THE AXEMEN SERIES : Lasse Hiltunen of As I May

 

 

 

  

 

1.Tell us your name and the band you play for

My name is Lasse Hiltunen and I play in As I May.

2.Who made you want to pick up the guitar.

Well, first I fell in love with music when I heard Anthrax. I think I was 8 years old then. But Enter
Sandman was something that blew my mind. I was 12 years old at that time. I had to get a guitar after
that so I asked my father to buy me one and he did that.

 

3.Are you self taught or did you take lessons? .

I’m self-taught, but off course I have learned things from my friends. I think it would be easier if I had
taken some lessons, but in that case, the music wouldn`t be the same as it is today.

 

4. Can you read music, Can you read tab?

I do everything by ear and I rarely play music made by others. I always write something new music, but
yeah, always by the ear.

 

 

5.Do you feel like you have your own sound / tone ?

I have heard that we have. I think it’s natural if you look years that music has infected to us or we have
played. I think every album will sound different. Nobody knows where we are when we write next one. So
the sound will change, but some things will always be the same, that comes from who you are.

 

6.Tell us about your guitar ( brand ,model . year , color )

 

I like everything that is "Tele" -style. I have many of those and also couple another style guitars, but my
favorite color is mat black. Those guitars I use live. I have fell in love with Chapman guitars. On the last
album we used baritone guitar. It gives more depth etc. to the sound, but in live we use like normal
length guitars.

 

7.What about pickups? Passive or active ?

 Tell us about them
I bought barenuckles pickups. It was something that our producer said that I should try. Ou hell yeah, it
changed the sound a lot. I was missing those passive pickups sound, but lack of attack I was using
active. It sounds more natural now and has a lot of depth. Juggernaut is the pickup.

 

8.Lets get into amplification, Same drill brand , model , speakers etc
Ou yeah. This one is my favorite. Let keep this short, as it can be. For this album I tried 502 different
kemper profiles, but something was missing. I couldn’t dial correct tone. Then I found Revv amps. I liked
how 100p was sounding. Couldn`t find one. So I had to just order it. Well from the first note everything
was just sounding amazing. I started to look why. Don’t know but I guess that it has something to do with
pickups and string cauge etc. Profiles are made with some type of guitar, pickups, strings. If something
changes from that it will sound different. Okay you can dial it from Kemper, but there comes the biggest

problem. It don’t work how normal amp does. It will push more/less power to tubes etc. If you use
Kemper etc. and you have not normal setup, you need to do your own profiles. Okay Kemper is the best
thing that you can have in these days. It makes your life easy. Live playing etc. But you need to have
both one. I use real amps just when I’m making album or sounds.

 

9.Do you have a pedal board? Tell us about that badboy

Well I use stompboxes when I’m making the album and profile those then. Secret weapon is precision
drive. I use bloom in cleans etc. I think there`s neves circuit in it. Off course carbon copy delay, can’t go
wrong with that. A lot of different pedals to go with crazy.

    

10..Now tell us your Dream Rig in detail.....
I have it.

 

11.What guitarist can you not stand?

Everybody is okay. There’s nobody who I can’t stand.

I12. Is tone more important or is technique?

Technique definitely. You can cover a lot with your tone, but first you need to have a technique that
works for your style. One of the things that is not paid so much attention is your picking hand. That’s
more important that the another one, because that’s the hand which is playing. It is something that many
players haven’t developed enough. Picking hand is also the hand that gives motion to playing.

 

 

13. Name your top 5 guitarist
There’s too many good guitarists but here’s couple. Not in any order.
Mark Knopfler,

Jimi Hendrix,

Tom Morello, 

Eric Clapton, 

Tommy Iommi.

 

14.Who is the most overrated guitarist

Is there?

 

15.Who would you like a one hour private sit down lessons with anyone dead or alive?

This is hard one, Björn Gelotte. I think we both like melodies.