Jackson has lost a few artists to ESP over the last few years… well basically since they were bought by Fender. This shows some artists still have faith in the Jackson brand. The guitar, which Mark Morton helped design really is run of the mill though. If you look on Jackson’s site, all of the unique features are in the aesthetics. You’ll see though that it has all of the standard metal guitar features including Seymour Duncan pickups, jumbo frets, and neck-through-body design.

Set aside the amazing finish and unique body design. The thing that stands out at me is both the bridge and neck position have the same pickup. To be hones the first thing I would do after buying this guitar would be swap out one of the pickups with a different Seymour Duncan to increase the range of sound. On the other hand, this IS a signature guitar… if you are going to buy it my guess is you are trying replicate Morton’s sound. Either that or you are like me and are having strong sexual feelings towards the guitar due to it’s stunning finish.

Feature Summary

• Body: Chambered Mahogany with Quilt Maple Top
• Neck: Neck-Thru-Body Mahogany with Pultruded Graphite Rods for Stability
• Tuning Machines: Pearloid Buttoned Sperzel® Locking Tuners
• Fingerboard: Ebony
• No. of Frets: 22 Jumbo Frets
• Bridge Pickup: Seymour Duncan® ‘59™ Humbucking Pickup
• Neck Pickup: Seymour Duncan® ‘59™ Humbucking Pickup
• Controls: Volume 1. (Neck Pickup), Volume 2. (Bridge Pickup), Tone 1. (Neck Pickup), Tone 2. (Bridge Pickup)
• Bridge: Schaller® 456 Fully Adjustable Bridge with Anchored Tailpiece
• Pickup Switching: 3-Position Toggle Pickup Selector and 2 Mini-Toggle Coil Splitter Switches
• Hardware: Chrome
• Strings: GHS Boomers, (.010 to .046)
• Scale Length: 24.75”

For Your Malice Intro Lesson

This first video is just Mark Morton showing us how to play the intro riff to For Your Malice off of 2003’s As the Palaces Burn.

I can vouch for this tab below. It is correct. You will, have to practice the open Ds a bit to get the right rhythm though. The way that I got it was its d u d u dud u dud u dudu where down = d and up = u. If you listen to it a few times and commit the rhythm to memory and then try it it will be easier. Start out slow and build it up. Also, take note that this is played in drop-d tuning.

Dm/A
e---------------------------------------|
B--10-10-10-10--------------------------|
G--10-10-10-10--------------------------|
D--12-12-12-12--------------------------|
A--12-12-12-12--------------------------|
D--------------0-0-0-0-000-0-000-0-0000-|
---d--u--d--u--d u d u dud u dud u dudu 

E7/A
e-------------------------------------------|
B-10-10-10-10----------9--9--9--9-----------|
G-10-10-10-10----------9--9--9--9-----------|
D-12-12-12-12---------12-12-12-12-----------|
A-12-12-12-12---------12-12-12-12-----------|
D-------------0-0-0-0-------------0-0-0-0---| 

Bb
e--------------------------------------|
B-11-11-11-11--------------------------|
G-10-10-10-10--------------------------|
D-12-12-12-12--------------------------|
A-13-13-13-13--------------------------|
D-------------0-0-0-0-000-0-000-0-0000-|
--d--u--d--u--d-u-d-u-dud-u-dud-u-dudu 

e--------------------------------------------||
B-11-11-11-11---------11-11-11-11-----------o||
G-10-10-10-10---------10-10-10-10------------||
D-12-12-12-12---------12-12-12-12------------||
A-13-13-13-13---------13-13-13-13-----------o||
D-------------0-0-0-0-------------0-0-0-0----||

Lamb of God – Hourglass

This second video is Mark Morton and Will Adler showing us how to play all of Hourglass. I don’t have a tab or anything for this, so if anyone has a good one they would like to post that would be great. I havn’t tried to learn this one yet. If I ever try I’ll post mine too.

Lamb of God in the Studio

This final video that I leave you with isn’t really a lesson, but is more of just a “this is lamb of god’s sound” video. It is a 5 minute clip of them being interviewed while in the studio, and I like it. So check it out.

Morton uses three different guitars. His main guitar is a Jackson MM1 Mark Morton Signature. His second and third are a Jackson Swee-tone Archtop and a Jackson RR5 Rhoads. Each guitar has a Seymour Duncan Invader pickup in the bridge and a Seymour Duncan Jazz in the neck. GHS Boomer 10 – 46 gauge strings are strung on the guitars and tuned in either a drop-d (D-A-D-G-B-E) or a double drop-d (D-A-D-G-B-D).

From Guitar to Amp

• Jackson Custom MM1 Mark Morton Signature
• Sennheiser EW100 Wireless Unit
• Boss TU-2 Chromatic Tuner
• Whirlwind Selector

From this point on the guitar signal is split into two channels. Each channel goes through the compressor, a noise gate, and into the Mesa/Boogie heads.

• DBX 266XL Dual Compressor
• 2 Mesa/Boogie Mark IV Heads
• Rocktron Hush Super C Two-channel Noise Gate via the FX loop of the Mesa/Boogie heads
• 9 Mesa Rectifier Straight-front traditional 4×12 cabs with Celestion Vintage 30’s

I think the idea for splitting the sound between two heads is really sweet. I would love to have a chance to play around with something like that one day.