Interview – Bo Lueders – Harm’s Way

When did you start playing guitar and what guitar and equipment did you start on?

I got my first guitar when I was 10 years old, it was a white squire Stratocaster that my dad gave me. I eventually gave it to my high school girlfriend who held onto it, and then eventually gave it back to me over the pandemic so I have it once again. Pretty cool. My first amp was a Fender Princeton 65 combo amp which was so loud and awesome. I sold it for like $300 in 2010 in order to pay rent and regret it all the time. Sell pedals or cabs, never sell guitars or amps.

Which bands inspired you to start playing guitar and are there certain riffs or songs that specifically motivated you to start playing guitar?

At the time I got into it, I was really into Led Zeppelin. The song “Over the hills and far away” off of Houses of the Holy was the song that made me wonder if I could play it. My dad had given me 2 lessons, one was basically how to hold a pick and how to position my hands on the instrument, the other was trying to learn the bar chord progression to Semisonic’s “Closing Time”. I guess that would be the first song I ever actually learned. Then, in 7th grade I discovered Blink 182 and POWER CHORDS, which were the key to unlocking the next 25 years of my life. I remember another guitar player in my class asking me if I knew any power chords and I said “yeah a couple” because I had no idea what they were yet.

The blink song i remember playing the most was dumpweed, carousel and pathetic.

When did you really feel your guitar playing and equipment got more professional and you thought: “Yes, this is the sound I really like!” ?

My first half stack was a crate G something, it was solid state and sucked. Bought it from Roselle Music in my hometown. Eventually I got a 5150 II when I was in high school and that was the beginning of it for me. Then slowly but surely pedals started getting added into my chain. It’s funny to see pictures of early shows we played and I have pedals in total nonsense order just loose on the ground. The final piece was a mesa cab under the 5150 II, green channel with a tube screamer cranked. That was the initial tone.

This is the Crate amp and cab.

The first real guitar after the strat was a Les Paul studio my dad gifted me for 8th grade graduation. It was an incredible guitar that I learned how to really play on. Triplets, little lead bits, pinch harmonics. It was all learned on the tune-o-matic bridge in that bad boy to the point where when I play another style these days I’m a little sloppy.

Playing wise, AFI was pretty catalytic. As was misfits songs and minor threat songs. Eventually as I got older (14/15) TERROR, CARRY ON, and NO WARNING made their way onto my iPod and lord would I play along to their first records. We’re talking every day after school for years.

Do these 2 go hand in hand or did it evolve differently for your playing and your equipment?

I’d say a bigger part of my evolution as a player was just discovering the kind of music I wanted to play, or at least was able to. Like, I’m not a great player, there’s a ton of stuff I don’t understand or can’t play to this day so getting into hardcore as a young player definitely pigeon holed me a little bit, but that’s ok. It’s taken me all over the world with my best friends so I can’t really complain.

Do you recall using what kind of amps, guitars, pedals and pickups on the albums? If so, would you mind sharing them? (for example: for album X we used a peavey 5150 mixed with a mesa dual rec and a HM-2 and I was using a ESP LTD MH-400 with JB in the bridge)

I will try my best, some of the stuff is almost 20 years old so bear with me.

For the Demo and Imprisoned 7”, I definitely used that 5150 II, an Ibanez TS9 and the Les Paul Studio with stock everything. Probably the same on the self titled 2 song 7” we put out in 2007 or 2008.

There’s that Les Paul, it was a Halloween show and I was Marty McFly.

Another pic of the studio.

Reality Approaches would be a similar setup. We used my 5150 and my Les Paul on my tracks, our other guitar player used a Dean dimebag lightning guitar and an orange head that screamed constantly. I would imagine we used Andy’s model T as well for a third track on that LP because it’s such a sick head.

By No Gods, I was getting more into actual gear so this started to change. My Les Paul Studio I’ve been talking about was stolen from a show another band I was in while at the Fubar in St. Louis (which is where we are currently headed as I type this up, different venue but the city will always have an aftertaste for me because of the guitar). I got a LTD EC-1000 after that happened, it had EMG 81/85’s in it and I played it for a few years. I was still using the 5150 II. On No Gods, I played all guitars and bass. We for sure used the 5150, a soldano Andy at bricktop has, and probably that model T. Bass, it had to have been an SVT classic.

