Xwan Pours through his full signal chain from his 2025 performance rig to breakdown the essential nuts and bolts of the Good God Father tone.
To get a sense for the Good God Father guitar sounds, Sean Lewis aka Xwan Solo, lead singer and guitarist, walks through his full signal chain from start to finish. Building a complex series of tones and sounds to flesh out the dynamic catalog of Good God Father’s sound. Since the song catalog has a demanding array of colors, from silk glistening clean tones, large reverbs and delays, to biting overdriven blues tones with that sort of warm buttery harmonic vintage distortion. But the demands don’t end there, as there are times where a dry percussive amp distortion for the more aggressive metal riffs is needed, all the way up to blistering spongey fuzz for thick carpets of power chord thickness. All of these are required to carve the listening environment to open the walls to reveal the spiritual landscape behind the veil.
The signal takes a number of turns beginning with one staple axe from the arsonal, a 2016 Epiphone Les Paul Standard Pro. From there, the signal hits the first pedal, a classic DOD Performer Compressor Limiter 525-A. The settings are the perfect boost to bring up the chime of the clean tones and provide a bit more dig in to the next couple of pedals which provide the crunch in the signal, first an Electro-Harmonix Lizard Queen, and the second another from Electro-Harmonix, the illustrious Hot Tubes Overdrive.
Next in the chain is a looper pedal from NUX called the Loop Core Stereo, which splits the chain in two directions, one side to manufacture a sort of bass supplement, driven by the Boss OC-2, in to an Ibanez DS-7. That side of the chain then is sent to a Tech 21 Sansamp RBI rack, with an Alessis 3630 in the effects loop. Powering this side of the chain is a QSC 1450 amp which powers an SWR 4x10T Workingman cabinet. Starting back at the NuX Loop Core, the other route follows the more general guitar tone, which proceeds in to a Digitech X-Series Multi Chorus, a Subdecay Echo, and an Electro-Harmonix Small Stone Phase shifter, with the color on. That sound is then carried to the Blackstar HT Soloist 60 combo amp, which has an M-VAVE TANK-G DSP effects processor on the effects loop, with a custom reverb delay setting on the preset, just for certain spacial moments of empasis.
That’s the end of the processing chain, and from there the Blackstar 60 watts of tube power pushes one 12" Celestion speaker that comes stock with this combo, and for extra control, there’s a speaker emulation hi-z output that goes to a D.I. for live sound, and recording. The Blackstar HT Soloist 60 is a very dynamic amp, with that heavy hitting percussive metal and heavy rock tone, so that provides the scaffolding for all of the other textures that come to play, with plenty of headroom to handle the diverse harmonic array that are entailed in the Good God Father sound.
When it comes to performing as an independent artist performing in small venues, Xwan has taken the big sounds of the arena rock world and condensed it in to a smaller package for maximizing the potential of every environment and sound system. The Good God Father sound is all about having a palette of colors to choose from to highlight moments from part to part, and song to song, with a solid foundation of basic tones that don’t get to complicated and plenty of dynamic range to take on different shapes depending on the requirements of the riff. With these tools, Xwan is able to capture the sensations of realization pregnant in the Apocalyptic themes of Good God Father’s music.
