The Current's Guitar Collection: Mikaiah Lei of The Bots, Fender Mustang
by Luke Taylor
September 24, 2014
The Bots visited The Current's studio last week for a rocking session and a rollicking interview with Mark Wheat. When the session was over, the Bots' Mikaiah Lei was delighted and enthusiastic about discussing his guitars and effects.
When you're 21 years old, as Mikaiah is, a guitar built in 1993 qualifies as "vintage." Mikaiah loves guitars; he's got a shedload of them, many of which are in for maintenance right now (so many, it was difficult to keep count). But he shares their stories and also talks about his beloved, road-ready effects board.
What were you playing today?
I was playing my Fender Mustang, my 1990-something! I don't know what year it is.
I was going to bring my Fender Strat. I checked the serial number recently and it was 1993, which is my year, it's 21 just like me. So it's a vintage Strat -- newly vintage.
But this guitar is good, I was playing my Mustang. I've had this guitar for quite a while. I don't play it very often on tour, actually. My other guitar is in the shop, so that's why this one's the workhorse for now.
And I like baby blue; it's my favorite color.
You say you've had it for a while. Do you remember where you got it?
I got it at Guitar Center, in the "used/vintage" area.
You mentioned baby blue is a favorite color; is that what drew you to this one?
Yeah, that's what drew me in. I like guitars! I own a couple blue instruments and stuff, and I just like the color. Obviously I like classic black and white instruments as well; I have an Airline Super Sahara which is really nice, it's a '68 Super Sahara and it's amazing. It's a Res-O Glass, with one humbucker on it by the bridge and it just squeals. It's got great low end. Wish I would have brought that one; that one's in the shop!
So you've got two guitars in the shop?
No — that one and my 1980s Squier. I use that one on everything. It's my Squier Bullet, and it's from when they were moving the factories from Japan to Korea. They had a bunch of spare parts and stuff, so it's got a humbucker on there, a Tele pickup, a Strat pickup. The body's kind of weird on there, you can see they just bound two pieces of random wood together. It plays a lot better than a lot of Fenders I've played today; and there's just something about the Squiers back then, before they started producing them as they do now, just quality wise; it's just different. They're just not the same now.
So how many in the shop right now — three??
Three guitars in the shop right now. And I've got a Kay acoustic that I'm getting fixed — I've got a lot of guitars in the shop, and then a lot at home that I use. I love guitars! What can I say?
Do all these guitars end up in the shop because you work them really hard?
No, it's because they're guitars that are twice my age! They're so old that they need general maintenance. It's like, the selector switch went out on this one, so I've got to put that in the shop for that to get that done, or get the neck re-fretted — that's what's happening to my Kay acoustic, get the neck fixed and the truss rod because they didn't come with them back then, they're putting that in there. I've got a Silvertone acoustic that's also in the shop as well.
And my Silvertone U2 peanut body has got to go back to the shop as well because the neck is a bit bowed.
I just love guitars and everything. I'm always consistently trying to put a guitar in the shop and maintain it so I have got instruments to use that are readily available.
With so many guitars in for maintenance and repair, you probably have a go-to person.
I do. My girl Lauren. She's amazing. She does everything for me; I only trust her with my guitars. If it's not me or my dad personally working on the guitar a little bit, it's her. She takes care of everything; she'll set up, give me my full intonated ... just everything! Just does it right. I've been working with her for the last year now, actually. She's my specialist, my go-to girl for guitars.
She works out of a shop [Red Zone Guitar Works] but she does work independently as well, and now that we've been working with her for this long, we've been getting kind of better "friend" prices. She'll take my guitar home and work on it and bring it back. She actually brought my last guitar to my house, which was so nice of her; I have to give her big props! She delivered it right before I was going on tour. I was thinking, "I need a guitar to be ready!" and she was like, "I gotcha covered, I'll get it to you by Tuesday evening" and I was like, "Yes!"
She came, sure enough, with the guitar in hand. I'm very fortunate to have people who care as much as I care about what we're doing and she supports us big time. It's really nice.
You've got quite an effects board.
I fly it around, so I had to minimize my load. I had two loop stations. I had an RC-20, which is very good, it's a very intuitive looper. I want to get a bigger pedal train so I could slap more on there.
The Eventide kind of saved my life. It's a great songwriting tool. You can do loops and stuff and undo and redo layers and whatnot, and this has loads of harmonious effects: You play one chord and it sounds like you're playing two, which is good, because it helps a lot live — it's not that I can't do it, but in the studio there are certain things you can do on the guitar that you can't do live. With this, you can play 'one chord and it plays a bunch, and in studio I play it with real, live organic instruments [through multi-tracking], but then the effects just makes it easier for live shows, so I can perform it just as it was written in the studio, so I figure out different ways to make it work.
I wrote "Side Effects", the last song we just performed, and I figured out a way to set — these aren't' presets, but I've turned them into presets with my own programming — it plays this, but obviously in the studio I'm playing two guitars. This pedal allows me to perform that song live with one guitar rather than needing two guitars.
If you hear the studio album, it's actually piano playing that part, and that's why I figured out how to turn the pedal effect into exactly what I needed to play. I perform live like that. I spend a lot of time in the bedroom tweaking and figuring things out like that. It's been a lifesaver on tour.
I've also got my road Big Muff; I like the original, but I keep the bigger ones at home. I've got the original POG at home, because it won't fit on the board, so I've kind of made a road-ready version of it. I've gone through like five of these whammys; it sucks over the course of like, three years, you play through a lot of those. You find out what you like and what works best for you and make it happen.
For the cheapest band, I'm allowed to loop and cheat a little bit. As long as I'm the one performing it, it's still all very organic in my eyes. It's just reproducing a song that I've written in my bedroom live with pedals, and that's the blessing 2014 technology has offered me.
Just a decade ago, this wouldn't necessarily be as easy to do what I'm doing, and I'm very, very happy with the way things have worked out for me.
Resources
The Bots - official site
Red Zone Guitar Works, Pasadena, Calif.
