With crossover progressive instrumentalists Polyphia, Tim Henson has redefined many things. The way an electric guitar can be played. The genres that can be combined in the name of shred. Heck, even the role of the guitar in contemporary music.
It’s why big-name composers like Hans Zimmer have his number on speed dial, while his contemporaries – from acoustic trailblazer Marcin and djent-soul wunderkind Manuel Gardner Fernandes to bona fide legends like Steve Vai – are lining up to work with him.
Henson’s efforts have shaken up the gear world, too. Look at the unprecedented success of his nylon-string signature guitar, the Ibanez TOD10N. Or his Neural DSP plugin, which proudly features a multivoicer effect that humanizes your guitar sound.
So when the virtuoso turned his hand to signature strings, you knew he was going to ask for something out of the ordinary from the unsuspecting engineers at Ernie Ball.
“I was just like, ‘Well, I don’t like it when I’m playing a harmonic, and then I hit the low string super-hard, and then it overpowers the harmonic while the notes are ringing together,” he explains of his “unreasonable” request.
A nylon set has also launched alongside the 9.5-gauge electric strings, although the two are more similar than you might expect…
“It just feels more like an electric guitar,” he says of the nylon strings. “It’s blasphemous to say that for all the acoustic players out there! But I started on electric guitar, and I was like, ‘Well, I want the timbre of an acoustic instrument, but I want to play the same riffs.”
But we’re not just here to talk about strings. When we sit down with Henson at NAMM 2025, he’s gearing up for an intense schedule of signings across a sea of brand booths, all the while checking out new gear (he has a DigiTech Hammer-On in his hand as he enters Ernie Ball’s private video suite – we can only imagine what he’ll cook up with that).
Beyond his show commitments, Henson is busier than perhaps he’s ever been. As word has spread of his talents, he’s found the scoring work piling up. Meanwhile, Polyphia are shaping up their fifth new album and the guest collabs (and new guitars) that entails; there’s a solo record on the way; and the small matter of a run of stadium shows supporting System of a Down.
Henson is down to talk about all of it – including the state of guitar in 2025, the players he has his eye on and his recent spiritual awakening. What follows are the highlights from our interview (you can watch the full thing below).
Your playing has featured in a bunch of film and TV projects recently, including Ultraman: Rising and Cobra Kai. What are the greatest challenges with that kind of work?
“With Polyphia, me and Scott (LePage) are the ones that make the final calls about anything, and when you’re working on someone else’s project, it is someone else’s project. (laughs)
“That’s always like a fun challenge to work within the parameters of somebody else’s vision. With Ultraman, for example, the movie on Netflix, Scott (Stafford), the composer, just set me up to thrive, really. Every time I would send him something, he’d be like, ‘This is great. Do more.’ And I was like, ‘You want more? Because I’ve been holding back – like, I can give you more,’ you know. They normally never tell me that!
“There’s so much shred throughout that movie, and then also, lots of fun stuff that I got to do with the guitar – onomatopoeia playing in the sense of, like, there’s a scene where Ultraman gets knocked back. He’s fucking scraping his nails in the concrete. And so I got to pick scrape on those and all sorts of stuff like that is super-fun and interesting.
I walk in and Hans has me sit down, and his studio is gorgeous. And he goes, ‘Let’s just get down to business. I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately’
“Oh, and here’s another really cool thing: when you’re scoring to picture, you’ve got this musical theme that takes a certain amount of time, but you also have to make it work by the time that this punch lands. Sometimes that’s just not within the BPM, right?
“As I was learning this, I was like, ‘Oh, there’s, like, seven bars of 4/4, and then on the eighth bar, it’s 3/4, because that’s when that punch landed.’ And so you have to learn to make a phrase that sounds complete, ending one beat before it should. You either play before or after the barline to just make it work. It was really interesting to do that.”
