The Used’s Joey Bradford - GEAR MASTERS Ep. 576 - video Dailymotion

Digital Tour Bus

Become a member (it's FREE) at https://digtb.us/signup Buy official DTB merch at http://digtb.us/merch  On this episode of DTB’s “Gear Masters”, Joey Bradford, guitarist of the rock band, The Used, shows off the gear that he uses onstage, while on the band's "25 Year Anniversary Tour." The Used is currently supporting their newest album, MEDZ.  PLAY THE SAME GEAR: Ernie Ball Music Man Stingray Electric Guitar (Grey in Drop A#) - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/K099Q9 Ernie Ball Music Man Stingray Electric Guitar(Cream in Drop B) - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/K099Q9 Ernie Ball Music Man Stingray Electric Guitar(All-Black in Drop C) - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/K099Q9 Ernie Ball Music Man Stingray Electric Guitar(All-White) - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/K099Q9 Ernie Ball Music Man Sabre (Drop D) - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/mObbQ1 Gibson Custom Shop Explorer Electric Guitar (Black & Gold) - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/qzNNPL Fender Jazzmaster Electric Guitar (White w/ black pickguard & P90 pickups) - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/Dy114d Taylor Grand Pacific Acoustic Guitar - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/9LQQK3 Ibanez Acoustic-Electric Guitar - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/POkk5Q Ernie Ball Skinny Top Heavy Bottom Strings (10–52) - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/55LL4N Ernie Ball Strings (10–48 on Sabre) - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/kObbxd Ernie Ball Aluminum Bronze Acoustic Strings (10–50) - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/aO66EM Evertune Bridges - https://tidd.ly/40b2xwW Guitar Side Dots by Beards Riffs and Gear + ChromaLabel - https://www.chromalabel.com/products/guitar-side-dots-fret-and-neck-markers-exclusively-from-beards-riffs-and-gear-chromalabel Line 6 Helix Rack Guitar Multi-effects Rack Processor - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/gONN39 Universal Audio OX Stomp - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/WyKK1X Seymour Duncan PowerStage 200 - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/nXbb7X Bad Cat Cabinets w/ Celestion Vintage 30s - https://badcatamps.com/cabs/ Digitech Whammy Pedal - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/RGaakb Ernie Ball VP Jr. Volume Pedal - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/dOZZmk TC Electronic PolyTune Pedal - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/YRooJj  VIDEO INFO: Film Date - April 26, 2025 Location - House of Blues in Chicago, IL  KEEP UP WITH THE USED: Facebook - https://facebook.com/TheUsed Instagram - https://instagram.com/theused Twitter - https://twitter.com/WeAreTheUsed  FOLLOW US: Website/Email List - https://www.digitaltourbus.com/#/portal/signup YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/digitaltourbus Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/digitaltourbus/ TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@digitaltourbus Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/digitaltourbus/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/digitaltourbus Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/digitaltourbus/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/digital-tour-bus-llc Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/user/digitaltourbus  VIDEO SUMMARY: 00:00 Introduction 00:44 Electric Guitars 11:48 Acoustic Guitars 14:40 Rig & Pedalboard

Transcript

00:00What's up? Joey Bradford here from your favorite band, The Used, and we're gonna check out my

00:15rig. Right now we're out on our 25th anniversary tour. We're playing three nights in each city,

00:20first record night one, second record night two, third record night three. Mostly sold out across

00:26the country. It's been amazing so far. We're back in Chicago for our second round of three

00:31nights and it's been going amazing. Sweet. Yeah. So let's check out my guitars. So most of my

00:37guitars I get from Ernie Ball, Music Man. They've been taking care of me for a long time. Incredible

00:42stuff. Everything's custom. Let's start here. We'll start with the, we just call this the gray boy,

00:48and this is my drop a sharp stingray. All my stingrays are set up the same. They're basically

00:57stock with some fun colorways and we do different gauges, different tunings for, I think there's

01:02eight different tunings I'm doing right now. And then we send them off to Evertoon. They outfit us

01:08with the bridges, which is something that I'm fully addicted to now. I come from playing bass and I've

01:15always played really heavy. So the Evertoons have been huge helping me get to, you know, still be a

01:21rock guy when we're on stage, but not flubbing all over the place. So I love those. Shout out Evertoons.

