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JB Brubaker’s gear history runs from a green Ibanez and a rack full of pedals to a much smaller digital setup. Across his published interviews, the August Burns Red guitarist keeps coming back to practical problems: getting the right feel under his fingers, changing tunings during a set and keeping effects under control.
For the first Friday Gear feature, we’re following those explanations into the equipment. The older rigs below are dated snapshots. Ibanez’s current signature specification gives us a separate reference point for the guitar you can buy today.
The Ibanez and the .010–.052 strings
Ibanez currently lists Brubaker’s JBBM40 in Pearl White. It has a 25.5-inch scale, 24 jumbo frets, an ebony fretboard, a fixed Gibraltar Standard III bridge and Gotoh locking tuners. The pickups are an active EMG 81 at the bridge and EMG 85 at the neck.
That pickup pairing also appears in his older green guitar, which he discussed in his Leveler-era BOSS interview. In the same conversation, he described playing in drop C with .010–.052 D’Addario strings. The current JBBM40 specification names EXL140 strings in those gauges and ships in drop C: C–G–C–F–A–D, low to high.
The Drop solves a live problem
In his August 2021 interview with Metal Magnitude, Brubaker described using a Fractal Audio Axe-Fx for his amp sounds. He also explained why a DigiTech pitch-shifting pedal had become useful: the set needed several tunings, and he wanted to avoid changing guitars every time.
“I use a pedal called a drop pedal that a company called DigiTech makes”
JB Brubaker, speaking to Metal Magnitude in 2021
The pedal lowers the amplified signal without physically retuning the strings. That distinction matters when you’re working out a part: the guitar’s string tension stays the same even though the sound coming out of the amp is lower. It is a practical pitch-changing tool, not a complete August Burns Red tone in one box.
Keep the old effects rack in its era
The BOSS interview captures an earlier arrangement: a TU-2 tuner, NS-2 noise suppressor, DD-7 delay, TR-2 tremolo and RV-5 reverb, switched through an RJM system. Brubaker placed the noise gate after the guitar and kept his time-based effects in the amp’s effects loop.
“I run my delay, tremolo, and reverb [pedals] all through the effects loop”
JB Brubaker, BOSS Users Group, Leveler-era interview
The album rig is another snapshot
For Phantom Anthem in 2017, Guitar World documented the green Ibanez RGA121 through a Peavey 6505 Plus and a Mesa/Boogie 4×12 Rectifier cabinet for the heavy parts. Leads used Fractal processing, and the sessions included drop C, drop B and drop A-sharp. That is a specific recording setup, distinct from the digital arrangement Brubaker described in 2021.
The useful takeaway is to match the equipment to the job. His signature guitar and string gauges are a concrete starting point. The Drop answers a tuning-change problem; tremolo answers an arrangement question. Work out which part of that you need before buying the whole list.
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