As long as I’ve known Dillinger Escape Plan, I’ve associated them with Mesa/Boogie amplifiers. Technically my first Dillinger show was back in ’98 at Coney Island High with Meshuggah and Candiria (that and the West Coast show a couple days earlier were actually Meshuggah’s first two U.S. shows ever), but I didn’t catch them because I hadn’t heard of them and my girlfriend at the time wanted to get something to eat. Man, what a killer lineup that show was.
So anyway, I don’t know what amps Dillinger played in ’98 but when I next saw them a few years later at Dimitri’s last show, both Ben and Brian had Mesa/Boogie Triaxis preamps and 2:90 power amps (or were they Strategy power amps… I’m not positive) in these big 12 or 16-space refrigerator racks. The next time I caught the band Ben had the same rig but Brian had moved on to a Rectifier. There were a couple more changes over the years, but at Dillinger concerts the Mesa name was a constant.
But now Ben has moved on to Laney. I’m kind of shocked, but change can be good, and I’ve heard some killer Laneys over the years, particularly the VH100R that Intronaut used for years before moving to (funnily enough) Mesa/Boogie.
In the video below Ben extols the virtues of the GH50L head as well as Laney’s 212 cabs.
