Bill Kelliher (Mastodon)

Mastodon's Website

Bill Kelliher is an American heavy metal guitarist best known as a member of Atlanta band Mastodon along with bassist-vocalist Troy Sanders, guitarist-vocalist Bret Hinds and drummer-vocalist Brann Dailor. Mastodon is known for blending clean ballad vocals with harsh screams and heavy metal riffs in order to create their signature style. Their recently released album The Hunter (2011) reached No. 10 on the Billboard 200 chart, their fifth full length album to date. On June 12, 2007, Hinds and Kelliher won Mastodon's first ever honor, the Metal Hammer Golden Gods award for best shredders.

Kelliher’s main axe is the Gibson Les Paul and much like he does with most of his solid-bodies, he rarely leaves these suckers stock. Like several of his heavy metal counterparts, some of his favorite pickups include various EMG models as well as a few of Seymour Duncan’s distortion pickups, such as the SH-6. This helps Kelliher attain a much fatter and rich distorted tone, a very sought after quality for most metal guitarists. Along with his use of a few standard metal effects pedals (small in comparison to your average metal head, actually), he gets the power needed from the output via his favorite show amps, unsurprisingly, the Marshall variety.

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