Sascha Gerstner is more than just a guitarist in Helloween. He has arguably been the band’s most consistently great songwriter since joining the band over two decades ago, he has a significant impact on how the guitars sounds on the albums and live, and multiple band members point to him as the one who creates order in potentially chaotic rehearsals. Gerstner is happy to shine some light on his unorthodox sonic and visual approach, as well as the process of recording ‘Giants & Monsters’.

“We mixed our approaches up a lot this time around.”, Gerstner explains. “For the songs Kai wrote, he laid down the foundation first, and then I recorded a track of rhythm guitars, and Charlie (Bauerfeind, production), mixed it together. For my songs, we did it the other way around: I recorded all the rhythm guitars first, and then Kai recorded a track of his rhythm guitar, and we mixed that together. We wanted to have everyone’s vibe on it.

Everyone has a different energy. And Charlie has a good approach to it. He always says: no matter how you perform live, good or bad days, this band always has a certain magic, a certain energy, and that’s what I want to hear on the album. That was the approach for how the three of us function as guitarists. That’s also how it works with the singers: how do you present the magic of Michi (singer Michael Kiske) and Andi (Deris, singer) the way it comes across live as well?

You don’t properly become a band until you go on tour after making an album. Of course, we already knew each other, but nonetheless, we had to let it grow together first. I think you can notice that when you hear the new album. Compared to the last album, we sound much more like a true band.”

A Lot of Bandwidth

“The red thread in a song is always the vocals. We have a certain idea of what Helloween is, and you write songs based on that, but the interesting thing is: I sing on my own demos, and because of that, our manager has difficulty imagining what the songs will be like. But as soon as Michi or Andi sings on it, it’s Helloween. And in the end, the band performance, of course. Some of the songs we think are just fine grow once we start playing them together.

You have to want the others’ energy. And I think a lot of musicians have difficulties seeing that as a benefit. Having so many songwriters in the band is a benefit. That’s our strength. It makes me enthusiastic. It gives us a lot of bandwidth to work with. It’s never boring. Usually, when you have one or two songwriters in the band, you can often hear it a little bit. It doesn’t have to be a bad thing, but for us, I think diversity is our strength.

I have a lot of respect for everyone in the band. Take someone like Kai (Hansen, singer/guitarist). This is a lifetime achievement for him: starting a band, being successful with it, creating an entire genre. I have a lot of respect for that. Same thing with Weiki (guitarist Michael Weikath). I have tremendous respect for him as a person. He is my best friend in the band.

That makes a very big difference: we all like each other. That is very important. You can be completely different people, you can have your differences, but we all like each other.”

Being Your Own Show Element

Perhaps the biggest eyecatcher on stage during a Helloween show is Gerstner’s unconventional guitar, which he created with Viv Guitars. “Most basic rhythm guitars or layers on the album I recorded with a Fender Telecaster”, he clarifies. “Because I wanted to do something a little different. But every lead, and some synthesizer guitars we recorded to fatten up the sound, all of that I played using my own model, which I designed together with a luthier.

It took three years before the guitar was what I had in mind. There were two different aspects to it. First off, I wanted to have something which had a certain visual impact. You can do a lot with stage shows, and many people do things with fire, lights, pyros and whatnot. But I think you can be a bit of a show element yourself as well.

It’s a bit controversial to go on stage with an instrument like that. I wanted to have something that works for metal, but someone like Lady Gaga could play this guitar as well. I also have a solo project, which is more like new wave mixed with electronic music, and I wanted to connect these worlds.

There are quite a lot of synthesizer layers that I play on guitar, and you need sustain for that, so the pickup will actually pick the sound up the way it should. You’ve got the guitar signal and an oscillator, which more or less converts the guitar sound into a synthesizer sound, and you need a lot of sustain for that.

For my solo project, I have a Roland synth guitar from 1985, the first real synthesizer guitar, and that one has this handle between the headstock and the shoulder, which is there to make sure you have the stability and the sustain you need. Also, for the clean parts, you can work with effects a little more if you have that sustain.

Those are the things I wanted to bring together: how can I use it as a technical element that also looks cool? That’s how it came into being. It’s kind of an Explorer-type guitar. I have an Ibanez Destroyer from 1982, and that one is in it a little bit as well.”

The Courage to Build Polarizing Guitars

The brand Gerstner used to be associated with was Dean, but he isn’t seen playing their guitars all that often anymore. “I do still have a bunch of Dean guitars that I collected over the years”, he says. “The original plan was that Dean was going to build my guitar, but we couldn’t make it work. We have talked about it, and they did show interest. Especially with those lawsuits, I thought it might be interesting for them to try something completely different.

However, as a company, I think you need a lot of courage to build a guitar like that. Simply because it is polarizing. Personally, I have gotten a lot of positive responses. That wasn’t the case in the beginning, but the longer I played it, the more people came up to me saying that it looked cool. But of course, there will always be people who hate it, because they are so used to more typical shapes. That is always a difficult thing when you make something unusual. And I understand that. You don’t know if something is going to sell or not.

We also talked to ESP, and they immediately turned us down, despite them building a lot of unusual things. I don’t know why it worked out that way. Every time you make something new, nobody wants to have it, no matter what it is you make. But then, when you are successful with it… Who knows what it will be like in ten years? There might be a giant fanbase for this guitar.

Ultimately, a guitar is something very personal. For me, it’s like a fashion item. It belongs to my personality. I can’t imagine myself playing a Flying V, for example. It doesn’t fit me. What I have now is a much better fit.”