You posted a picture with Hans Zimmer on Instagram recently, so I’m assuming this is leading up to something with the maestro…
“Man, it was super-cool to go over there. I walk in and Hans has me sit down, and his studio is gorgeous. And he goes, ‘Let’s just get down to business. I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately.’ And I was like, ‘That is so flattering.’ And he pulls up… well, I’m not gonna go into too many details about all the stuff, but, you know, fingers crossed that all these things come into fruition. And then the next time you interview me, I can tell you all about the process.
“But it’s such a flattering thing to know that Hans has been thinking about my playing and in the sense of the things that he’s working on. So yeah, shout out Hans Zimmer. Dude’s incredible and just such, such a nice guy, and the most amazing studio I’ve ever been to.”
And how’s the new Polyphia shaping up?
“OK, so we’ve been working on album five. We’re still working on it. I’m also working on my solo record during the process. But, yeah, it’s heavy. (laughs) It’s heavy. So that’s exciting for us, and I think last year was really eye-opening for us in terms of how we should start composing for the live performance.
“Because last year we did our first festival circuit in general. We’d just been passing on the festivals until we felt like it was the right time. In France, we were playing Hellfest, and we were like, third from headlining, and there was, like, 80,000 people there. It was incredible. But it was really like, ’Oh, we’re playing Playing God to 80,000 people. And I have no idea what this sounds like to the 55,000th person way in the back there!’
“It made us realize, like, ’Hey, we should start composing for it to work in these situations of 80,000-plus people.’ And so we’re trying to, obviously, bring more energy by making it heavier. And then – I don’t want to say tone it down in the technicality department, but sonically, making sure that it can work and just be executed really well.
“Because, you know, playing a nylon-string to 80,000 people is a little like, you know, when you think of a nylon-string, you think of a dude in a coffee shop, right? So, it’s a little disconnect there. So, yeah, we’re excited to hone that in to really make the music bigger and just for that kind of audience now.”
How’s that going to affect you in terms of playing and gear? Is that more distortion? Is that seven- and eight-strings?
“Yeah, lots of eight-string. We’re playing baritones and stuff, too. We’re just making new guitars that don’t exist for the sole purpose of writing something really, really cool with it, so that if you want to learn it, you’re gonna have no choice but to buy that guitar! (laughs) You know, it’s the Playing God treatment, right?
“And, yeah, you know, more distortion… lots of sound design. We’ve really been locking in with that. Last year, I got the pleasure to go jam with Mike Dean. He’s the dude that’s behind all the synth sounds of the Kanye West records and all, the big, big hip-hop records. So getting to be around that, and then working that into our music… It’s coming out really cool. So I’m very excited to say the least.”
A new Polyphia record means new guests. Is there anyone you’ve been working with lately?
“We have one with Serj (Tankian) from System of a Down, and we just finished a second Babymetal collab – that’s for their record, though, and we were working on one to send them for our record. So hopefully we’ll make that one come to fruition.
“We’re about to book a whole bunch of sessions throughout the year as checkpoints. So then we’ll be able to tell where we are in the record more. Because right now it’s just writing and throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. So there’ll be organization sessions in which we can then kind of decide, ’Oh, hey, this would be really cool if we got this person or whoever,’ you know.
“Remember That You Will Die was very much a showcase of range for us, where we’ve got songs like ABC, which is a J-pop song, and then songs like Bloodbath, where it’s with Chino (Moreno) and super-heavy, and songs like Playing God with nylon-strings. And songs like The Audacity, which is crazy jazz.
“So for this record, rather than kind of like being all over the place in terms of a range showcase, we’re more pinpointing the sound and really going deeper into it, rather than wider, if that makes sense.”
You mentioned a solo album as well. What is that going to be like?
