Gus G
Gus G |
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Kostas Karamitroudis (Greek: Κώστας Καραμητρούδης) aka Gus G., born September 12 1980 in Thessaloniki, Greece is an acclaimed heavy metal guitarist. Currently he's playing with Ozzy Osbourne and his own band Firewind. He has also played in Mystic Prophecy, Nightrage, Arch Enemy and Dream Evil. At the age of 18 he left Greece to enroll in the Berklee College of Music, but left after only a few weeks and began working on making a name on the Metal scene. During his brief time at Berklee Gus came into contact with Joe Stump, who he credits as a great influence on his career [1].
On July 2005, he temporarily replaced Christopher Amott as guitarist of melodic death metal band Arch Enemy on their Ozzfest dates, and also contributed to their album Doomsday Machine by playing lead guitar on the song "Taking Back my Soul".
He has made guest appearances for various artists, such as providing solos on the songs "Felonies of the Christian Art" and "Life Deprived" by Old Man's Child, from the album In Defiance of Existence, and a few solos on the album Gallows Gallery by the Japanese avant-garde black metal band Sigh).
Most recently Gus gave two guest solos for the new Nightrage album Wearing A Martyr's Crown marking a return to his former band. The solos appear on the instrumental Sting Of Remorse.
The stage name "Gus G." has two sources of origin - "Gus" is a common Greek American English translation of the name "Kostas," and "G" was a nickname given to him by a friend during his time living in the U.S.
Gus G was chosen as the third of the three best guitar players all over the world in 2003 by the Japanese magazine BURRN!.
Gear
Gus teamed up with ESP Guitars to make two custom model guitars to his specifications, the "Gus. G FR" and the "Gus G. NT". The 'NT' was used in the videos for "Falling to Pieces", "Breaking The Silence" and "Tyranny". The 'FR' is featured along with the NT model in the video for "Falling To Pieces" and was discontinued in 2009 for North America, being replaced by the 'NT'. In a 2009 video of Gus playing backstage at Muskimesse Frankfurt with his new T2 amplifier, he is seen with a white ESP Gus model with a black Firewind logo on the front.
While playing with Ozzy Osbourne during the Blizzcon 2009 closing ceremony, he could be seen playing 2 ESP Eclipse II guitars, one in Amber Cherry Sunburst tuned to Standard D, and another one in Vintage Black, tuned to Dropped C.
Gus has used Marshall Amplifiers in the past as well as Krank, however more recently, he uses Randall T2 and V2 Amplifiers. Gus has a signature Randall amp designed by him and based on the T2 head named Heaven and Hell. It features 2 channels, each using independent gain and tone controls. The head has a 400 watt output.
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