Misha Mansoor is definitely an eclectic player. His style is difficult to pin down, drawing on a wide variety of influences, but also filled with his own original approach to music. After starting Periphery, it didn’t take long before his and his band's names were mentioned in the same breath as legendary acts, such as Meshuggah and Dream Theater.

A recent article in Guitar Interactive Magazine covered Mansoor’s array of gear used to get his original sounds. It notes that while Mansoor doesn’t have an endorsement deal with any one company, he is obsessed with his tone and uses guitars made by many different manufacturers in order to get the sounds he wants.

His guitar lineup includes axes made by Blackmachine, Mayones, Strandberg, Music Man, Jackson and Bernie Rico Jr., to name a few. Mansoor employs many different alternate tunings and uses six, seven and eight-string guitars.

Employing guitars with extended ranges gives Mansoor the opportunity to use some interesting tunings. One tuning, on a seven-string guitar, combines a low B with the sixth string dropped to D.

For his guitar amp, Mansoor is a big fan of Fractal Audio System’s Axe-Fx II. The Axe-Fx II is a digital guitar preamp processor that also serves as an amp modeler. The Axe-Fx II has the added feature of mimicking other tones. Users can feed sounds into it, and the processor works to copy the tone, even correcting itself if it notices any deviations from the original sound source.

Mansoor used the Axe-Fx II in line with a Peavey 5150 as the power amp on Periphery’s second album, 'Periphery II.' Surprisingly enough, Mansoor also uses a Line 6 POD, mainly for his Soundclick recordings.

Periphery are currently touring the U.S. For tour dates and band news, check their website.

 

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