“You know, it’s interesting, because when I do these sessions with my friends and I tell them, ‘Hey, there’s two records we can work on: mine, and we can work on the Polyphia record.’ And I’ll play them the Polyphia record, and then I’ll play them mine. And they always ask the same question: ‘What’s your record? Is this just Polyphia minus three dudes or…’
“And I never had an answer, but I recently played it for my friend Johan. And he was like, ‘Oh, no. This is different. This is great. This is a whole other thing.’ One of my friends was like, ‘This almost is like Tim the producer, as opposed to Tim the guitar player.’
As I spiraled down, and it just kept going lower and lower, I hit a point where I broke through the other side
“And, granted, guitar is, of course, the main thing on the record, but I just figured, if I’m going to make a solo record, I want to do it in the way that I would imagine like that, like Kanye makes his records, where what he wants to hear, he puts on his record.
“So he’ll go out and find the craziest samples and the craziest producers and whatever to really craft the sound that he has in his head. It’s a huge almost like executive producer role to find all the pieces and make it work.
“So, yeah, that probably tells you nothing about the music! But in the process, last year, I got to randomly have a spiritual awakening, simply because I had cold-turkey quit my antidepressants on tour, and kind of spiraled, because that’s what happens when you do that. I learned not to do that. (laughs)
“But as I spiraled down, and it just kept going lower and lower, I hit a point where I broke through the other side. And I really started going super-hard on meditation… and, you know, I was doing a lot of mushrooms. (laughs) So the music is very reflective of that on my solo record. That’s kind of the vibe.”
So meditative, mellow?
“I mean, yeah, there’s definitely mellow bits, for sure; there’s a lot more breathing room than on a traditional Polyphia record, you know? So, yeah, lots more, like, ebbs and flows, et cetera.”
You said Serj Tankian will be guesting on the new Polyphia, but before that sees the light of day, you’re opening for System of a Down at some huge shows. How are you feeling about that?
“I’m very, very excited. These are going to be, I think, the largest shows we’ve ever played. It’s six stadium shows, two nights back to back in each city. So I think that’ll be cool to just fly there for the weekend and play the shows and go home. (laughs)
“In the levels of being in a band, you’re in a van, and you go on tour for, like, nine months out of the year, and it’s really rough. And then eventually you just get to the point where you’re just like, ‘I guess we’ll just play the weekend,’ and then you play the weekend, and then you go live your life on the weekday, and then you go play the weekend again. So I’m very excited about that.
“And of course, you know, all my love to System of a Down and Serj for having this incredible opportunity to be able to play to that many people and to get to play with Deftones and Korn and Avenged Sevenfold. All of those are huge acts. It’s just a really awesome thing.”
To be playing those festivals and those shows with instrumental guitar music, some of it on nylon-string, is absolutely nuts. For someone in my position, it’s inspiring to see someone taking it to that next level. The last time we spoke was a long time ago. It was pre-pandemic, and you were talking about your mission to make guitar music cool again. Where do you think guitar music is now?
“I’d say guitar music got cool! You know, maybe we had a little bit to do with that, maybe we didn’t. Around that time, Eminem did the thing with MGK (Machine Gun Kelly), and kind of made him switch genres (the rap icon and Machine Gun Kelly had beef so fierce that MGK left the hip-hop world and turned his hand to guitar-forward pop-punk in 2020 – Ed). And then MGK got a number one record with a guitar on the cover, which is really cool. So shout out MGK for making guitar cool again!
“Since then too, like, think about all the insane players that have come out, like Marcin, like RJ (Pasin)… there’s so many new insane guitar players. So I’d say that it’s really cool. (laughs)”
Are there any other guitarists in particular who are really impressing you at the moment?
“Dude, there’s that guy, Spiro (Dussias) – you know what I’m talking about. I don’t know how to say his last name. I just recognize the Instagram handle, but that guy is fucking crazy. And there’s definitely a few others that are escaping me.
“But as we start to book these sessions this year, to bring in all the incredible talent that is out there, to vibe them out on the new music, I’m definitely going to be hitting up Spiro just to see what kind of insanity he can bring. There’s lots of incredible stuff coming up talent-wise in the guitar world right now.”
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