Skip to main content
Music Radar MusicRadar The No.1 website for musicians
Sign in
  • View Profile
  • Sign out
  • Artist news
  • Guitar Amps
  • Guitar Pedals
  • Synths
  • Guitars
  • Drums
  • Keyboards & Pianos
  • Controllers
  • Software & Apps
  • More
    • Recording
    • DJ Gear
    • Acoustic Guitars
    • Bass Guitars
    • Tech
    • Tutorials
    • Reviews
    • Buying Guides
    • About Us
More
  • "Worst rap album in history"
  • Superbooth 2025
  • Eilish vs Radiohead
  • 95k+ free music samples

Recommended reading

Misha Mansoor digs in on his signature Jackson Juggernaut as he play live with Periphery. The stage is lit in purple and white.
Artists “Use as a little gain as you can to get the idea across, which may still be all the gain in the world”: Periphery’s Misha Mansoor on exploring “absurd” tunings, his friends' genius, and why he is looking for someone to teach him guitar
Former Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson hits a note and feels it as he plays a red Gibson Les Paul onstage. He wears a grey blazer and a black T-shirt.
Artists “Not that I was restricted in any way with Rush. I’m very proud of what we did. But this is a whole different kind of experience”: Alex Lifeson on disguised guitars, soloing strategies and finding fresh sounds and freedom with Envy Of None
Phil X
Artists “I never would have approached anything associated with suicide for a song, but after I heard about Chris Cornell’s passing I wrote that lyric”: Bon Jovi guitarist Phil X digs deep on his new album
Steve Vai on the BEAT tour
Artists “Jesus, that was hard! But I got it. I welcome the challenges”: Guitar hero Steve Vai reveals the difficulties of playing King Crimson music - and how he gets by with a little help from Robert Fripp
Bob Dylan
Artists “I was frightened, but I was like, ‘ok, big boy pants time. Step up to the plate, here comes the pitch and you can either knock it out or you can strike’”: Bob Dylan's live engineer Jason Frankhouser on mixing front-of-house for The Never Ending Tour
Travis Barker in the studio
Artists "If I wasn't recording albums every month, multiple albums, and I wasn't playing on everyone's songs, I wouldn't need any of this”: Travis Barker reveals his production tricks and gear in a new studio tour
romesh
Producers & Engineers “I was watching an episode of Friends and someone was wearing a Motörhead T-shirt. Literally an hour later, I got a call to work on their record!”: Romesh Dodangoda on how he became one of modern rock's most in-demand producers
  1. Artists
  2. Guitarists

Doug Pinnick talks bass roots, King's X and making KXM's Scatterbrain

News
By Alison Richter ( Bass Guitar ) last updated 11 September 2022

The genre-spanning bassist reflects

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

Introduction

Introduction

Take three musicians from three bands, put them together in the studio, and the end result is “like cooking spaghetti,” according to KXM bassist/vocalist Doug Pinnick. “You put the ingredients in, stir it up, and what comes out hopefully tastes good.”

Pinnick (King’s X), guitarist George Lynch (Lynch Mob), and drummer Ray Luzier (Korn) put their ingredients together the old-fashioned way for KXM’s new album, Scatterbrain.

They gathered at Steakhouse Studio in North Hollywood, California, with engineer Chris Collier, who worked on the trio’s 2014 self-titled debut, to work out parts and create songs. No sending files back and forth, no pre-production, just musicians in a room. The process was both challenging and rewarding.

“Creating something out of nothing is the challenge,” says Pinnick. “When we get something we like, and other people like it, that’s the reward. We don’t purposely get together to do demos, bring them in, and work. 

“The whole thing is to have a good time with no pressure, and as a result, this is what we got. We go in, start working on a song, and within an hour we’ve got it and move on to the next. There’s no real way to make music. You just have to dive in.

“The challenge is fun, but it also gets easier and quicker,” he adds. “You come up with a riff and you’ve got a song. When I was a lot younger, you’d come up with a riff and then you’d argue over it, figuring out ‘is this good, is this not?’ 

“You’d get insecure about it; you’d look for approval and all that kind of stuff. But we’re older now. We have our own respective bands, our own lives, and we just want to have a good time.”

