John Mayer & Bob Weir Talk Gear Ahead Of Dead & Company’s Sphere Return

Dead & Company’s Bob Weir and John Mayer recently sat down for an interview with Guitar World to talk Sphere gear and more. With Dead & Company’s second residency at the technologically advanced venue set to kick off tomorrow, Thursday, March 20, the guitarists gave some insight into both the sonic and visual aspects of their experience at the Las Vegas Sphere.

The Sphere presents certain sonic challenges as far as what gear one can have on stage. guitarist Trey Anastasio of Phish, who were the second band to play at Sphere, summed it up in his own interview with Guitar World in 2024.

“No-one will ever have an amp on stage at the Sphere,” he said. “They might have dummies, but they’re not on. The 52,000-speaker sound system comes down right behind your back. So there’s a slapback [echo].”

Guitarists are partial to their amps and last year Mayer pulled back the curtain on how he has skirted the amp issue, revealing that while his amp head is on the stage, the cabinets are mic’d up in isolation boxes offstage. Mayer recently shared how he even tricked out his boxes as Deadhead hangouts.

While Weir followed a similar model, he said he did away with it pretty quickly in the recent chat with Guitar World.

“Well, you know, at first I had all this stuff with me – an iso chamber with a guitar amp in it, all of that,” Weir explained. “But very quickly, I was done with it. It was just not necessary. Instead, I’ve been using the Universal Audio Ruby, which is basically a [Vox] AC30 in a stompbox. I couldn’t have imagined when I first walked in there that that was going to be pretty much all I’d need. It turns out it was pretty much all I needed. [Laughs]”

Weir noted that he began working out the UA Ruby while on Dead & Company’s Final Tour in 2023. Conversely, Mayer maintained his use of cabinets mic’d up offstage.

“This is going to kind of merge into a very hot topic among guitar players – something they like to call ‘pushing air.’ The Pushing Air Debate. For me, I know for a fact that I need a larger space for soundwaves to come out of a guitar amp and be caught a little bit further away than an iso box allows. There has to be more of a comet tail so that the note can bloom a little bit. So we had to devise a system that would give a little more space to the speakers. And what we decided to do was use shipping crates as much larger iso boxes – kind of a ‘mini room.’ In fact, Jeremy Nielsen, my guitar tech, decorated the inside of the box as if it were a small-scale studio, because that’s how much of a genius he is. That gave us some dimension so that while I was playing, there was just that extra little bit of space for the note to grow. So my amps were onstage, but the speakers were in these boxes on the loading dock of the Sphere.”

The conversation also touched on the visual aspect of Dead & Company’s Sphere performances. Perhaps most interesting was Weir and Mayer talking about how much they notice what is going around them. Bobby explained in classic Bobby fashion.

“[W]hen I walk onstage, I walk into a hallucinogenic realm. I’m gone. I’m as out-there as a fellow gets, and I’m not sure I’m even going to notice the tech. We do have to watch the visuals at the beginning and the end of the show, because we have to time everything. But the visuals probably hit anybody else in that place harder than they do the people onstage, because the average guy onstage is in a hallucinogenic realm to begin with. That’s the nature of our business.”

Mayer likened the Sphere to a “big elephant at the circus that we work with.”

“I think that’s a pretty fair metaphor,” he said. “It’s this massive thing you have to respect, but it’s a part of our show. You almost want to pat the side of the Sphere and go, ‘Good girl, good girl.’”

Mayer shared that he had a favorite moment from the show where he joined the audience to marvel.

“One particular part that I was just so mesmerized by was when we return back to Earth [toward the end of the show] and we move through this particle field,” he said. “I look up and feel it come over my head, and I take that time every night to be swept away by it. It’s like, for one moment I get high on my own supply. [Laughs].”

In a recent social media post, Mayer shared an update on new Sphere visuals for the upcoming residency. Check it out below.

The Guitar World interview also touched on the possibility of a return to an idea that was floated around the time the band began: recording an album.

“Oh, it’s something I would still love to do,” Weir said. “We’ve got our best guys on it…” Bobby also toyed with the notion of possibly taking Dead & Company “across the seas.”

In the meantime, Dead & Company’s second Las Vegas Sphere residency begins tomorrow. Scroll down for itinerary and ticket info.