01:26So yeah, so pretty, pretty standard with this one. I play it for a couple songs. Everything I play for

01:31that song is bridge pickup. Neck pickup is pretty much for show on this one. But volumes all the way up,

01:38you know, I, I build out a lot of my tone for each of the songs individually through my amps and power

01:43amps and the whole rig there. But the guitar is, uh, it's made to turn up and leave it there for

01:49the song and rip it. Yeah. That's what that one. And then same thing with the gauges. I use the same

01:55gauges across all my guitars conveniently. Um, I make it my guitar tech's problem to figure out all of that

02:01fun stuff. Um, but we're using, what is it? The skinny top, heavy bottom, 10 to 52,

02:08and that's across like four different tunings that works really great. But yeah, that's this

02:14guitar. It's one of my favorites. I love playing a low tuning drop, a sharp, super fun. It's kind

02:19of floppy, but everything holds really good. My guitar tech's good at this job. Um, this is number

02:25two. This is my cream and, uh, this is drop B right now. We have it in, right? Is that this one?

02:32Yeah. Same thing. Use it for a few songs, uh, purely just changing tunings and colorways for the

02:39difference here, honestly, which is fine. Yeah. These are this bridge pickup all the way for this

02:45one. Um, and volumes all the way up on these guys. This one is a beast. It's a, I don't know why,

02:52but it's a little bit heavier. It's the same wood, same everything. We put the ever tunes in these,

02:56um, same gauge of strings as the other one. Skinny top, heavy bottom by Ernie ball. And I love it.

03:03These ones are kind of fun because when we had the, uh, ever tunes put on, they initially hit me

03:08back and they're like, Hey, these bodies aren't big enough for these, you know, setups. Are you sure

03:12you want them? I'm like, sure. Yeah. It's just stick out a half inch. It doesn't bother me at all,

03:17but it looks kind of funny. But yeah, that one's great. I love this guitar. I've had this one for

03:22probably five or six years now. We've changed the tuning on it a bunch of times. It's kind

03:26of like fills in where I need it. Always kills, hasn't been destroyed yet. Love it. I also put

03:34the, uh, these little neck dots on here. My good buddy, Ryan fluff, Bruce turned me onto these.

03:41He like sells them now with a company and they're super cool, but yeah, they glow, which is huge.

03:46You can change them out pretty quick. It's nice. Love it. All right. This one is my favorite

03:53stingray that I have from the guys. And this was the first one that they gave me. Uh, when I first

03:59moved over to Ernie ball music, man, I needed a baritone. We were doing a tour and I didn't have

04:05a guitar for a song we were going to play. Um, my, the company I was with before, they didn't have a

04:11baritone at the time. So I reached out to my dude, Tim dove at Ernie ball, who I'd already been

04:17getting my strings from forever said, what do you have? I need something. He's like, we'll get you

04:21set up. And then when they showed up to, to give it to me, they also had this all black stingray

04:28that they just gave to me. They're like, we thought you would like this, check it out,

04:32you know, whatever. And I fell in love and I haven't turned back ever since that day. And this is still

04:37one of my main guitars. I played for the majority of our, all three of the sets. Uh, this is my drop

04:42C guitar, the most played in my arsenal. I love that. It's kind of starting to patina and like get

04:49all jacked up because I'm a sweaty boy, but everything still sounds and works amazing. You

04:55know, we've just cleaned up some parts. We haven't replaced much. I love it. And it's the all black.

05:01It's just painted, you know, it's same thing with that popping out, uh, ever tune back, but we love

05:08it. And they all have the Schaller locking tuners too. Those have been great. They hold up really

05:13well. Again, we tour the world and beat these up and, and they're just like, we pull them out and

05:17they're good to go. So on the last, uh, last couple of tours we did, we had some, some pretty cool

05:23production. It kind of looked like a UFC setup or something, but we had these big, uh, chain link

05:28fences and, um, our, our drum tech and his lady, uh, they helped decal out a bunch of

05:34our production. They helped build a bunch of our production and they were putting these

05:37decals on the drum kits and, uh, had them toss them on a couple of guitars and I've just

05:42left them cause it's kind of fun. I did the all black and the all white for a few years.

05:46So mixing it up a bit, but I kind of love it. It's way cooler than I thought it was going

05:49to be. So that was my first guitar that they gave me. And then this was my first like fully

05:56custom dream guitar that I got from them. Um, I had seen a guitar many, many years ago.