It’s been 10 or even 15 years since I played the 12-string, but lately I’ve been pulling it out again

Pinnick recorded his bass parts using his signature Schecter four-string, his 12-string, and on two tracks, Noises In The Sky and Not A Single Word, his five-string.

“I don’t normally use the five-string,” he says, “but it’s all about experimenting, so I thought, ‘I’ll give this a try’. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. It’s been 10 or even 15 years since I played the 12-string, but lately I’ve been pulling it out again, and I decided to incorporate it. It’s a different animal, but it’s inspirational.”

His signature model, the Baron-H, went through three prototypes. “The first one was a stock model of the Schecter Diamond bass,” he says. “I really liked it, so they gave me two of them and I played them for a while. 

“Then they said, ‘How about we make a Doug bass?’ I said, ‘I want this style, the Diamond bass, and I wanted the neck just a little bit longer, because I play tuned down a lot, and the longer the neck, the more it holds the low tuning’. So it’s a tiny bit longer than other basses. 

“Other than that, it’s pretty normal. It’s got the standard Seymour Duncan pickups, and it has one knob because I don’t use tone controls. I use volume up and volume down, and that’s it. It’s a light bass because it’s got an F-hole. It’s light, but it’s balanced.”

Page 1 of 3
Page 1 of 3
Signature tones

Signature tones

Pinnick has used DR strings exclusively for more than 20 years. His attack is strong, hard, and groove-oriented. 

“I play with a pick most of the time,” he says. “Sometimes I use my fingers, if I’m playing blues or something soulful that requires a different touch. When I saw Chris Squire play with a pick, I thought, ‘I guess that’s how you get that tone’, so I grabbed a pick about three years into playing bass. That’s what I was looking for at the time, and I stuck with it.”

The amp has a lot of high end and distortion with low end at the same time

His Tech 21 Signature Ultra Bass 1000 amp figures prominently on Scatterbrain. “The amp has a lot of high end and distortion with low end at the same time,” he says. 

“It’s two different amp sounds blended into one. With King’s X, I go back and forth. There are times when I don’t want the high-end signature sound; I just want the normal bass sound. So my amp is built to go to that. I don’t mic any bass when I’m recording. It’s all straight out of the back. It makes me sound live, and there’s no need for me to mic my bass at all. I plug in and I go. 

“All the other amps I used would get my sound, but there were so many signals going and EQs and compressors. I had probably nine or 10 things in a rack, and there were always problems with wiring and things breaking down. Tech 21 said, ‘What do you want?’ I said, ‘Can you make a small amp I can put into a rack that sounds like that?’ They said, ‘We can do that’. It took us two years to figure it out.”

When he’s not busy with King’s X or KXM, Pinnick keeps his calendar full with other projects. His blues group, Grinder Blues, is mixing their second record; he’s writing songs for a solo album; and he’s readying the release of a long-awaited Hendrix tribute disc. There’s also a King’s X album in the works.

“We’re definitely going to make a record,” he says. “We don’t have any real information at the moment, but we’re meeting to finalise exactly how that’s going to happen.”

The connecting thread in all of Pinnick’s output is the musical triumvirate of his childhood: gospel, R&B, and hard rock. He grew up in Joliet, Illinois, where he was raised by his devout great-grandmother, and spent his formative years exploring a diverse range of artists, from Mahalia Jackson to Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Jimi Hendrix, and the church choirs that were an integral part of his upbringing.

Out of everything I listened to, I listened to the bass more than anything else. I became obsessed with the low-end volume of it

At the age of five, he heard Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers’ ‘Why Do Fools Fall In Love’. It was a pivotal moment. “I was drawn to the bass-line,” he says. “It was all I remembered, and from that point on, out of everything I listened to, I listened to the bass more than anything else. I became obsessed with the low-end volume of it. I immersed myself in it.”

Pinnick also began singing, winning contests for his rendition of ‘Blue Moon’. His elementary school music teachers recognised his talent. “They would make me sit in different choir sections and sing the parts so that the other kids could stay in pitch,” he says. He eventually began performing with local bands, and aged 23, when a friend loaned him a bass that he never returned, his musical horizons expanded again. “The 70s were my most impressionable time when it came to playing music,” he says. “That’s when I started playing bass and really listening to bands like Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple. I noticed that they were all trying to emulate soul music; they were just playing it harder. It was like coming full circle.”

