The BEAT Tour is a musical high-wire act. Here was Steve Vai, Tool’s Danny Carey and King Crimson alumni Adrian Belew and Tony Levin performing ‘80s-era King Crimson classics Discipline, Beat, and Three Of A Perfect Pair.
Nothing about that is easy. Vai had most of the songs down pat but even he couldn’t get to grips with the Frame By Frame riff at first, and had to reach out to Robert Fripp for advice. Following the tour, Belew had to get surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome – and what does that say about the material?
This was a very special kind of tour with a very special set of demands. Accordingly, it also required a very special rig, and in a video segment for Sweetwater’s YouTube channel, Vai reveals all, offering a guided tour of his epic pedalboard, the dual guitar amp setup that runs behind it, plus the guitar synthesizers needed to present that classic King Crimson material onstage. And, he says, his meticulously put together pedalboard was all the work of his long-serving tech Doug MacArthur.
“I don’t have anything to do with this,” says Vai. “I just say to Doug, ‘I would like that. I would like that. I would like that. And all of this beautiful looming and construction – the colour – he built everything. It is beautiful, but even more so, it’s clean and it works great, and it does everything I need.”
This footage should come with a warning. You will want to rewire your pedalboard after watching this. You might also be in the market for a new pedalboard power supply. Vai gives his CIOKS DC7 the highest commendation.
Of course, most player’s – even those performing live night after night – won’t require a ‘board like this. It’s not that Vai's is necessarily complex; it's that he has some powerful hardware on it.
Many of Vai’s stompboxes are commonly found, such as his trusty Dunlop Cry Baby wah pedal and the Xotic EP Booster. Vai admits he was late to the party with the latter.
“This little EP Booster, I have never used it before except for this tour and I am so surprised by how often I’m using it,” he says. “It gives you a boost but it accentuates everything above 4kHz in a way that’s not painful, so that’s nice!”
There’s also an MXR Phase 90, his ever-present DigiTech Whammy, a Universal Audio UAFX Max preamp and dual compressor pedal and most intriguingly a custom-made MXR overdrive pedal that has no name as yet but it is finished in a Vai-friendly shade of green. Could this be a coming signature pedal, a take on his favourite green box, the Tube Screamer, or is it just a custom-job pinch-hitter? Watch this space.
That, however, is that as far as outboard pedals go. You’ll notice there are no notable absentees. There are no Boss digital delay pedals here. Typically, Vai would have two in his setup, each set to a different delay time.
Here, however, his Fractal Axe-Fx III amp modeller is driving the bus as far as effects go, with the centrepiece of MacArthur’s epic ‘board build a Fractal FC-12 MkII foot controller. And it’s really down to Vai’s discretion should he choose to use it and do the switching himself.
It’s quite a pleasure because throughout the whole show I don’t have to touch it
“Doug navigates it. He has another pedal like this right over there. And it’s quite a pleasure because throughout the whole show I don’t have to touch it. Doug does it. And there’s like what? 50 switches per song. That’s really nice. That, you can’t buy.”
Compare and contrast this rig with his usual touring setup, or with the stripped-down rig MacArthur put together in 2023 for Vai’s dates with the Metropole Orchestra, and you’ll find a lot of differences. But one thing remains constant. The most important footswitch of them all is the one that turns on Vai’s fan.
Check it out above, as Vai explains why he needs not one or two of his Synergy preamp units but four, all running in tandem with a Roland Jazz Chorus, and why this gig called for two Roland guitar synthesizers and a laptop onstage to program them. You can subscribe to Sweetwater’s YouTube channel here.
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