artists » John Connolly of Sevendust

The pros know tone when they hear it. There’s nothing more inspiring to a guitar player than killer tone. The VOX ToneLab has become an indispensable recording and performance tool for many of today’s top guitar players. It delivers the tone and features they need to write, record and perform the way they were meant to. Recently, John Connolly took the time to tell us about his experiences with ToneLab. Check it out…

The band Sevendust has been around long enough to give us four albums of their own brand of introspective metal. Their music definitely runs deeper than the traditional metal we’re all used to. Sevendust’s music takes the listener to another place, forcing them to think instead of just reacting to the song. Their fans already know this and have remained loyal to the band from the start.

Their first album, Sevendust was released in 1997 and introduced the band and their style of aggressive, bottom-end heavy metal to a very receptive audience. Home, the 1999 follow up to Sevendust, saw the band reach number nineteen on Billboard’s Top 200 Album chart. The band showed that they had really grown between the two albums. Further evidence of Sevendust’s evolution is obvious on their third album, Animosity. This album saw the band introducing orchestral string arrangements to certain songs, which was quite a departure for them. Their most recent studio album, Seasons, has earned them acclaim from fans and critics alike. The album has reached number fourteen on Billboard’s Top 200 chart, a new height of success for the band.

While on tour in support of Seasons, the band decided to do two weeks of acoustic shows to change things up a bit and to present their songs in a new light. Those sessions proved to be inspiring to the band and resulted in the release of those live performances entitled, Southside Double-Wide, which shows the band’s ample musical ability and the breadth and width of their song catalog. The album consists of a DVD and CD to truly deliver the live recording feel that Sevendust worked so hard to capture.

One of the driving forces behind the band and their music is guitarist John Connolly. John has been with the Sevendust since its inception and has seen the band go through many changes. One thing that has remained consistent throughout the band’s history is John’s guitar tone. Undeniably, his tone is one of the major elements that help define the band’s signature sound and give them their sonic fingerprint. That’s why John’s gear is so important to him and a major factor in his choice to use the VOX ToneLab. As he told us, “Most of those modeling amps have somewhat of a synthetic quality. I don’t really have a problem with a solid-state amp for a lot of my heavier sounds, because I’ve always used a tube amp and a solid-state amp for my live stuff. Even when I record in the studio, I usually double up with a solid state amp up against a tube amp, but it’s very difficult to get good, clean sounds in your house with any kind of product that doesn’t have any kind of pre-amp to it. It’s just as simple as that. Clean stuff sounds better through a tube, and that was the first thing I noticed about the ToneLab.”

John continues, “When I was going through the ToneLab, the sounds were absolutely amazing! It was that extra little thing that you can’t put your finger on that says, ‘It has got to be the tube.’ It is the only thing that is really different, that extra little bit of warmth. The clean sounds on the ToneLab were a pleasant surprise. They were nice to have. The acoustic simulator on the ToneLab was a big help too. I got caught with my pants down without an acoustic guitar and I needed one, so the Les Paul and the ToneLab’s acoustic simulator worked out just fine.”

Catch up with Sevendust on the web at www.sevendust.com.

By Hugh Gilmartin
Photo by Keith Smith