Board To Death Ep. 8: Troy Van Leeuwen (Queens of the Stone Age, Gone is Gone)
Aaron Rogers
The Evil has landed. We caught up with Queens of the Stone Age guitarist and lap steel player Troy Van Leeuwen to take a look at his multi-amp setup combining the best of modern signal routing with the immediacy of old-school, “pedals on the floor” plug-and-play rock and roll raunchiness. We were also there to drool over his collection of custom Echopark and Fender Custom Shop Jazzmasters and Teles, but that goes without saying.
Troy’s rig uses two Rainbow Machines (one on the floor and one in the rack) for a tight, dry room sound to give his guitar its own place in the mix. Also on his board is a Tentacle analog octave, which Troy uses to give his single coil pickups some extra upper harmonic pop. “The Tentacle, for me, is one of the best pedals because there’s no knobs at all. There’s one setting: on or off,” he says.
Troy's pedalboard with his Rainbow Machine and Tentacle
In addition to QOTSA, Troy plays in the band Gone is Gone with Mastodon bassist Troy Sanders and At the Drive-In drummer Tony Hajjar. “This [the Bit Commander] is a pedal that I used on…like, almost half the record,” he says.
Elsewhere on stage, Troy’s beverage rig is fully stocked with hydrating, life-giving Vita Coco coconut water, and the healthy, delicious, and refreshing taste of Pamplemousse sparkling water by La Croix.
Queens of the Stone Age’s Villains is available now.
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