 What's up? My name is Nick DiPiro. I play guitar in the band Night Vs. and Head Cave. So, what made me pick up the guitar? Honestly, growing up, just going to shows. My dad took me to a lot of concerts early on. Tool was one of my first shows I ever saw. And just kind of seeing the atmosphere of live music and listening to music, I always just felt inspired by it and it made me want to do it myself. And so, early on, I was probably about 13 or so. I got my first guitar and at that point I really just went straight into just trying to write stuff. I mean, I learned a lot of songs as well, which helped develop some skill to write. But as soon as I could, I was writing music and recording myself onto my computer in the most basic way just so I could hear song ideas that I was trying to come up with. My biggest influences on guitar, I mean, to mention again, Tool Adam Jones was a big inspiration for me on guitar. I think the way he was able to kind of fill out a lot of sound as a single guitar player going between leads and riffs and chords and stuff like that. As well as, you know, Death Tones, Steph and Carpenter, I think he's great. Rage against the Machine early on, Tomorillo was another big influence. And then, yeah, I would say a combination of those bands and the other bands they came up with around that time. I really liked effects and kind of like the trippy aesthetic of guitar, but also very heavy music. So combining the two was always kind of my favorite aesthetic when I would hear that from bands. And that carried on into, you know, more progressive stuff like Hopeth, Marzvolta, ISIS and stuff like that. So kind of a little all over with it. Yeah, so one thing I really, you know, got into was alternate tunings on guitar because as I was writing a lot in kind of normal drop tunings, I mostly used Drop C for a long time. And I still do, but I started realizing adding extra octaves and extra, you know, notes. So for example, Drop C, but the top two strings I drop a whole step. So it's C, G, C, F, G, C. And I kind of relay that same mentality across seven string guitars and eight string guitars because the open tunings allow you to really kind of stretch out across the fretboard, at least when you're playing with your root as your open string and sometimes other keys as well. But I often like having open notes kind of ringing over each other, creating dissonance. It opens up more harmonics. It opens up just more potential for bigger sounds as an only guitar player or a single guitar player in a band. So for me, that's kind of why I've gravitated towards unconventional tunings in a way. The most important thing for me as far as amp tones would be clarity and very punchy sounds to both channels. Speaking like clean and distortion. So for distortions, I like high gain. I like kind of an aggressive tone, but also not too saturated to where you can identify the notes in chords. So I really like to have kind of like a medium gain situation with the potential to go more intense if I want. And then on the clean, I like very same thing, like clear sounds, but also like body. Like I wanted to kind of be there when I'm strumming harder. I wanted to kind of get aggressive with me if I want that. Or also on the other end go very melodic and like, you know, pretty sounding as a clean amp. So those are the two things I really look for is just like them to kind of work off each other as well. So like when I switch between the two, I want it to sound like a consistent vibe versus, you know, a drastically different tone between them. So ideally, yeah, that's pretty much what I'm looking for. Yeah, so Night Vs. Just recently played at the Whiskey and it was the first time I got to use the St. James 6L6 head live. And leading up to that, I was using it at rehearsal. And it was great because I was able to go direct into our sound board and have, you know, direct in audio. So in practice, we weren't even using apps. We're just going straight in through headphones. Our drummer was able to just play for volume and we could hear everything. But what was awesome live is I actually got to go through your cab and go into the house at the same time. And that's the first time I got to do that. And I could tell the difference just through my stage monitor how clear the tone was because there was no interference from a mic. And on stage, it was loud because I was still going through the cab. And so the tone, in my opinion, is pretty different between the two. They're both great, but they are separate enough that when you combine them, it creates like a pretty big sound. And it was the most compliments I've ever had on a guitar tone, which is rad because, you know, I've been using different amps throughout my life. And this being the newest one and getting comments like that was really cool. It was the most people heard my guitar like clarity wise within the mix of the band. And as the only guitar player in my band, it's important to be heard. So that's a good thing. And it took all my pedals well. So I'm stoked on that app. That was great. Yeah. So what's awesome about the St. James app is you can go like we're talking about going direct in. So when I'm at home, I can plug straight into my computer either using the USB output on this on the head or using my interface. So I actually run it into my interface. And that allows me to take the stress off of my computer because there's no like extra CPU hogging from the head itself or any software that I'd be using as far as like amp sims and things like that. So I'm able to actually run direct in and record without a mic or without needing to mic a cab or anything like that. I can practice that way. And I do a lot of live streaming on Twitch as well. So that allows me to, you know, play my full set as if I would be playing with my band just live on my computer because I can control the amp with my pedal board and all that stuff. And the tones are great. They go straight into the computer. So there's no like issue with getting a good tone out of it. So that's what I say. Thank you to Blackstar for having me out for this. I've been playing the ramps for years and I love it. If you guys want to check out any of my music or my band's music, you can find myself. Probably best place is Instagram. Instagram.com. You can find me on Twitch. Honestly, if you go to my Instagram page, I have a link that has everything in there. So just check that out. Links in my bio. And it's pretty much it. Thank you.