“We shared and borrowed gear from our students, who usually had better gear than we did”: How Jason Becker and Marty Friedman made one of shred’s most celebrated albums with a little help from their pupils

In 1986, Marty Friedman and Jason Becker started Cacophony – a relatively short-lived project that would be responsible for some of shred music’s most technical and celebrated compositions.

Together, the two virtuosos produced a pair of studio albums – Speed Metal Symphony and Go Off! – which gave Friedman and Becker ample opportunity to let loose on 15 tracks of no-holds-barred neoclassical shred metal.

Both records have been cemented into the annals of metal guitar history – Guitar World ranks Speed Metal Symphony as one of the greatest classic shred albums of all time, no less – but it turns out that Friedman and Becker both received a little help when it came to assembling their recording rigs.

In a new interview with Guitar World, the Cacophony partners reflect on the recording of both Speed Metal Symphony and Go Off!, and recall how they managed to piece together their records with some equipment they borrowed from their pupils.

“We shared gear and borrowed gear from our guitar students, who usually had better gear than we did,” Friedman remembers. “We started to have a few endorsements, so there was a lot of new gear coming into the studio, too. I used my first Jackson Kelly and a few Carvin guitars. Few, if any pedals. No idea about amps.”

“If I remember right, we used the same kind of Carvin amps,” Becker adds. “Marty could correct me if I’m wrong. Maybe we used Marty’s student’s Marshall amp like we had on our solo albums. I think we used the Carvin guitars from the cover of the album.”

Fortunately, the mash-up of borrowed student gear and increasing endorsements didn’t have an adverse effect on the overall sound of their tone: no matter what the two guitarists played through, they still sounded exactly like themselves.

“We didn’t have to consciously work on sounding different,” Becker notes. “We could use the same gear and sound like ourselves.”

With the help of their students, Becker and Friedman were able to tape two masterclasses in extreme shred guitar. And, as the pair go on to reflect in their Guitar World interview, that was exactly the objective.

“Our problem was we were shining too much almost all the time,” Friedman notes. “There is only so much shining a listener can take. Any one song on Go Off! might have about one full album’s worth of guitar work on it. It was like a ‘money shot compilation’ of guitar solos.

“We knew listeners usually wanted a memorable song rather than an insane guitar solo or riff, but we wanted to be extreme, whether people liked it or not. At the time, that extremeness was a big minus, but that may be why the album is more appreciated now than it was then.”

“It was just so much fun being able to make music with my best friend,” concludes Becker, who was diagnosed with ALS in 1989. “I’m so grateful for those times. I was healthy, happy, young, and full of creative energy.”