, Recto, Ampegs, etc)


----------



## Screamingdaisy (Dec 11, 2022)

tedtan said:


> I looked for the old thread, but couldn’t find it.
> 
> Any chance you remember what kind of analysis they were doing?


They didn't get into the nuts and bolts of it. From what I remember, they discussed looking at both signals (real and Fractal) in DAW and did comparisons until they had the Fractal dialled in, and they had to do some time and phase adjustments to get it to perform similarly. It was essentially full custom builds, and I assumed the labour alone was costing them a fortune.

My memory is likely a merger of multiple sources at this point. There was the thread, some interviews on Youtube with FOH and guitar tech, etc... plus it's been ten years and my memory isn't what it used to be.


----------



## Andromalia (Dec 12, 2022)

If that's the same video I thinbk it is, you remember pretty well. I also remember one of the topics was, "our stages are 150m wide and cable length is a real problem with all the emissions around cause we can't do everything by VHF". The fret price was also a factor, even for a band like Metallica, especially considering that they mostly toured Europe back then because the € was strong to the $. Notice now that it's somewhat reversed, they tour the US.


----------



## AkiraSpectrum (Dec 17, 2022)

Godin built him a new bass that he will use and then auction off after the performance:

.


----------

