Friday Pilots Club’s James Kourafas - GEAR MASTERS Ep. 580 - video Dailymotion

Digital Tour Bus

Become a member (it's FREE) at https://digtb.us/signup Buy official DTB merch at http://digtb.us/merch  On this episode of DTB’s “Gear Masters”, James Kourafas, guitarist of the pop rock band, Friday Pilots Club, shows off the gear that he uses onstage, while on tour with Circa Waves. Friday Pilots Club is currently supporting their debut album, Nowhere.  PLAY THE SAME GEAR: Fender Vintera ‘60s Stratocaster Electric Guitar - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/aO4mbY Fender Mustang Electric Guitar - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/GK2Bx2 Ernie Ball Skinny Top Heavy Bottom Strings (.010–.052) - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/JKW09v Ernie Ball .73 mm Picks - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/gO4KmX Neural DSP Quad Cortex - https://sweetwater.sjv.io/o4B3xW  VIDEO INFO: Film Date - April 28, 2025 Location - House of Blues in Chicago, IL  KEEP UP WITH FRIDAY PILOTS CLUB: Facebook - https://facebook.com/FridayPilotsClub Instagram - https://instagram.com/fridaypilotsclub Twitter - https://twitter.com/fridaypilots  FOLLOW US: Website/Email List - https://www.digitaltourbus.com/#/portal/signup YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/digitaltourbus Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/digitaltourbus/ TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@digitaltourbus Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/digitaltourbus/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/digitaltourbus Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/digitaltourbus/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/digital-tour-bus-llc Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/user/digitaltourbus  VIDEO SUMMARY: 00:00 Introduction 00:27 Guitars 02:10 Amp & Pedal  ABOUT DIGITAL TOUR BUS: Digital Tour Bus is your backstage pass to your favorite touring artists! With daily video releases, we cover all genres, and have had the pleasure of featuring the likes of Matchbox Twenty, Twenty One Pilots, Megadeth, Machine Gun Kelly, Papa Roach, and thousands of others, over the past 15 years. "Bus Invaders" takes you inside an artist's home on the road, "Cooking at 65mph" showcases the culinary skills of artists on tour, and "Gear Masters" unveils the equipment musicians use on stage.  Affiliate Disclosure: Some of the links in this description are affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you if you make a purchase. Your support helps me continue to create content like this. Thank you!

Transcript

00:00Hey there, I'm James. I play guitar in the band Friday Pilots Club. We're right here at House

00:14of Blues Chicago for our Chicago date of our tour co-headlining with Circa Waves. And yeah,

00:21figured I'd give you guys a little bit of a rundown of what I'm working with for this tour.

00:24So the guitar I use is a 60s Vintero Strat in burgundy mist from Fender. It's made in Mexico,

00:33I believe. It's my favorite guitar. I've been playing this for some years now. And I use this,

00:40and then I have a backup Mustang that's a little bit like modded with some different pickups. But

00:46primarily, I pretty much always use this guitar. I feel like it works the best for our set,

00:50sounds the most versatile. The guitar is all stock. I haven't changed anything about it

00:55since I got it. And I really pretty much always rock the middle pickup. I think it works really

01:01well in tandem with Sean's guitar. His guitar has a more mid-forward thing going, and he uses a lot

01:06of bridge pickup. So me on the middle pickup, I feel like it kind of creates this nice hole for

01:11him to sit in the middle for his lead tones. And really, I think occasionally I'll roll the tone

01:18down, but pretty much I'm keeping it pretty standard and letting the pedals do all the heavy lifting

01:22for the bigger tone changes. But picks, I'm using the Ernie Ball 0.73s. And I play everything in E

01:31standard, and I do a lot of tuning with the quad cortex to avoid having to, you know, do a lot of

01:37tuning and guitar switching. The strings I use are Ernie Ball heavy bottom skinny top. It's 10 to 52s.

01:44All right, and as I was saying, I use a Mustang. Fender Mustang is a backup. I don't pull this out

01:51super often, but when I do, it's always a pleasure to play it. I have a Seymour Duncan noiseless strat

01:57pickup in the neck and a humbucker in the bridge. Yeah, super different than the strat. Also really

02:05cool guitar. Always a pleasure when I get to bust it out. So for the past year, I've been on the quad

02:12cortex, and it has been amazing. I honestly have nothing bad to say about it. I've tried a few

02:18different options. I've tried, you know, the analog pedals with the amp. I tried helix. Yeah,

02:24a bunch of different options, and I found that this is just what works the best for me. It's really,

02:29really easy to make any adjustments you need. The tones sound great. I don't really do anything too

02:35crazy with uploading any, like, captures or anything. I'm pretty much using everything that

02:39just comes stock on the pedal. And yeah, for the amps, a lot of what I'm doing, we run everything

02:46in stereo. So I usually am running two different amps, just so even when I'm not using stereo effects,

02:52I can get a little bit of extra width and size to the sound. So usually I'm using an AC-30

03:00on one side and a Fender Twin on the other side. And yeah, sometimes I'll run this thing where I have

03:09like a dual channel where I'll have one amp and one signal chain here, and I use a gain plugin to mute

03:17and unmute which side I want to use because I like to keep it to like one patch per song and just change

03:28the scenes. And I think the thing about the pilot's set is the songs are pretty varied, genre, tone,

03:36sound-wise. And so I think that's where for us using the digital boards really comes in handy

03:42because we have so many drastic tone changes throughout the set that it's nice to be able

03:47to not be tap dancing all over the place and be able to just instantly switch to something that's

03:52really crazy different from what you were on previously. As far as the pedals that I use,

03:59again, it's super dependent on the songs. When I have like, I like to add a little bit of dimension

04:05to the patches. So when I have just even simple clean things, I'll add like a little bit of like

04:11stereo room reverb very subtly to kind of bring in a little bit of width. I'm big on like modulations,

04:18like choruses and stuff, even used really subtly. Like for instance, here's one where our song

04:24Never Say No, where we have a big section where it gets really kind of fuzzy and big. I'm actually

04:30modulating one side of the signal chain. So before I hit the amp on the right side, I have a little bit

04:37of a modulation going on here, just a boss chorus emulation. So then just to give even more width

04:44and size. But yeah, as I said, it's really, really varied per track. And another good thing that

04:52we've been doing on the recent runs is I have me and Drew use MIDI switching to do all of our changes

04:58for us, which I think at first I was like, a little uncertain on how I was going to feel about like

05:04not doing the actual like pushing of the buttons. But I think now that I'm used to it, I really,

05:10really like it. It's one less thing to worry about with, you know, the BGVs and, you know,

05:16just trying to put on a good show. You know, just kind of letting it do its thing. We sit in the room

05:22for a lot of time and, you know, mess with all this stuff ahead of time. And then just kind of,

05:26it's nice to not have to worry about it too much during the gig. Thank you so much for watching.

05:32You can keep up with Friday Pilots Club on our Instagram most easily at Friday Pilots Club.

05:36We post all types of updates. We're going to be working on some new music. So hopefully

05:41we'll have some stuff out for you soon or FridayPilotsClub.com. You can find our tour dates

05:47and all that stuff. So yeah, thank you.

Friday Pilots Club’s James Kourafas - GEAR MASTERS Ep. 580

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