Isolation and the Breeding Grounds single was when the HM-2 started creeping into our brains like the symbiote. Nails, Trap Them, rotten sound and of course Entombed were all using it and it fit well with what we were doing in Isolation. For that record I did all of the guitars and figured out the tone with Andy in the studio. We had a second guitar player at the time, Saba, but he didn’t track anything on the record. He did however also love the HM-2 tone and would just dime his MIJ version for live shows. For sure used a 5150 block letter for this record as well as a jcm-800 that the studio owned. Probably a model T or that same soldano as well. Cabs were emperor 4×12”s with v30’s.

This is the isolation HM-2.

For blinded things changed a little. Our van was stolen from Chicago which had my trusty 5150 II in it, a shitty Marshall cab with white Rolex as well as a black LTD EC-1000 that I got to replace the previous orange one I mentioned earlier because it broke at the headstock. For the record I used a newly acquired JCM-800 2203 that was supposedly owned by the Gin Blossoms prior, a stencil on the head case indeed says “GIN BLOSSOMS” and there’s a sticker on the head from a music shop in AZ. I tried reaching out to them to confirm but never heard back. We did that, with a MIJ HM-2 and this new EC-1000 for one side. Jay played on this record and he had a pretty sick Soldano SLO 100 that sounded awesome for the other side and then I think.

The JCM-800 2203. Still have it, it lives in our practice space.

This was taken during the blinded session. We loved these SKB boards at the time because they came with a built in power supply and also had a lifetime warranty. They stopped making them though.

This was bass tracking but you can see the Soldano, the Model T and a Sunn concert bass or lead that we used as well.

There’s the final EC-1000 with the SKB board, 800 and a mesa stack.

Rust was finally when I started to actually figure stuff out personally. I was still using the 800, HM-2 and the EC-1000 but I was trying to manage the noise on the HM-2 with an NS-2, ended up using the loop with one and then a SECOND NS-2 at the end of the chain. We had played with Black Breath a couple of times and they used the same setup but somehow never had feedback issues and always sounded so good. It was a total mystery to me. That was until i discovered the Empress HEAVY pedal. That thing fuckin rocks and changed my shit. It’s an amp in a box with 2 engines on either side and independent EQ, but also independent noise gates per side so I had a loose setting and then a tight setting. Most of the recording and touring from rust was done with that setup.

SKB setup. It was a mess.

Here’s the Empress on a flight board.

Here’s some variations of the board at this time:

Loved tape apparently.

Posthuman had a pretty big overhaul for us. We started working with Ibanez and I grabbed a made in Japan Les Paul shape they were making called the ARZ6UCS. It came stock with either the bareknuckle nailbomb pickups in it. We used that guitar for the majority of the record. The amps used were a PRS Archon, a Marshal JVM, a Diesel and I think a block letter 5150.

We also were introduced to the WayHuge Swollen Pickle by Will Putney who did Posthuman with us and that replaced the HM-2 for its’ reliability and control.

After this record I got fixated on the Joe Satriani JVM head because it had 4 channels and a noise gate built in. Used that for 2018 including warped tour.

Amp not pictured because it was 117 on the stage in phoenix that day and it fried the second I turned it on. But this was warped tour 2018 with the prestige model Ibanez. During the posthuman touring cycle i switched over to Fishman fluences and those are what are in essentially all of my guitars that i use for HW.

There’s the JVM. This head rocks.

At the end of 2018, we started a tour with a routing show in Vegas and had our entire trailer full of gear and merch stolen. So that rocked. Ended up getting the guitar back thankfully. Since we had to get new heads though I ended up on a Peavey Invective 120 which was a very fun head. It’s built with a guitar player in mind.

There’s my board that I assembled from donations from friends and random shit at guitar center. That tour almost broke us.

This was taken on the cannibal corpse tour we did in 2018 after the theft. That iron label FR was my main backup. That’s the invective there.

