December 2018 with Metal Hammer in English

Interview: December 2018, Metal Hammer

For Paul Landers, this is a rather unusual first. After his colleague in Rammstein, RZK released his own ESP guitar series in 2004, Landers is now presenting his first signature instrument. (Does this count as an instrument?) The SansAmp Fly Rig PL1 from Tech 21. In our extensive interview, he explains what types of musicians may find this small preamp interesting. He also reveals some details about the upcoming Rammstein album. But first things first...

Question: Paul after nearly 25 years in Rammstein, you have now your first signature model: SansAmp Fly Rig PL1. Why did you decide to take this step now?

Question: Which brings us right to the PL1.

Paul: Exactly. I'd been in touch with Stefan Kühn through the GT2 for years. Stefan is always a friendly guy and low-key, and he knows I'm completely satisfied with the SansAmp and didn't want anything for free. I'm not much into sponsorship - more like collaboration. Eventually, Stefan asked if I would like to have my own pedal, which had always been my dream.

Question: When did Stefan ask exactly?

Paul: 400 years ago? Just kidding. In the spring of 2016. I didn't have to think long about the offer because it's important to me that I actually like who asks. Stefan and Andrew Barta from Tech 21 are good guys, and it's simply fun talking things through with them. And that's what you need to do when you take on a project like this. I only work with people I like. Even when choosing my plumber or electrician, I make sure they're nice people. That's another reason why I happily accepted the offer. I find the original Fly Rig good, though the sound is too rock-y and amp-ish for my taste. I prefer that dead, very mechanical distortion tone from the GT2. My problem was that I never had a decent way to play while traveling because I couldn't get the right sound. I tried to use my phone once, but it wasn't for me. I felt stupid putting my guitar into a phone. Sometimes I took the GT2 with me, but then it gets complicated because you can't plug headphones into it and such. On the other hand, the PL1 has everything you need. It works when you're traveling on your own, but also when you're giving a small concert for a Russian millionaire.

Question: So the technical base of the PL1 is the GT2?

Paul: Unlike the other Fly Rigs, this one has two SansAmp channels: one dirty and one clean, plus a GT2 setting with an additional midrange EQ. We tried to make the PL1 more versatile than the GT2. The main distortion tone is inspired by the GT2, but goes a step beyond.

Question: The clean channel is called Wasser [water] and the distorted is Feuer [fire]. Do the two channels have specific tonal reference points?

Paul: The clean channel is based on the Roland JC 120. I think the sound is very inspiring, you play things you didn't know you were capable of. I would say it "gives you a hard-on for playing" tone. That's why it also has the Ambiance control so playing is really fun - the bathroom effect. The sound is more professional than you'd expect from a small box.

Question: How many prototypes did you go through while developing?

Paul: Seven total. I would have kept on tweaking them, but Tech 21 rightfully insisted that the box had to be finished eventually. After the seventh prototype, they told me: "These things sound good and we're not trying to fly to the moon with this thing."

Question: What do you find could be improved on the GT2?

Paul: I think the GT2 has too much low end. That's nice for impressing other people and all, but in real life no guitarist needs bass below 50Hz. Every sound engineer cuts it out anyway without telling the guitarist. The PL1 has a low-cut filter, so you can turn the bass all the way up while the very bottom still stays fairly defined in the lowest range.

Question: Will you use the PL1 live? Or is it "only" for on the road?

Paul: I don't know if I'd dare to do that yet. Some prototypes were used already at concerts and functioned well. But it really comes into its own when I'm on the go. My rack is somewhere in the stadium but I'm sitting in my hotel room and want to play. It has a direct headphone output that sounds great because the Fly Rig has an analog speaker simulation built in. The PL1 is also great for vacations. Once a year, I travel to Cape Town with our bassist Olli to go windsurfing. And I take this little box and a computer with me so I can record my ideas in my free time. It's great for rehearsals and songwriting when we lock ourselves as a band into a small room. The PL1 is suitable for concerts, but that wasn't the main focus. It's for situations more like when you want to have a professional yet portable sound. For me it's great to be able to put this thing in my bag and take it with me anywhere I go.

Question: When you started working with Tech 21, was the PL1 retail price a criteria you had to take into account?

Paul: No, obviously I knew it wasn't going to be some boutique device. I trusted Tech 21 to tell me when it started becoming unprofitable for them. I only concerned myself with what went into it and with the design. I left everything else to Stefan and Tech 21. To be honest, I don't actually know how much it will cost. I also don't care how many units the company ends up selling in the end. The main thing is that I have one! Obviously I'd be in a bad mood if it was the cheapest device in the Fly Rig line. (laughs) By the way, thanks to the active EQ the PL1 can be used for all styles of music. Including surf tones, blues rock, or whatever else. What's more, unlike most amp simulators, the SansAmp drive tone still sounds good with very little drive. Crunch tones usually only sound good put through an amp.

