Gear Rundown: Wes Borland
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05.02.2025

Gear Rundown: Wes Borland

Wes Borland
Words by Mixdown staff

Doing it all for the nookie, Wes has been a constant source of inspiration to guitarists, artists and musicians everywhere.

Wes Borland has been pushing the envelope, primarily in Limp Bizkit, for decades now. From his on-stage outfits to his eclectic collection of gear, Wes inspired a generation of nu metal and alt metal players. He brings together traditional ‘metal’ playing styles and sounds with industrial, electronic and futuristic sounds, using a wild array of gear to do it all, more recently performing with Danny Elfman. Let’s dive in.

PRS Custom 24

Wes uses PRS guitars extensively and it makes sense for him to use a PRS Custom 24, the fretboard offering two full octaves of range on each string for Wes’ unique style. Wes’ Custom 24 is a deep black colour with the traditional PRS pickups and tremolo system.

PRS’ Custom 24 comes with their 85/15 humbuckers, bringing together modern clarity and vintage warmth and vibe. Wes uses tremolo and whammy for expression, and while the vintage-style tremolo doesn;t divebomb quite like the Floyd Roses on his Jacksons, it still sees plentiful use in Wes’ extended catalogue in and outside of Limp Bizkit.

Jackson King V & Randy Rhoads

The last few years have seen Limp Bizkit touring extensively, Borland often with a Jackson strung across his shoulder. Having historically used the pointy Warrior body-shape as well, Wes has been using King V and Rhandy Rhoads guitars on stage, the King V being a more angular and extreme incarnation of Gibson’s Flying V.

Regardless of the variation, Borland opts for Floyd Rose equipped models, as well as locking tuners at the headstock. Often enough, Wes also removes the neck pickup to streamline the whole system.

Wes also plays a left-handed Custom Shop King V, returned to the Custom Shop by a customer. Electronics knobs were drilled into the body for him to access at a right-handed player, and his new #1 was born.

PRS 4-string Guitar/bass hybrid

Wes has played a handful of these over the years, mostly recently with a PRS guitar/bass hybrid. He’s played an Ibanez incarnation of this, but the last few years has seen PRS build him a custom model, with switching options to toggle between the Bass pickup (EMG) and guitar pickup (Seymour Duncan).

Tuned to either A A D G or F# F# B E, the 4-string straddles the line between bass and guitar in terms of tuning and frequency response, helping Wes to achieve some of the impossibly heavy sounds he’s required to perform live with Limp Bizkit.

Diezel VH4

Performing with Danny Elfman to support Elfman’s album Big Mess, Borland used a slew of guitars with a Diezel VH4 at the core of the rig. The VH4 is a four-channel amplifier with varying levels of gain available. Each channel has independent (three-band) EQ, Volume and Gain controls

Global ‘Presence’ and ‘Deep’ controls help to shape your tone overall. The four channels also have independent send/return for an insert point, allowing Wes to integrate his massive pedalboard more deeply with the amp.

EVH 5150 III

For his Limp Bizkit sounds, Wes opts for dual EVH 5150 III, the recently released revision of the famous 5150 model of amplifier.

The original 5150 (colloquially known as a “blockletter” because of the font used for ‘5150’) and 5150 II are two channel amplifiers, the 5150 III adds a channel and various tone and gain controls to offer everything the originals had on offer, and more.

Independent channel controls combined with independent presence controls, the 5150 III allows for total tonal controls.

STL Tones Wes Borland

While Wes may not be performing with these live, STL Tones recently announced a Wes Borland package, tying together his most famous tones into a digital package.

The STL Tones Tonality: Wes Borland package includes 3 amps: a Roland JC-120 inspired clean sound, a high gain tone modelled on the aforementioned Diezel VH4 and a vintage inspired tone based on Wes’ 1965 Selmer Zodiac 50 MKII Tremolo. Additional effects like fuzz, delay and filters are available as well!

Keep up with Wes and his sonic escapades here.