06:02I want to say I was, I saw death cap for cutie playing and their whole setup was all white,

06:07all their amps, all their guitars, their drums, everything. I was probably 16, super highly

06:13influenced at the time. And, and that was one of those, like, if I can ever get my dream

06:17guitar, I want an all white guitar. So I went with them said, Hey, I want a stingray. I want

06:23it all white fretboard, everything. They're like, cool. We can do it. We can't do the fretboard.

06:28I said, no deal. Like we're doing the fretboard or we're going to do a different guitar. So I went

06:33back to, uh, the engineers and the builders and they're like, we'll try it. And this was their

06:39first version of it. And I've had it for four years now. And it's held up amazing. I play this,

06:45the other half of the set pretty much. Um, the majority of my songs,

06:50this one, I do get to use the neck pickup from time to time. There's a couple, uh, uh, clean parts

06:56and, and some cool songs. We're getting some ballads. Um, we keep the, the neck pickup a little

07:01bit low, which, um, helps with kind of this brittle sound that we're going for on a couple of songs that

07:06I use it for. Uh, but the rest is all bridge and just ripping. I use this for a lot of the rock songs,

07:12a couple of solos that I get to kind of dig into it. And yeah, I love this one to death. I think

07:17we're going to, uh, try to do a couple more versions of the all white and keep going. All right. This is

07:21my newest guitar. Uh, this one they sent me out before this last tour. Love it. It's a saber by

07:28music man again. Um, kind of something I'm about to dive into. I've been playing stingrays for so long,

07:35been super interested seeing a lot of my friends start to play these. Um, and they sent me this one

07:40and right out of the box, it was like, okay, this is coming on tour. And again, we were days before

07:45tour and I had to call my tech and say, Hey, we have space for this one. And he thankfully said,

07:50yes, we do. So we brought it out. I'm using it on a couple songs that we've never played previously

07:55and it works great. Um, this one, I actually get to play around with the tone. Uh, we were using,

08:02I think three different positions on the pickups and a couple combinations. Um, there's a couple songs

08:08that, you know, they're, they're really brittle and I call it the danger zone when there's just

08:13these like crazy clean riffs. They make me do it all the time. And now we're, uh, we're,

08:17we're playing around with pickup selectors. We're playing around with different clean tones.

08:21Uh, volume and tones still stay up all the way, but anyway, it's a great ripper. I love it. It works

08:27for a lot of things. Uh, I think I'm going to probably start leaning in a bit more to playing these

08:31in the future too. This one doesn't have an ever tune. So normally I I'll have them send guitars

08:36straight over to them and they'll outfit on the East coast and then ship them back to me.

08:41Um, but because I was kind of just wanting to dive into it and test something out,

08:46got their standard tremolo on there. And I honestly love it. Like I go back and forth whenever I play

08:51a guitar that, that doesn't have the ever tune where I can really feel and sing. But as far as like the

08:56live applications with the ever tunes and I, we get them in bend mode and I get them really, uh,

09:01comfortable, but it's such a different feeling when you can really control the guitar.

09:05I'll never deny that that is a thing, but, uh, yeah, I love it. It's been holding up great. Um,

09:11thankfully holding tune really well. We have this one. What is this drop D? Yeah, this one's in drop D.

09:17So, uh, kind of more on the ballpark of, you know, how a guitar is supposed to be set up when they're

09:23built. And then the gauge of strings is different on the 10 to 48 gauge strings on this one.

09:30It's super comfortable. It's a little bit slinky, but it's holding tuning really well. And it's one

09:35of those guitars that kind of makes me feel like I'm better than I am. You know what I mean? When

09:38it's just singing for you. Love it. Thanks music, man. You guys are the best. There we go. Uh, this is my

09:47custom shop Gibson Explorer in black and gold. This is one of my dream guitars growing up.

09:53Um, and I was recently working with the Gibson foundation, got an opportunity to buy it, jumped

10:00on it right away. Um, it's been something that I use for pretty much one song, but, uh, it's our song

10:06Pretty Handsome Awkward where there's kind of a, uh, flying solo section and I jump up on the riser and

10:11do this thing. And when I do pull it out of the case, I use it for that song. Again, volume all the way up.

