12 Daves Of Christmas: 5 - Dave Knudson of Minus The Bear

(C) Jason Moore/ZUMA Press/Corbis

Seattle band Minus The Bear have mastered the art of making impressive musicianship and sonic experimentation sound, well, palatable, and at the heart of it all is guitarist Dave Knudson.

He once lit up the fretboard with mathcore pioneers Botch, but Knudson favours extreme effects experimentation these days, and he has a mighty pedalboard to prove it, as we found out when we toured his rig recently.

Did You Know?

Knudson has four Line 6 DL-4 delay modellers on his pedalboard. Two for delay, and two for triggering pre-recorded samples.

Simon Bradley is a guitar and especially rock guitar expert who worked for Guitarist magazine and has in the past contributed to world-leading music and guitar titles like MusicRadar (obviously), Guitarist, Guitar World and Louder. What he doesn't know about Brian May's playing and, especially, the Red Special, isn't worth knowing.