I liked the invective because it was built for someone like me, like i said. Misha put 2 9v power supply outputs and 2 FX loops on the back of the head. So i had a midi controlled EQ pedal made by Source Audio that lived on there and would switch between presets via midi. This began my obsessed with switchers and MIDI. I would control a source audio delay, the EQ pedal and the channel or gate on my head with a single touch and that was kind of blowing my mind.

I started with the JOYO midi and effects switcher, these are all just variations of the same thing. Eventually i got the Boss switcher which is much more popular and common.

The mini volume pedal was an expression pedal for the pitchfork which we started using and writing with for the follow up to Posthuman.

In 2022 I eventually got another ARZ from Ibanez that I still use today in tandem with the LP shape, this one’s a strat with a tram bar.

Plays so good. I eventually put the Heafy Fluences in it and i love it.

THEN something big happened in 2020, can’t remember what. Joking of course, but over the pandemic I got really into amp modelers and that brings us to today.

For common suffering Nick used two different 5150 III’s, one 6L6 and one EL34 and then a couple parts on a badcat amp. There’s was also a 6505 used throughout. For the chugs we used my Les Paul Ibanez again, and for most of the songs it was Nick’s ARZ.

Then I got a quad cortex in 2023 and it’s been amazing. I love it.

This is my current board. Excuse the pic I’m on tour and it’s on stage. I use a temple audio board with some mods on the side for a simple patch bay. I run vocal effects for our singer via my board so there’s an XLR in and a wet/dry out. I use the Seymour Duncan power stage 200 for my power amp into a mesa standard cab. There’s a signature pedal of mine on there by Oneder effects called the HW-2 which is awesome and I use it every night. Next to that is the boss DD-6 which i use for the home effect, you’ll notice that’s been on every board over the years. I use it to make noise.

So with the quad cortex on top, i at first had a Seymour Duncan power stage 700 mounted underneath the temple audio board along with a furman AC215A power conditioner. I watched this amazing video with an old guy talking about his mods to his board and it convinced me to try it. The issue was, the way the power amp was mounted underneath the board, i couldn’t physically reach the volume pot so i had to set it and tape it in place. Naturally, i set it to 100% and used rh quad’s master volume as a fader but this effects the tone of the quad. And also, when you have a 700w amp dimed you’re gonna head lots of noise, grounding issues and microphonic shit. So after 2 tours I swapped it to the 200w version of the power stage and am very happy with it. 

Here’s that video with the old wizard by the way, for anyone interested in this kind of thing he’s a legitimate genius: https://l.instagram.com/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2FnAI-rVqrKy8%3Fsi%3DwKeMvyonOafWZN5t%26fbclid%3DPARlRTSANcCvpleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABp-Nl62HCN9PjIJtgaF5uJd729VML-2ikpQZ9MYeSPI7p0vLrcA4-Nf0AqNJh_aem_vHYlMbyLL7KPHHUzQxy49A&e=AT0Yfw6OQaX5NJRtkT3Epvn7lTLj7t0S1hswvADVRfvXkvB4uwem4vJKghJJCAZQi7q5xx8CaA691P1uTU8KJRskrJ6DtWby2lBMxUVsAX6r9wxvGBfvOJtdV3r8

t video with the old wizard by the way, for anyone interested in this kind of thing he’s a legitimate genius

What I like about the Quad is being able to change every amp and pedal according to the respective song and record on the setlist. You can scroll up now and see what I use for every song because it’s all there.

I have noticed the difference in sounds over years of your albums; did you switch to other amps but do you also feel the amps were a better fit for you, the songs and your playing?

See above baby.

I see you used the famous Boss HM-2;  did you use it mainly on a clean channel or on a slightly overdriven channel in former albums?

I used it in front of every pre amp I ever used because I didn’t know better.

Do you still use a HM-2 or any other pedal next to the amp’s overdrive sound? Your sound is so massive but I do hear a difference on the albums from a typical HM-2 sound to a much more refined overdriven sound but still sound evil and thick

I use my pedal now instead of a Boss one. The key is to NOT dime it. Blend it. Control it.

