Equipment
Pike has only rarely changed his guitar setup since his time in Sleep. He played mainly Gibson Les Pauls through the first three High On Fire albums, including the cherry-sunburst Standard he used in his previous band. During the early years of Sleep, Pike used Laney and Orange Amps but Pike and Al Cisneros discovered the Matamp “Green” while on tour in England, which became their preferred amplifier. Between the touring cycle for Blessed Black Wings and Death Is This Communion, Pike teamed up with First Act to design a custom guitar. He, along with Bill Kelliher and Brent Hinds of Mastodon, designed a 9-stringed double-cutaway solid-body guitar, made of mahogany and maple. The bottom three strings (tuned to C, F, A# on Pike's guitar) are normal; however, the treble strings are doubled up, similar to a 12-string guitar, to provide a natural chorus effect and add depth to the sound. They are tuned to D#, G, C, with their adjacent strings tuned the same, making the overall tuning C-Standard.
A few photos online have shown him using his Laney amps and some Marshall amps as well. In the Sleep "Dragonaut" video, he was shown using a Hiwatt amplifier. Initially, the only other addition he made to his set up after Sleep was adding a Soldano X-77 Preamp (to add more gain) to the Green head. He eventually switched to a beefy Soldano SLO-100 Head during the Blessed Black Wings era.
2006, he has been using only the Soldano head to power two home made cabinets. Matt's amps for tour are currently a Soldano SLO-100 head and a Marshall Amplification Kerry King JCM800 head powering 4 Emperor 4x12 cabinets. He also has a Boss TU-3, a MXR Carbon Copy Analog Delay and an ABY box for switching between amp in his live signal chain.
As of, December 2011, Matt Pike and Lace Music Products announced the release of Pike's Signature pickup set, dubbed the “Dirty Heshers”. This set is voiced with the signature sound that Matt first introduced to the world with the legendary band SLEEP, which evolved and was perfected with his current project HIGH ON FIRE. His unique heavy sound has been capture in this high quality humbucker set.
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