Buckethead (aka Brian Carroll) is an American guitarist and composer. He is known for wearing a white plastic mask and a KFC bucket on his head and for being a quiet dude.

Buckethead has released 38 solo albums and performed on over 50 more records. He has also made a guest appearance on 44 different albums from various artists. His music spans across diverse areas such as thrash metal, funk, electronica, jazz and avant-garde music.

Although a multi-instrumentalist (playing bass guitar, banjo, keyboards, ukulele, organ, violin, clarinet, saxophone, recorder, drums, gong, and piano), Buckethead is best known for his electric guitar playing, characterized by diverse playing styles spanning thrash guitar, fingerpicking, and slap guitar. Guitar One voted him number 8 on a list of the "Top 10 Greatest Guitar Shredders of All Time".

Although Buckethead now works primarily as a solo artist touring the United States with a trio, he has had a wide variety of high profile collaborations with such artists as Les Claypool, Tony Williams, Bootsy Collins, Bernie Worrell, Iggy Pop, Serj Tankian, Guns N' Roses, Saul Williams, Mike Patton, Viggo Mortensen and with Bill Laswell on Praxis.

Cool fact we found - Buckethead studied for a year under Paul Gilbert.

Let's check out Buckethead's Guitar Gear Rig and Equipment !

Want to sound like Buckethead? Click the gear for more info & to buy at Musician's Friend

Guitars
- Gibson Les Paul - 1959 heavily modified, all white hardware, Covered DiMarzio X2N pickups. (a regular 50's neck is pictured below)

- Gibson Les Paul - 1969 heavily modified, all white hardware, killswitch, Uncovered DiMarzio X2N pickups.

- Gibson SG

- Gibson SST
- Gibson Chet Atkins
- Jackson Y2KV - "coopwood" custom made, reverse neck, with larger body and headstock due to Buckethead saying normal guitars looked like toys in his hands
- Jackson Y2KV - "KFC" same as the "coopwood", only with the KFC red stripes, Di Marzio X2N PUs, kill switch and an Original Floyd Rose
- Jackson doubleneck - a custom doubleneck half guitar, half bass
- ESP MV custom - used throughout his concert in the Wetlands, broken as seen in one of the Binge Clips
- Heartfield Talon model with pink DiMarzio X2Ns
- Steinberger GS "Kaiser's Gift"
- Ibanez X Series Rocket Roller II - used throughout the Praxis era
- Takamine Acoustic
- Vigier Excess Indus 4-String Bass



Amps and Cabinets
- Peavey Renown amplifier
- Peavey 5150 head

- Marshall 1960a Slant 4x12 cab

- Diezel Herbert
- Mesa/Boogie Triple Rectifier
- VHT Pittbull 50 watt heads

- Matt Wells 17 1/2 watt head wired through a Harry Kolbe 4x12 cab



Effects and more
- Digitech Whammy II (and IV)

- Dunlop CryBaby 535q

- BOSS TU-2 Chromatic Tuner

- BOSS NS-2 Noise Suppressor

- BOSS RC-20 Loop Station

- BOSS OS-2 Overdrive/Distortion

- Roger Mayer Octavia
- DOD Electronics FX-25B envelope filter

- Alesis MidiVerb II
- Roland SE-50 multi-effector
- Zoom multi-effects
- AnalogMan BicompROSSor
- MXR EVH phase 90

- Line 6 FM4 Filter Modeler

- Electro-Harmonix Micro Synthesizer

- Dunlop .73mm guitar picks

Go to the next page for pictures of Buckethead's guitar rig.