It’s a curious quirk of Limp Bizkit axeman Wes Borland’s career that, despite being in one of the most commercially successful acts of the nu-metal era, his technical prowess and crushing tone remain surprisingly under-appreciated.
Borland’s guitar sound and technique were crucial to Limp Bizkit’s fusion of rap and metal at the turn of the century. Given the recent return of the genre to the forefront of guitar music, many modern players are looking to access some of the tonal choices made by Wes Borland at the height of Limp Bizkit’s powers.
In this article, I’ll take you on a deep dive into Wes Borland’s favored gear, including the guitars, amps, and necessary settings to achieve the classic Limp Bizkit tone you can hear on “Break Stuff” and “Nookie.”
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Wes Borland Guitars
In the early days, Borland was a loyal player of Ibanez guitars. In fact, when Limp Bizkit recorded and toured Three Dollar Bill Y’’all, Borland was wielding brutal seven-string guitars, long before anybody used the word “djent.”
Borland’s choice of 7-strings in these days, however, was somewhat unorthodox. He strung the guitar like a six-string, with an extra high E string to fill the empty slot. To clarify, Borland’s seven-string guitars had no low B string, so you can effectively emulate his tone and note choices without an extended-range instrument.
As Bizkit took off, Borland took to some bizarre four-string guitars that, depending on your perspective, could count either as high-tuned basses or limited-string baritone instruments. Some of these were Ibanez, others made by PRS.
For the commercial smash record Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water, Borland resumed playing six-string guitars. He favored custom instruments built by luthier George Gorodnitski, who built some of Borland’s four-string guitars.
The key features of the custom four-string guitars were:
- 5’ scale
- Alnico 5 humbuckers
- Custom string gauges and tuning: E – .030, B – .042, F – .052, low F – .080
Today, Wes Borland tends to play high-powered customized Jackson Rhoads V guitars, which feature aftermarket Seymour Duncan Invader pickups, and heavy-gauge Ernie Ball strings (052, .042, .032, .022 wound, .014, .011) tuned either to C# standard, or Dropped B, depending on the song.
If you’re anything like me, you don’t have a personal luthier who can build custom guitars for you. In the absence of George Gorodnitski to build the Borland rig of our dreams, we must turn to the production-model instruments on the market.
Borland uses Jackson’s range of guitars live quite extensively. He’s partial to the very affordable King V and the aforementioned Rhoads V, as well as the aggressively shaped Warrior model.
Key to this setup, however, is his choice of high-gain Seymour Duncan pickups and ultra-heavy strings. This is what allows Borland to access the brutal detuned tones for which he is famous.
Wes Borland Amps
Wes Borland’s favored amps, through the early days of Limp Bizkit’s meteoric rise to stardom, were Mesa/Boogie triple rectifiers. These were the go-to amp for high-gain nu-metal players, and it’s no surprise to see them in the Limp Bizkit backline.
Borland also played Diezel VH4 amplifiers and has dabbled in Orange amplification since.
These days, however, Borland is a devotee of EVH amps and, curiously, the Roland Jazz Chorus, for clean tones.
Of these amplifiers, by far the most accessible to most guitar players would be the excellent EVH 5150 combo with its enormous amounts of gain on tap.
While you could fork out for a full-powered Mesa/Boogie triple rectifier, I wouldn’t recommend doing so unless you are playing larger venues. These tremendously loud amps tend to be too much for bedroom playing and practice, although they are excellent in a live setting.
You could, if you already own a decent amp with relatively neutral voicing (like, say, a Fender), try the Throttle Box Distortion, which is effectively a Mesa/Boogie amp in a pedal-sized enclosure. It isn’t a true amp pedal – you can’t plug it into a speaker and expect tonal bliss – but its distortion pattern mimics the classic Rectifier tone, and it sounds great in front of a good guitar amp.
Wes Borland Amp Settings
Now that you’ve lined up the right guitar and amp combo, it’s time to dig into Wes Borland’s choice of amplifier settings.
Borland’s tone is heavily saturated and occupies a lot of bottom-end frequencies while retaining the crisp, defined character of his pick attack. There’s plenty of thump and sizzle to this sound, and it’s diverse enough to play more or less any nu-metal songs on your six-string.
Fortunately, this is a relatively straightforward “scooped” nu-metal tone to dial in once you have the right gear.
Volume: 7
If you’re playing a tube amp, you want your volume knob nice and high to achieve the tube compression and saturation necessary for Borland’s thumping, percussive tone.
Gain: 8-9
You’ll need plenty of gain. On an EVH or Mesa-style amp, run the gain almost at full. You don’t want the sound so saturated that you lose note definition, but it needs a lot of distortion to get the full Limp Bizkit effect.
Bass: 6
This is a thumping, powerful low-end tone. Your heavier strings have plenty of low end already, so don’t add too much bass lest the tone become muddy.
Mids: 4
We’re scooping out some of the natural midrange of your guitar for this tone. You don’t need strong vintage-sounding mids for this aggressive guitar sound.
Treble: 7
Because you’re using so much distortion, it’s important to add treble to this guitar tone so the notes remain defined and clear. As crushing and distorted as Wes Borland’s tone is, it still sounds like a guitar, not a synth.
Wes Borland Pedals
Wes Borland has no shortage of guitar pedals at his disposal. He uses a tuner and amp switcher to go between clean and dirty tones, but I find it easier to use an amp footswitch to go between clean and dirty channels when necessary.
For the Borland clean tone, he uses a Strymon Big Sky Reverb, Ibanez Chorus, Maxon OD808 (for all intents and purposes a TS808), EHX Q-Tron, and a pair of Boss DD-6 delay units, although you can use the DD-8, as the former is out of production.
Borland’s dirty signal path includes the same delay units at the end, with the inclusion of a Cry Baby, a boutique tape delay (I recommend the UAFX Orion) and a Boss noise suppressor to tame the hiss and crackle inherent in such a high-gain tone.
Note that, with the exception of the light drive in his clean path, Borland uses his amp to achieve his distorted tone, not a drive or distortion pedal.
Final Word
If you’re looking to capture some of the power and precision of Wes Borland’s unique, immediately identifiable playing style, the right gear is the best place to start.
The key ingredients are a high-powered guitar with Seymour Duncan Invaders, a high-powered amplifier capable of high-gain tones, and a willingness to venture into lower-pitched alternative tunings.
With these in place, you’ll be 90% of the way to emulating one of the most enigmatic, underappreciated lead guitar players of the nu-metal era.
