PEDALBOARD1. GIG-FX CHOPPER This powerful pedal makes Rogers’s guitar signal sound like helicopter blades or machine gun fire or can summon even weirder “chopped” sounds.“It’s a tremolo and it has this chopping modulation so you can change what kind of wave pattern you want, the ratio and the rate of it,” Rogers says. She admits the stereo-capable pedal is “a little intimidating,” but appreciates its versatility and noisemaking potential.2. IBANEZ TUBE SCREAMER OVERDRIVE/HOME-MADE OVERDRIVEDepending on the needs of the band, Rogers summons additional grit from a modified Ibanez Tubescreamer (which is currently plugged in) or a purposely noisy homemade overdrive (which is not).3. BOSS LOOP STATIONRogers has cello and banjo loops saved in this pedal, which she turns on when she’s tuning. These inter-stitial sounds come out of her quieter Ampeg V4 head amp.

RICKENBACKER 620This guitar caught Rogers’s eye in a music store around the time she went off to col-lege, but she lacked a good amplifier rig for it for about fifteen years. Rogers says it’s light and easy to play but still boasts a big sound. It remains her favorite instrument in her arsenal.

AMPS AND CABSHOMEMADE 50W HEAD AMPOne of the more remarkable pieces of gear in Rogers’s collection is a homemade amp in a clear housing. With all its tubes proudly exposed, it’s compelling in a Brutalist sort of way. She built it with her partner, Patrick Zung, who based the design on a Marshall amp he borrowed from Pipe guitarist Mike Kenlan. “(Zung) is the real mad scientist amp builder, but I soldered every piece of that amplifier. We build kind of matching ones and have continued to tweak them along the way, and his now sounds different from the way mine sounds,” Rog-ers says.HOMEMADE 412 CAB“I kind of like a new, crispy speaker, what most people don’t like. With my guitar amp and setup, I’m kind of going for a higher-range fre-quency to come through, and this grittiness that is in the distortion pedals kind of adds this grit texture to the high frequency,” Rogers says. “There’s a little sizzle that I like. That’s what I’m going for.”

GUITARSGIBSON SG SPECIALScrew holes in the body of this guitar and nonfactory tuners tell Rogers that this 1970 or 1971 electric was modified before it got to her, and that once upon a time it sported a Bigsby-style tremolo. She’s done a few mods of her own, re-fretting it and putting in new pickups. At home, Rogers has a Gretsch hollow-body, an old Martin acoustic, and a Gibson S-1, which she says sounds good but is heavy and awkward and not entirely fun to play.

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TUNINGSFrom her childhood spent listening to banjo music, Rogers has a long-held appreciation for the instrument’s hypnotic quality, so she tends to replicate her favorite banjo tunings on her guitars. Usually, she uses a lower tuning in C or D.

“When you’re the only guitar, it added a lot of fullness, and I loved the doubled notes on the guitar. You give yourself a drone, and the notes you play off of it has that kind of push-pull,” Rogers says