10:17We're, we're ripping, but I love it. Gibson really took care of me on this one and I'll probably keep

10:24this one forever. This one, I'll sit next to me with the kids. This last one is super special to me.

10:29This is my Fender Jazzmaster. Um, this was my first guitar that Fender gave me when I joined the band.

10:38And this to me was like such a huge step up in my guitar journey and my, like my whole story.

10:47You know, I'd been playing things that I could afford to get at a pawn shop or that my dad would

10:51help me get, you know, and once I jumped into the band, Fender was gracious enough to hook me up with

10:57a big boy guitar made in America. And it's been incredible. This is a beast. I've beaten the heck

11:02out of this thing all over the world and it still just shows up in place. Um, I locked the,

11:08I locked the, uh, tremolo on here. Most of the time we got the, uh, it's just the V mod pick, uh,

11:16P nineties that come with these American standards. And I just love it. I've had it in probably five

11:23different tunings over the years and it's been amazing. It definitely has a very specific sound

11:28with the pickups. And once I started moving more into the humbuckers and using the Ernie ball guitars

11:33and building my sound around that, um, it, it's application kind of started to fit in certain

11:38spots and not others, but, uh, I keep it out with me and it, I use it for a couple of songs here and

11:43there. Love it to death. It's the best. Uh, what do we got next? We got my Taylor grand Pacific

11:49acoustic, which I absolutely love. Um, this has been fun. I've written a lot of songs in the studio with this

11:56one the last couple of years. It's a super inspiring instrument. Um, it sounds great plugged in and we,

12:02and we do use it live for a couple of songs, but this one's like sits next to me in my studio at home

12:08always. I fly with this one. This is like my, my baby. Love it. Sounds amazing. Beautiful guitar.

12:16Taylor takes care of me. They're the best company. They give back to kids. I love it. And then my last acoustic

12:27which I've been using quite a bit on this tour is this pretty little Ibanez something

12:36who knows. So what had happened was we were having an issue with the pickups on my other guitar,

12:42uh, had to replace a part and needed to play the show. So we ran down to the local music store

12:49and this was the only acoustic electric guitar that they had there. I think we paid 200 bucks for it,

12:55plugged it in and it sounded incredible. And I've been using it for a year. It plays amazing.

13:00Just one of those kind of like serendipitous moments where it's not about the price tag or the name

13:05or the whatever, where it's just, I picked up this great guitar and it's awesome. And now I use it for

13:10three songs in our set right now. And, um, it's been a beast. It sounds really beautiful

13:15and it's got a built-in tuner on it too, just in case. We love it. Uh, this one is D-A-D-G-A-E.

13:25Yes. So it's like super unique. Um, yeah, it's funny. There's kind of like only a few different

13:35progressions you can play on it, but they're all beautiful and they all sound familiar to, uh,

13:41these old school youth songs. So it's perfect. It's fun. Some more Ernie Balls. We got the

13:46aluminum bronze. Yeah, there we go. We got some 10 to 50s on here. 10 to 50, aluminum bronze,

13:53just as I suspected. Yeah, they're great. Feels amazing. It's not like, uh, it's just one of these

14:00guitars where, where we pulled it out, slapped some strings on it in this funky tuning and the action

14:04is perfect. The intonation was really close from the beginning, uh, which I just love. You can kind

14:09of only get that out of an acoustic guitar where it's, you just pick up a random one that's been sitting in

14:14a room of some weird temperature long enough to make it this perfect instrument. And, uh,

14:19it's hard to recreate, but stoked on this guitar. I love it. All right. Let's look at my amp setup,

14:25my simulator setup, my pedals, my power amps, how I make live sound, how we get it out to there.

14:31So I, my main brain of my whole system that I am now using is the line six helix. Um, I use the rack

14:40model because I love to have everything in tech world in case something goes wrong.

14:45And then I have the ground control at my feet on stage just in case I want to be in control

14:50or, or change something. It's the best that they do it that way. Um, there's a lot of really great

14:55modelers and all of these things out there. I think they're all kind of on similar level.

15:00You can make them sound great. They can all sound really bad. But what I love about this is that we

15:05have the control from tech world and on stage. It's redundant. Love it. Um, so that's what I'm

15:10using. Uh, then I have my, my amp sims in here that I'm using for this set. I don't change too much.