He left Illinois for Missouri, where he landed a year-long gig with [acoustic singer-songwriter] Phil Keaggy, whose band included drummer Jerry Gaskill. From there, the two eventually formed King’s X with guitarist Ty Tabor. 

“People ask me, ‘What’s it like to make it and do what you do?’ and ‘How did it feel when you knew this was happening?’” he says. “And I say, ‘I’ve been doing this all my life. I never thought about a beginning or an end’. Music is my dream, and it’s an outlet for me, too. It’s a way to express all the feelings that I have inside. It’s something I’ve done so much, and that’s what I love about the music I make. I don’t let it turn into something that’s going to cause me pain or upset me or disappoint me.”

Page 2 of 3
Page 2 of 3
Finding love

Finding love

A lifetime of introspection and questioning finally brought him to a place of peace five years ago. 

“I looked back and said, ‘This is who you are, this is what you’ve done, and this is what you’ve created, so stop struggling and just do it’,” he says.

I came to the conclusion that the world will not love you, but you will find some people that love what you do

 “I came to the conclusion that the world will not love you, but you will find some people that love what you do. That’s when I stopped trying so hard to make music to be successful. There are enough people who love what I do to keep me believing in myself. Also, I stopped struggling monetarily. I’m not rich, but now I can go out, play, do my side projects, and pay my bills every month, and that’s all I ever wanted to do.”

“Like anybody else, I have my issues, I have my demons, I have my insecurities, and I have things that stopped me from being me. I finally grew up and became comfortable with who I am and everything I do. It’s taken 60 years to get there. I look back now and wonder what the struggle was and what the fight was about being me. I’m content now. 

“At 60 years old I realised that a lot of things I had been fighting and struggling with were just futile. I was just trying to change who I was. At 60 years old I looked around and said, ‘You’re old now. It’s time to stop crying about your life, and tell the young audiences what an adventure they can have if they just step up to the plate’.”

Pinnick’s ongoing search for meaning and self is often reflected in his lyrics. “When I’m onstage, I’m pouring my heart out,” he says. “It’s scary sometimes, but at the same time, if I don’t do it, I’m not happy, I don’t feel peace, I don’t feel like I’m doing anything with my life.”

Things that people don’t want to talk about, or they’re embarrassed to say anything about, I’ll sing about to let them know they’re not alone

That vulnerability, he believes, is part of the reason King’s X and KXM have such a loyal fanbase: audiences connect with the candour of human struggle more than with a rock star on a pedestal, claiming to lead a charmed life. 

“I think we all want to be loved and feel like we’re OK, and that’s what I bring to the stage,” he says, “but instead of going out there and trying to get it, I went out and gave it, and as a result, it came back in droves. I didn’t realise until five or six years ago how much I was loved, how much people really appreciate what I do, and how it changed people’s lives. I never paid attention to that kind of thing because I was too busy looking at myself, hating everything, and saying, ‘I’ve got to make this better, better, better. I’m not good enough. I’m not good enough’.”

“People relate to music in many different ways. Some of them find creativity, and that inspires them. Others listen to the words and relate to the ideas about the way we feel. Things that people don’t want to talk about, or they’re embarrassed to say anything about, I’ll sing about to let them know they’re not alone. Through the years I realised what is created through what I do, and so I realised it’s a bit more important. It’s way deeper than just the songs.”

Scatterbrain is out now on Rat Pak Records.

