Gear Rundown: Wednesday

Local Wednesday fans were thrilled last week when RISING, Melbourne’s premiere winter festival of art, music and performance, announced that the North Carolina country-gazers would be gracing the Max Watts stage later this year, along with stages across Brisbane, Sydney, Fremantle and Mullumbimby.

After releasing quite possibly the best indie LP of 2025 with their spectacular album Bleeds, Wednesday are really hitting their stride, earning themselves a plethora of new fans all around the world, and Australia is no exception.

Despite having lost guitarist MJ Lenderman as a touring member (he’s a little busy with some other project, apparently?), the Asheville natives show no signs of slowing down. A powerful band that has captured the hearts of everyone from chronically online teens to veteran Gen-X bands like the Drive By Truckers, they’re clearly just getting started.

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Characterised by their heavy wall of fuzzed out guitars, noisy shoegaze-inspired freakouts, raw vocals and sharp alt-country songwriting, Wednesday’s sound has been a huge hit with critics and lovers of noise alike, but their rigs aren’t as elaborate as you might think. Proof you don’t need 100 pedals apiece to produce some monstrous shoegaze sounds, Wednesday’s touring setup is a lesson in good taste and keeping things simple.

So, to celebrate the return of this immensely talented band to our humble shores, let’s take the traditional Mixdown approach and delve into their gear!

Karly Hartzman

Lead singer and primary songwriter Karly Hartzman is shaping up to be one of the finest artists of her generation. She expertly combines the sounds of shoegaze, noise rock and alt-country to form a rich and visceral sonic landscape in which her deeply nostalgic and often candid lyrics never fail to shine. In addition to this, she’s an incredibly passionate and exciting performer who never treats her audiences to anything less than her heartfelt and profoundly emotive best. In terms of gear, she keeps things pretty simple, her role as rhythm guitarist in the band not requiring a particularly elaborate setup.

Hartzman’s choice of guitars is about as eclectic as you’d expect from such a unique performer. Her small but mighty collection includes a Harmony Bobkat, a sparkle finish Fender Jagmaster loaded with two humbuckers, a Fender Stratocaster heavily adorned with stickers and buttons, an Italia Modulo Type I in Black Tolex and a Gretsch G6118T Anniversary model. Also in her arsenal is a very cool Danelectro Baritone guitar for when the band needs that extra bottom end kick.

Hartzman almost always plays through a basic Fender combo, normally a Hot Rod Deville, and is known to use only one pedal, the legendary Pro Co Rat for her distortion. Fender combos are a common choice for rigorously touring bands who need amps that are consistent, reliable and readily available. At this stage of Wednesday’s career, it makes total sense to go for something solid over something more vintage or boutique. As for the Pro Co Rat, well, you really can’t beat them for that heavy midrange wall of dirt sound.

MJ Lenderman

MJ Lenderman, who no longer tours with Wednesday but is still an important part of the band’s records, is known for playing a variety of guitars across his various projects. For Wednesday, however, he tends to stick with Jazzmasters. The classic choice for making noise in noisy bands, the Jazzmaster’s long tremolo arm, symbiotic relationship with fuzz pedals and the possibility it provides for playing behind the bridge make it the perfect weapon for the shoegaze tones that make Wednesday what they are.

When he was touring with the band, Lenderman used a two amp setup including a Vox AC30 and a Fender Blues Deluxe, and his pedalboard consisted simply of a Death By Audio Interstellar Overdrive Deluxe, Cry Baby Wah and a TC Flashback Delay. The Interstellar Overdrive is definitely doing a lot of heavy lifting here, containing a myriad of different fuzzy textures that help the band achieve its heavy sound. Lenderman also tends not to use his wah in the traditional way but rather more as a stationary filter to accentuate harmonics and uses his delay primarily as a noise machine, cranking up the repeats and manipulating the delay time to get all those fun, freaky effects.

Xandy Chelmis

Xandy Chelmis’s wonderful pedal steel playing puts the ‘country’ in Wednesday’s signature country-gaze sound. The pedal steel is presently having a real moment in the sun, breaking out of its traditional genre confines and finding a place in a variety of more contemporary acts. It’s a beautiful instrument, and Wednesday is certainly a part of the reason for its recent surge in popularity.

Xandy runs an early 70s 10-string ZB Custom with a proprietary pickup, which he keeps in E9 tuning. He mostly plays it through a Fender Twin Reverb and has a handful of pedals including a Goodrich H-120 volume pedal, Guyatone SD2 sustainer, ProCo Rat 2, Boss CE-2, MXR Carbon Copy Nano and Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail. It’s super refreshing to see young bands approaching the pedal steel with a new attitude, experimenting with effects and pushing the envelope, which is breathing new life into what has been a severely underused instrument outside of the traditional world of country.

Ethan Baechtold

Ethan Baechtold holds down the low end for the band with his trusty black Ibanez SR20 5-String bass. Whilst certainly not an expensive instrument, the SR20’s sturdy construction makes it a solid choice for a rigorously touring band like Wednesday and its extended range is a great match for the band’s tuned-down sound.

Alan Miller

Not a single shred of evidence can be found on the internet that confirms drummer Alan Miller’s preferred kit, but it would seem, at the very least, he prefers a modest four-piece setup rather than a more elaborate kit. One thing that we can confidently state is that whatever he plays, he plays it very well. All the more reason to go do some snooping at the band’s upcoming shows. Don’t miss them!