Have you ever considered moving from 6 strings to 7 strings for Harm’s Way or use baritone guitars?

Yeah we’ve thought about it but to be honest it’s really not needed. You’d be surprised how many bands just use digital drop pedals to down tune. Drop B works real well for us.

Have you modded any of the guitar gear you have or you use the stock/default setup of the guitars, amps or pedals?

The 800 i was using came hot rodded but i took it all out to make it stock. I did a couple mods on some pedals over the years but my brain can’t understand schematics.

Can you tell me a bit more about the thick strings you use; how do they help your tone and does it help with playing as well? (why would a thinner set of strings won’t work for you?)

Like i said we are in drop B so i like thicker strings. I use 13-62’s, with a 4th wound string. I just like the tension and beat the hell out of them honestly. I tend to squeeze the fuck out of the neck and lighter strings would bend sharp if I used them.

How relevant is the speaker cab for you? Do you use what is at the venue, hook up to the FOH or do you prefer to play a default cab like a Mesa 4×12 with V30 speakers or something else?

I prefer a mesa oversized 4×12 with v30’s. I still push an amp so i don’t worry too much about IR cab sims on stage through FOH. Orange cabs are actually the best but they’re so heavy and annoying.

What is your favorite guitar atm and why?

I didn’t even tell the story behind my 30th birthday present to myself. I got a 1988 Les Paul Standard for myself. I love that thing. Doesn’t handle drop b very well so it lives at home.

Here it is with some Lace pickups in it, i forget what they were. I changed it back to stock hardware after I retired it. I used it around 2016/2017 on the road.

If you could choose one amp to play for the rest of your life (can also be a modeler or profiler); which one would it be for you and why?

That would definitely be the quad cortex. I really love the thing. If not a modeler then the classic 5150.

Which album are you most proud of as a guitar player?

Oh I think Posthuman is what in the proudest of. I played like half of the stuff and Nick, who is a much better player than me, did the rest. I just really liked that record and the process therein.

Is there something you learned over the years about guitar gear (for example: using a tubescreamer, specific pickup or strings, amps, cabs, passive vs active pickups etc.) and you wished you knew before and gave you an ‘AHA!’ moment?

I’ll give you a little trick I really like. Get a 6 band or 10 band EQ pedal, dial it in however sounds best and put it in the fx loop of your head and enjoy. It sounds like taking a thick blanket off of the cab.

I also really had an aha when I realized that less gain is typically the answer. You don’t need THAT much saturation all the time.

Passive vs Active pickups: which one do you prefer for your style and band and why?

For this kind of thing with HW I’ve always been an active guy. I just like them hot!

What is the most consistent item in your guitar rig and why?

Honestly it’s the Boss DD-6 set to that hold feature. We use it constantly during the set in between songs for noise, some songs like infestation or mind control we use it during the song. I think I’ve had one on my board since 2010?

Which riff of one of the songs you wrote are you most proud of and why?

“Infestation” was fun. The intro riff and verse was one I came to practice with and we very quickly turned it into the song you hear. I had an idea for what became “Call My Name” too but the actual riff got totally reworked and changed, the vibe was similar though and I think that song ended up really cool.

Do you use a certain guitar playing technique that is instantly recognizable for who you are as a guitar player? (damping, blues licks, power chords/barre chords, pinch harmonics)

Lots of barre chords, but we’re in drop so we do that almost triangular shape with the first 3 fingers. (5-3-5 for example.)

Which guitar players of current existing bands inspire you as a guitar player and why?

Nick is a really amazing player and he inspires me all the time tbh. Taylor Young is also great and so good at dialing in a tone that is absolutely inarguable.

Last but not least: any last words or tips for guitar players out there?

Whenever you hear a riff you like, any genre, record it in your phone or make a note of it somehow. Go home, figure it out by ear. It will help.

Also learn Kirk Hammett guitar solos. They’re relatively easy but sound great once you get them down and will give you a good basis for leads. In fact, learn all Metallica songs they’re fantastic learning exp

– Bo

Check out Bo’s band Harm’s Way here and check out some video’s of them here, he also does a really nice podcast with interviews together with Colin Young, check it out here