Gear Rundown: Tash Sultana
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14.01.2025

Gear Rundown: Tash Sultana

Tash Sultana
Words by Mixdown staff

An Australian icon, Tash Sultana borrows influence from dub, poo, rock and more into their own unique sound.

Tash Sultana moved from busking on the streets to festival stages across the world, their own unique voice coming through in their music and expression. Using loops and other tech to make music all by themself, it’s only somewhat recently that Tash has been performing with a band.

Also honoured with a signature a Fender Stratocaster, today we’re diving into the world according to Tash.

Fender Jazzmaster

Like most people, there’s a good chance you first saw Tash Sultana when you were scrolling through your newsfeed one day and happened upon their viral performance of ‘Jungle.’ Throughout the video, Sultana bops about their bedroom, stacking layers strumming away on an Olympic White Fender Jazzmaster with a tortoise shell pickguard, which you can see above.

Read up on all the latest features and columns here.

It also looks like they own another Jazzmaster, decked out in a Seafom Green finish, which is used sporadically for live performances and can be seen in pictures from their busking days.

Fender ’72 Reissue Thinline Telecaster

Previously of Tash’s main touring guitars, this Fender Telecaster is a semi-hollow 70’s reissue with a natural finish and maple fretboard, and fitted out with two fat-sounding Fender Wide Range humbuckers.

Fender Jimi Hendrix Signature Stratocaster

In a recent performance for Rolling Stone, Sultana can be seen shredding away on a Fender Jimi Hendrix Signature Stratocaster, modelled with a reversed headstock and slanted pickups in tribute to the famous maple fretboard ’68 model played by Hendrix at Woodstock.

Fender Tash Sultana Signature Telecaster

The Tash Sultana Signature Stratocaster ties together the classic design of the famed guitar and a refreshed aesthetic in line with Tash’s. Conventional specs like a Modern “C” shaped neck, an alder body and synchronised tremolo, the Tash Sultana Signature Stratocaster also features a Transparent Cherry finish, a stylish matching headstock and more modern electronics with Yosemite single-coil Stratocaster pickups and a Double Tap humbucking bridge pickup.

A push/pull tone pot engages the DoubleTap function, splitting the humbucker and offering a single coil sound when required.

Maton SRS70/C 12-String

Similar to the style of fellow Aussie guitar virtuoso John Butler, Sultana plays a Maton SRS70/C 12 string tuned to Open C on their track “Blackbird”. Discussing the piece with Premier Guitar, Sultana confessed that they, like Butler, only play with 11 strings on their Maton. “It just breaks,” they explain. “It is the most common string that I break. If it’s broken, I won’t put it back on. I don’t really care.”

Sultana also tours and records with an Epiphone MM-50E Mandolin, featuring a NanoMag pickup system with the controls laid into the pickguard of the folk instrument.

AMPLIFIERS

In the studio, Sultana tends to rely on the tones of four different amps, often simultaneously, using a Vox AC30, a Fender Deluxe Reverb, a Marshall JCM2000 TSL100 head, and an Orange head with a matching cabinet.

However, due to their layer-heavy live sound, Sultana eschews the use of live amplification, instead plugging straight into the P.A. “I don’t use an amp live,” Sultana told Premier Guitar in an interview conducted earlier this year. “Too much bottom end comes through and amps don’t work with drum samples. It doesn’t sound as good for how I’ve set my stuff up.”

EFFECTS

A true effects junkie, Sultana operates an extremely sophisticated effects setup to beef up their guitar chops, with a Boss RC-30 Loop Station at the heart of their rig to layer loop upon loop of sound.

While Sultana is super secretive about the specifics of their signal chain, by looking at a couple of shots of their pedalboard, you can spot a whole bunch of BOSS pedals including three BOSS GE-7 Equalisers, a BOSS DD-7 Delay, a BOSS TE-2 Tera Echo, a BOSS AW-3 Dynamic Wah, a BOSS TR-2 Tremolo, a BOSS ST-2 Power Stack, and the classic BOSS TU-2 Chromatic Tuner. In addition to that, they also run a Dunlop Crybaby Mini, an EHX Soul Food Overdrive, a TC Electronics Hall of Fame Reverb and a Beta Aivin OC-100 Super Octave for simulating bass lines live.

Vocal manipulation and processed harmonies also pop up throughout most of Sultana’s tunes, which tend to be done with two seperate TC Helicon VoiceTone Harmony G units set up for different effect modes, which can be seen on their separate board.

KORG MICROKORG

A tried and true classic used by musicians around the world, the familiar sight of a Korg MicroKorg can be spotted in various pictures of Sultana in the studio, presumably used for its array of synth bass and pad tones.

NORD ELECTRO 4

The organ sounds of the Nord Electro 4 can be prominently heard in Sultana’s groove heavy track, ‘Murder to the Mind.’

ROLAND SP404SX

While they also use a SPD-SX drum-pad and a HPD-15 Percussion Controller for triggering and creating drum loops on the fly (which can be seen all together in the above image), Sultana’s core drum sound tends to come from the humble Roland SP404SX sampler, a highly respected and heavily used sampler used by dozens of electronic and hip-hop producers for its intuitive sampling abilities.

You can keep up with Tash Sultana and their work here.