15:17I try to use the same couple amps across the board every once in a while. I'll get in there and do

15:22something special. But, um, for my dirty amps, I'm using a, uh, placator, which we confirmed that

15:30that is how you pronounce it. I've heard it pronounced a million different ways, but we're, uh, we're using,

15:34uh, a placator, which is, uh, it's just replicating like a high gain amp, something that I can, um,

15:41just kind of have some beef a little bit gnarlier than, than we would do on an album. But for a live

15:47setting, trying to make it really rock facing. And I love this amp. I use it pretty much across the

15:52board for rhythm tones and lead tones will boost off of that. Um, and then for my clean amps,

15:58uh, I'm using the, uh, line six clarity, which is essentially like,

16:07what would I compare it to? Um, it's kind of a cross between like a mesa clean and like

16:13an orange clean at time where I can, it's a lot of mids, but it's still kind of snappy,

16:18which I love. Um, and then I ended up compressing cleans quite a bit anyway, uh, which that's all done

16:24in the box too. Um, every song that we have has kind of a unique setup of effects and, um, tempos

16:32and all sorts of different changes that I'm doing, um, using MIDI. So everything's built into our Ableton

16:37session. That's doing all my patch changes for me live, all my song changes, uh, pretty much everything.

16:44But I do keep this on stage just in case I want to play around or if something goes down, which kind of

16:49doesn't happen because we have, it's a full redundant rig, but it's just nice to have because

16:55I just like to have extra stuff. Uh, yeah. And then we do have something that's kind of unique

17:00is, um, I'm using the, the aux stomp from universal audio for my cab simulators. Um, that's something I

17:08just love in my studio at home. I love their cab sims and I use the, um, aux box at home. I've loved it.

17:16I kind of have this same exact setup in my home studio that I started using with other artists.

17:20So, uh, brought this over, which is just through the send and return of the, the helix. And, um,

17:28then we bypass these to then go out into my power amps, which are the Seymour Duncan, uh,

17:36the power stage 200s. And I have two of those for my two cabs on stage. So we go out of the amps,

17:43we bypass the cab sims to go into the power amps, which feed my, uh, bad cat.

17:52Which those have V30s in them. We love them. Um, and those get mic'd up. There's a stereo out of the

18:00helix. What else? I know we have, there's five lines. I think we have DI stereo out of the helix,

18:09than the two mic cabs. Two mic cabs and he's taking a DI line out of your Seymour Duncan.

18:17So we have a DI line out of the cab sims. We have stereo DI out of the helix. And then we also have,

18:24uh, two cabs, which are mic'd up all for one dude playing guitar, all blended by our wizard front of

18:31house guy and, uh, made to sound beautiful and lovely in the house. Cause playing, playing one

18:36guitar in a band that has so much going on. Um, it gives me a lot more kind of confidence knowing

18:43that there's just so much, uh, just color and kind of like beef behind my tone. I can kind of play up

18:49there and know nothing's going to sound thin. Uh, and that's really just trusting my front of house

18:53guy and knowing that we have a cool setup too. But that is honestly, that's the majority of my rig.

18:58The only other special thing that I do is I keep a Digitech whammy and drop on my board,

19:05which I use quite a bit. I'll, I'll primarily use it for two octave up if I'm going to have some fun

19:11with the whammy or use it for a full octave down. If we have a heavy part that I want to add some beef

19:16to, um, kind of unbeatable with the octave sounds, this particular pedal. Uh, and then there is one song,

19:23even though I have 1800 guitars, there's one song that I do have to use the pitch up function for

19:30on the whammy, um, to get me even higher, which is drop E flat or yeah, drop D sharp. We'll call it.

19:36Uh, but I love it and it's, it works and, um, it seems like a lot, but it's really not. I used to have,

19:43you know, I used to have three amps, analog switchers, this massive pedal board, things that

19:49I loved and I'm like prideful that I got to use, but the amount of times things would go wrong at

19:54big shows. It was just like, all right, moving into this world. We've spent the last four or five

19:59years dialing it in and I'm super stoked how everything sounds. And yeah, that's my rig.

20:06Thanks for checking out my rig guys. Go to the use.net to check out our tour dates. We'll see you out there.

20:13We'll see you out there.

The Used’s Joey Bradford - GEAR MASTERS Ep. 576

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