We Sit Down With Megadeth’s Guitar Wizard to Talk About Gear Preferences, Tour Life and Much More! – Interview with Finnish Heavy Metal Guitarist Teemu Mäntysaari of Megadeth and Wintersun

Finnish heavy metal guitarist Teemu Mäntysaari has carved out quite a name for himself for his blistering speed, technical prowess, and deep-rooted passion. Coming to prominence as the guitarist for Finnish power metal stalwarts Wintersun and currently shredding the stage with the legendary thrash metal band Megadeth, his journey to the forefront of the global metal scene is a story of dedication, talent, and relentless pursuit of excellence. In our exclusive interview, Teemu chats with us about his influences, his gear preferences, his experiences with Megadeth, and what the future holds for him in the ever-evolving world of heavy metal.

Gleb: Hey how’s it going! Thank you so much for taking some time to talk to me, I appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule.

Teemu: Yeah, my pleasure!

Gleb: So, I guess let’s get right into it! What do you think is the biggest difference, you would say, between playing in Wintersun and playing in Megadeth? I know you have two bands that you tour with regularly, so it’s got to be quite the difficult thing, maintaining a time schedule to be able to stay open to both bands.

Teemu: Yeah, I mean, of course, Megadeth’s schedule is busy all the time. Like, currently we’ve been doing four weeks on the road, four weeks home, four weeks on the road. So, luckily for me, Wintersun has not been really active in a while now. There’s a new album coming out, but we don’t have any touring plans with Wintersun, so I can concentrate fully on Megadeth for now.

Gleb: Okay, that was actually going to be my next question! I know you guys in Wintersun have a new album coming out, and I was going to see if you guys had any dates planned in support of the new album in the United States, but you answered that question already.

Teemu: Yeah, the Time II album has been coming for a long time, we’ve been waiting for it for a long time. And then once the Megadeth thing happened for me, soon after that I got to know that the album is finished. Luckily for me, Jari wanted to concentrate on finishing the next album after Time II, because he has a bunch of stuff in the works, new music after Time II already. So, once he has the next album after Time II completed, then we’ll see what’s going on, but also our drummer and bass player also play in Nightwish, so we’ll have to see where everybody is and how everybody’s schedule is, and then hopefully we can get together at some point with the original lineup and maybe play some selected shows.

Gleb: Awesome, yeah, It’s got to be tough with everybody playing in different bands to be able to have time to get everybody together. So, what would you say is the Megadeth song that you have the most fun playing live?

Teemu: Honestly, it changes from night to night. I really enjoy a lot of the songs. Tornado of Souls is one of my favorites because it has such a classic solo, a long solo section, so that’s always cool to play and people recognize the solos. It’s always fun to see people’s reactions in the audience. But maybe I’d say Holy Wars is probably my most favorite because that’s such a classic song as well and it’s usually our last song of the set. So, it has this special energy, you know, being last song of the show. So, you kind of let any energy that you have left, you let it out for that song. And people, of course, love that song as well. So, that’s a great one.

Gleb: Gotcha, yeah. Tornado is actually one of my favorite songs. It’s one of the songs that first inspired me to start learning how to play guitar. What is the biggest culture shock that you’ve experienced while touring in the United States?

Teemu: Nothing really too shocking. I mean, I’ve toured states many times previously. Of course, now this tour is much more extensive than the previous tours I’ve done. Now we’re doing nine weeks altogether, I think 34 dates altogether, we have two legs. So, it’s really nice to see kind of all the different states and different cultures. Actually on the last tour that we did in September or October last year, we played a Navajo reservation. That was something I haven’t seen before. We kind of played this rodeo, they had a metal show and rodeo put together, which was pretty cool.

Gleb: Oh, that sounds really cool, actually! So, I have a bit of a more guitar-related question for you. Where do you stand on the tube amp versus amp modeler debate? I know a lot of players like to bring a whole lot of gear on the road and have their collection of amps out, while some people just like to keep it simple and go with a Kemper or something like that.

Teemu: Yeah, yeah. I’m kind of a gear nerd, so I love it all. I love tweaking the sounds and testing different things. With Megadeth on the road, we try to keep things compact and consistent. So, we are using the Neural DSP Quad Cortex units as the main sound, but we also do this kind of hybrid setup where we have Seymour Duncan power amps and Marshall cabinets on stage, pushing some air on the stage. And just in case if something happens with the in-ears, then it’s kind of a backup as well, so you do have sound actually on stage as well. But the main sound is direct Neural DSP to the front of house and to our in-ear monitors, which I really enjoy playing.

When that unit came out a few years ago, that was for me like a turning point. I had played before all the previous modeler units, starting from the legendary old Line 6 Pod and going to the Axe FX and trying the Kemper and all that. But to me, the Neural DSP Quad Cortex was like the first one to really nail not only the sound, but also the feel of the real amp. And I’ve been fortunate to work closely with those guys in Finland at Neural DSP, and they’ve actually borrowed some of my tube amps to do their models of the Quad Cortex. And funnily enough, when I came in here in the Megadeth camp, I realized that the amp that the guys were using was actually modeled from my physical amp, the Friedman HP-100 amp, which is one of my favorites. So that’s what I’m still using, the model of my physical amp on the Quad Cortex.

Gleb: Oh, that’s awesome. It’s great to hear that it ended up coming full circle in a sense. So I’ve seen that you particularly enjoy playing Ibanez instruments. Do you have any plans to have a signature model? And if you were to have one, what would be some features that you would need to have on there?

Teemu: Of course, as a gear nerd and a guitar fan and guitar collector, it’s always been my dream, you know, drooling over those guitar magazines as a kid. It’s always been my dream to get a signature model at some point. And of course, now being in a big band, it’s a much more realistic dream than before. But those things always take time to do the R&D and planning all the marketing and everything. So I’m really hoping it happens sooner than later. And yeah, there’s been some talks and some plans.

And I’ve tried some different things, different pickups on stage and try to kind of really fine tune what it is actually that I would want to have in my signature model. So I’ve had a bunch of different kinds of guitars, different kinds of specs, testing, testing different things. And yeah, fine tuning for hopefully a signature model at some point.

Gleb: Awesome! Over the years, how has your approach to guitar playing evolved? And what new techniques and styles have you incorporated into your music with both Megadeth and Wintersun?

Teemu: I mean, it’s an ever evolving process to me. I always try to learn new things. I always look for inspiring players. And of course, nowadays, Instagram and YouTube are full of really technically great players. And even like going back, I often like to do the nostalgia trip and listen to the old Shrapnel artists and kind of get inspired by different genres. One of my favorite players is Guthrie Govan as well. So I like to learn a lot from the fusion guys, a little bit from the jazz guys. Genres that I maybe don’t excel in myself, but still enjoy the music and I kind of try to be open-minded and keep my ears open and just try to learn every day.

Gleb: Awesome. Well, thank you very much for taking the time to talk to me. I really appreciate it.

Teemu: Sure thing. My pleasure.

Gleb: I hope you have a good day and I’ll see you when you come down to Florida next week!

Teemu: Yeah, looking forward to that. See you there! Have a good one.

Make sure to catch Teemu and Megadeth on their current “Destroy All Enemies” United States tour, which will be hitting the iThink Financial Amphitheater in West Palm Beach on Saturday, August 24th. Check out more tour dates and get tickets on Megadeth’s website.