Page 3 of 3
Page 3 of 3
Categories
Guitars
Alison Richter
We're the UK's only print publication devoted to bass guitar. image
We're the UK's only print publication devoted to bass guitar.
Subscribe for star interviews, essential gear reviews and killer tuition!
More Info
Read more
Misha Mansoor digs in on his signature Jackson Juggernaut as he play live with Periphery. The stage is lit in purple and white.
“Use as a little gain as you can to get the idea across, which may still be all the gain in the world”: Periphery’s Misha Mansoor on exploring “absurd” tunings, his friends' genius, and why he is looking for someone to teach him guitar
Former Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson hits a note and feels it as he plays a red Gibson Les Paul onstage. He wears a grey blazer and a black T-shirt.
“Not that I was restricted in any way with Rush. I’m very proud of what we did. But this is a whole different kind of experience”: Alex Lifeson on disguised guitars, soloing strategies and finding fresh sounds and freedom with Envy Of None
Phil X
“I never would have approached anything associated with suicide for a song, but after I heard about Chris Cornell’s passing I wrote that lyric”: Bon Jovi guitarist Phil X digs deep on his new album
Steve Vai on the BEAT tour
“Jesus, that was hard! But I got it. I welcome the challenges”: Guitar hero Steve Vai reveals the difficulties of playing King Crimson music - and how he gets by with a little help from Robert Fripp
Bob Dylan
“I was frightened, but I was like, ‘ok, big boy pants time. Step up to the plate, here comes the pitch and you can either knock it out or you can strike’”: Bob Dylan's live engineer Jason Frankhouser on mixing front-of-house for The Never Ending Tour
Travis Barker in the studio
"If I wasn't recording albums every month, multiple albums, and I wasn't playing on everyone's songs, I wouldn't need any of this”: Travis Barker reveals his production tricks and gear in a new studio tour
Latest in Guitarists
Frank Zappa in a top hat
"Window or aisle, how would you like to return home?": Dweezil Zappa on how his dad ran his band
EVH in 1986
“He went into this trance state as he played. I’d be sitting there at the console and he would lean on me while he was playing. And it was kind of weird – it was like it was coming through me”: A close encounter with the genius of Eddie Van Halen
Scott Ian of Anthrax introduces his new X Series signature King V in black with gold hardware, and the original Jackson logo on the headstock.
“The old-school Jackson logo, that’s pretty much the pièce de résistance! And it plays even better than it looks”: Jackson gives its metal thrashing X Series Scott Ian King V a super-classy makeover
Brad Paisley wears a white cowboy hat, burgundy jacket black jeans and cowboy boots as he sits with his new Fender Lost Telecaster from the Custom Shop.
“I like the real thing that happens when you dig in a little bit and the amp starts to cry for mercy”: Is the compressor pedal a country guitar essential? Brad Paisley doesn’t think so – and here’s why
Status Quo Performing in Hyde Park, 2001
“We used to work with Fleetwood Mac a lot on the uni circuit. You could sit down beside the stage and they’d start playing - der-der, der-der - for an hour and a half. We wanted to do that”: Francis Rossi on how Status Quo developed their 12 bar boogie
Michael Jackson
“It’s not technically hard - a third-grader can play these bits. But on the spot? That’s kind of the difference”: The guitarist on Michael Jackson’s I Just Can’t Stop Loving You on how he found the right moments to play his “little earworms”
Latest in News
Frank Zappa in a top hat
"Window or aisle, how would you like to return home?": Dweezil Zappa on how his dad ran his band
Bruce Springsteen performs during the first night of 'The Land of Hopes and Dreams' tour at Co-op Live on May 14, 2025 in Manchester, England
“In my country, they’re taking sadistic pleasure in the pain they inflict”: Springsteen issues rallying cry against Trump at Manchester gig
microlab mk3
Arturia upgrades its MicroLab MIDI keyboard with new keybed, sustain input and USB-C - and slashes the price
Dire Straits Brothers In Arms
"Everybody was going 'Does anybody know how to work this thing?'”: How Guy Fletcher and a classic ‘80s synth became Dire Straits’ secret weapon on Brothers In Arms, and helped to turn it into one of the biggest albums of the decade
Fortin Fourteen Dual Boost Overdrive: the new tricked-out green stompbox from Mike Fortin packs two Tube Screamer OD flavours in one housing and is packed with features.
“Each of the three modes represents a milestone in pedal history”: Fortin triples down on modded-TS tones with the Fourteen – an boost/overdrive pedal representing the “apex of Mike Fortin’s modification philosophy”
Andy Bell and Liam Gallagher 2005
“I’m in and I’m really looking forward to it”: First non-Gallagher member confirmed for Oasis reunion line up

MusicRadar is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site.

  • About Us
  • Contact Future's experts
  • Terms and conditions
  • Privacy policy
  • Cookies policy
  • Advertise with us
  • Accessibility Statement
  • Careers

© Future Publishing Limited Quay House, The Ambury, Bath BA1 1UA. All rights reserved. England and Wales company registration number 2008885.

Please login or signup to comment

Please wait...