Chris Payton is one of the pop world’s first-call session pros. He has played with Katy Perry. He has played with Jay-Z. And right about now he is surely kicking back after just completing the epic European leg of Bruno Mar’s The Romantic Tour, which packed out stadiums night after night.
There were six nights at Wembley Stadium, two at Milan’s San Siro, two at the Metropolitano in Madrid… Payton and Mars’ summer schedule was more Champions League than Soul Train. But what does Payton have on his rig to play these shows?
Ahead of his shows in Milan, we got a look thanks to Planet Guitar, who shot a rig-rundown with Payton, and with his tech, who is overseeing a rig that’s got one seriously expensive wireless systems, three Kempers, and some super smart routing.
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But it was Payton’s electric guitars that caught our eye. His choices here – and the mods he has made to them – are pretty darn imaginative, but practical too.
It’s like he says, he needs these guitars to be versatile.
“Well, we have an array of guitars, because Bruno’s style, it’s so vast,” says Payton. “It goes from pop to funk to soul, R&B and all that stuff, so you want to be able to cover as many bases as you possibly can.”
The first guitar he shows us is a Fender American Elite Stratocaster HSS from 2016. This guitar is already one versatile design, not only with its pickup configuration, but you’ve got the S1 switch offering all those alternate tones, and you have the push-push Passing Lane button for the Shawbucker bridge humbucker, bypassing the guitar’s tone and volume pots for a brighter tone with more output.
Payton’s, however, doesn’t work quite like that. For a start, he’s got Lambertone pickups in it. Secondly, there’s a clever mod on the S1 switch.
“Okay, a little secret I like to do on a lot of my guitars, is I like to wire it to where I can have these two guys [bridge and neck pickup] at the same time – almost like a super switch, but not,” he says. “So that’s what the S-1 is doing; the S-1 activates the bridge in any position. And [the Passing Lane button] is just a coil tap for the humbucker.”
And this is just his backup Strat. His number one is a sunburst S-style made by the Californian boutique guitar company, Iconic Guitars.
“This has become my favourite over time,” he says. “Man, these guys are pretty special, because they pretty much hand-make everything. They’re out of California, a little custom shop kind of thing, but, man, they just make really, really good quality guitars.”
Again, there’s a mod. That 5-way pickup switch is not what it appears to be.
“My other little secret is, this right here, this position, that’s supposed to be the neck, right? It’s not. It’s my middle pickup – just because I’m always in this position for the set, going from lead stuff to main stuff, it makes it easy.”
This being a Payton rig, there are of course some PRS Guitars, whom he has endorsed since 2011, including Mark Lettieri’s Fiore signature guitar – “ this guitar, it just speaks for itself” – and the Special Semi-Hollow.
“Man, this guitar can do anything,” says Payton. “With the middle pickup, the dual splitting humbuckers, I can get any tone I want out of this guitar. If I just had to take one guitar, that would be the guitar. But I don’t have to!”
There’s also a Heritage H-535, left stock, and a stunning Collings I-35 semi-hollow that was a gift from Mars (one thing we learned from this is that Mars is a superfan of Wayne Collings’ high-end builds – he owns several).
But again, it goes back to the Stratocaster HSS, with a circa ’21/’22 American Ultra with a Seymour Duncan Exciter humbucker at the bridge. Payton kept the wiring stock, and leaves this in Eb for Runaway Baby. But it’s the modded American Elite that
Check out the video for more on these guitars and, crucially, where what their signal gets sent through. It’s indicative of just how challenging it is to put a rig together for a stadium production when you’re playing a two-hours set split into three acts, with songs from across an artist’s career.