Question: How did your live sound engineer react when you used PL1 prototypes at Rammstein shows? Was he skeptical at first with the rest of the band?

Paul: Yeah, they were. I found the first prototype to be really cool. It sounded incredibly evil, like a nasty synthesizer. That worked well on its own, but with the other instruments it was too extreme. That's no longer the case with the PL1, which works perfectly well in a full band mix without problems. Usable tones tend to have more mids, which also moves the sound a little closer to GT2-ish again. My sound engineer is happy with the SansAmp GT2 anyway. He wouldn't have needed anything else. We even set up a PA to test which frequencies we needed from the PL1 for live usage. Because live is always a special case, that's where the wheat really gets separated from the chaff. This also applies to pickups. I don't particularly enjoy active pickups, but they are practical when live.

Question: Speaking of usefulness, has the PL1 already been useful in the preparations for your upcoming album? How many new songs are there?

Paul: Here's where things are: we are finalizing the new album. Everything has been recorded. The new songs are finished and we are about to start mixing. That should happen in October, and by then we'll decide what stays and goes. When recording, you always play more than you end up needing - additional keyboards, additional guitar lines. Over the next few days, we'll decide which parts to use. The process is always a bit tiring, but we take the time to do it.

Question: How many new songs are there?

Paul: A total of 16. Although we didn't actually want to record that many. If you have too many, it's easy to lose track. As I said, we'll be mixing for the rest of the year. So we'll probably release the album next spring.

Question: So the rumors of a farewell tour are false?

Paul: Absolutely. We're not thinking about quitting at all. Especially since we've never been as close to one another as we are now. We're one of the few bands that still do things together and actually like one another. And when we don't like one another, we try to talk about it so we can like one another again afterward. Let's put it this way: God gave us this band so we could play with it and get paid for doing some shenanigans. We just do foolish things and get paid a lot for that. We'd be stupid not to continue. It still works, so we keep doing it. We'd deserve to be beaten with heavy iron bars if we voluntarily catapulted ourselves out of this paradise.

Question: Sounds quite relaxed.

Paul: It is. Of course, I can only speak for the present. If one of us beats his wife to death next year and ends up in prison, things certainly won't be so relaxed anymore. Just an example, Flake has been enjoying playing live for the first time since last year. Before that, he was always very scared on stage so he could never enjoy it. Only now is he slowly beginning to enjoy it.

Question: What kind of new songs can fans look to see?

Paul: God... As always, it's - well, I tell people this all the time - like the new Mercedes S-Class, if you are lucky, it looks even better and even bigger. Nah, not bigger - well, it's different. It moves with the times while staying true to itself. What you always try to do as a band, what everyone tries to do: keep your style while developing further and moving with the times. I don't know whether the album will be good, but we enjoyed making it. We like the songs. It's a bit like cooking from a recipe without a taste test in the middle.

Question: The rule is that if a band loves its own album, there will surely be fans who love it too.

Paul: That's how we've always done it. That's our theory: if we like it, others will probably like it too. We never ask ourselves, "What will others think about it?" We've never done that. Or whenever we have tried, it has backfired immediately. We have to like it, and we like the new songs.

Question: Is anything different from previous albums?

Paul: Yes, this time we concentrated more on playing. Which means we sat together more often and simply played. We're better now than when the band started, admittedly that isn't much of an achievement. In our old age, we're slowly getting to know our instruments. It's fun. We're still working on the sound to develop it further. We haven't reinvented the wheel with the new album but we haven't stuck to our basic formulas either. We tried to develop further within our own framework. That's what you inevitably end up doing if you're not totally a buffoon.

Question: The enjoyment you're having with the new album is apparent in everything you're saying.

Paul: Well it's better to enjoy what you're doing.

Question: What I meant is, during my first interview with you at the end of 1994, before the release of the debut album, I witnessed firsthand how difficult the decision making processes were. I remember how you argued bitterly about the smallest details. That seems to have shifted.

Paul: No. No, it just sounds like that. Three years ago, I was a strong advocate for making another album. If I'd known how laborious it would turn out to be, I probably would have thought twice. Especially since the album still isn't finished. It's genuinely exhausting, because absolutely nothing has changed about the constant wrestling over ideas. I'm in a good phase right now because everything is nice again. But if you had met me a month ago, my mood would have been different. In a band, there's always mountains and valleys. Which is why the new album took so long and was very, very exhausting. We changed producers, changed the approach, and it's still very difficult. We fiddle endlessly with the music. The songs are great, no doubt about it, but getting everything finally finished... We wanted to try something new but I'll tell you about that next time.

Question: In a sense, this side of things is a part of Rammstein and adds to the appeal, right?

Paul: Absolutely. We recognize that too, and it probably has to be that way. I hoped things might be more relaxed this time, but they weren't. Not at all! We're a little more relaxed now and know how to handle it, and we can talk about it too. But the chemistry is still exactly the same as it was in the beginning. That's what makes it appealing, but at the same time also extremely exhausting.