A Very Specific Tone

In an earlier interview, fellow guitarist Kai Hansen said that Sascha had sent his Fractal Audio Axe-FX III guitar sound to him and guitar colleague Michael Weikath to use or modify. “Kai is always turning knobs”, Gerstner smiles. “He always makes his own thing out of it. And Weiki is happy when I do something for him. He only wants to go out and have a smoke, haha! When I develop something new, he always immediately says: I want to have the same thing as Sascha.

Of course, much of the sound comes from your hands. For example: no one can play sad as well as Weiki does. Weiki has a very specific tone, and you can turn as many knobs as you want, it will always end up sounding like Weiki. And I like that.

For me, it’s always a case of having a certain result in mind, and wondering how to get there. When the technology is there, I will use it. Of course. Back in the day, I tried everything that was available in terms of modeling. I also had a Kemper, but Kemper always felt more like archiving to me: we’ve had this amplifier, these speakers, these microphones, this mixing console, and subsequently, we achieved this sound.

Since 2011, when Kemper hit the market, I have sort of archived all rigs we had in the studio, so that we can reach back and get them whenever we need to. That was great, but I never really liked the feeling of it. It always felt weird while playing, and whatever you tuned in had started sounding digital. I didn’t like that. When I played Fractal, that was the first time I thought it felt like an amp. For effects, it’s the best thing that currently is on the market, in my opinion.”

A Hybrid System

“When I’m playing at home, I still have a bunch of amplifiers. How it feels playing at home, in a room, with a speaker: that can’t be beaten. But practically speaking, it’s not very useful. There are still people who say that it can’t be good without an amplifier, and that they can hear the difference. That’s nonsense. That’s no longer true in 2025.

Of course, the feeling of playing an old Marshall is always something special. You can’t get that with in-ears. But I also say to those people: I used to have two Marshalls on stage, and four speakers, all of them on. Sometimes that was awesome, sometimes it was shit. If the room is bad, or the stage reflects sound in a weird way, I would sometimes have a terrible sound, even if I did have all the equipment. These days, the sound is fairly consistent, and that is an advantage.

I have even recorded the album with the Axe-Fx. On the last tour, I brought it with me, because I thought it was very practical, but I didn’t dive into the details too much. I had a solo part for ‘Best Time’, where I play around with synthesizer sounds that I played with my foot, layering guitar on top of it as an intro, and I already thought that was awesome.

That’s how I started programming things. After the tour, I started getting really deep into understanding everything the Axe-Fx had to offer, and I built a hybrid system. I started combining a Lexicon PCM70, an Eventide H300, and a DBX compressor – old machines from the eighties – with the Axe-Fx. And that is what you can hear on the album. There are many small details that may not be on the foreground, but they are there.”

As a Songwriting Element

Finding his place within the guitar trio that Helloween has had since 2016 was not difficult for Gerstner. “Kai does what Kai does, Weiki does what Weiki does, and I have always asked: how can I connect that?”, he says. “It all came very naturally to me. Especially with this album. I love beautiful clean guitars. Also in metal. It’s fun for me to play. Kai and Weiki aren’t as fond of clean guitars, so they left a bit of space for me to make use of that.

That’s the cool thing about there being three of us now: on the album, there are always multiple layers of guitars. Now that there are three of us, we can actually play it like that live as well. There are these classic moments where Kai and Weiki play twin solos. On the albums, there are rhythm guitar parts there. Back in the day, the band couldn’t do that live. They would only have a bass underneath the solo. These days, we can do it, because I can play the rhythm guitar parts.

Playing rhythm guitar is something I love doing. Solos aren’t that important to me. That probably is something no one will believe, since I can actually play solos. But as a songwriting element, they aren’t that important to me. As a kid, I didn’t even know what ‘lead guitar’ and ‘rhythm guitar’ meant.

When I heard George Lynch for the first time, with Dokken, all I heard was this fat guitar sound and these fast licks, and I tried to play both in one part. That’s also how I developed my style, more or less. It wasn’t until later that I found out that 95 percent of all songs is rhythm guitar. I always loved it.”

A Different Emotional Connection

“I believe that ego is the biggest limitation on music. However, it can be a good motivator. Sometimes we have that in the band. Sometimes ego comes to the table. That is something you can’t avoid as an artist. And sometimes, that friction is a good thing. You write a song, and you already notice that it has a certain strength. And that could encourage the others: I want that too! That’s the part where ego can be a good thing.

But when it concerns how you relate yourself to others, ego is just shit. And I don’t have that at all. Some people might not be able to imagine that, but I’m not a jealous person. I don’t even know how it feels to be jealous. I can’t understand it. And that’s how it has been since the beginning in Helloween for me as well. When I played the majority of the guitars on an album, and Weiki hasn’t, but people still think Weiki is the best, that did not make me jealous at all.

When we were on the Hellish Rock tour with Gamma Ray, so with Kai, we were always travelling as a group, and we partied a bit as a band, and that’s when I already knew that there would be circumstances under which a reunion would be possible. That’s when I told him: just so you know, I have no problem with just playing rhythm guitar. He couldn’t believe that. He told me that he thought I would be frustrated. But that doesn’t play any role.

Also, no matter how well I play, there will always be people who were fans from the very beginning who will never be able to accept me like Kai or Weiki. The fact that I understood that is probably why I’m still part of the band. Old school fans have a different emotional connection to the band than people who know me from social media or whatever, and haven’t gotten into Helloween until 2005 or 2008. Every era has something to offer, really.”

Comfortable from the Start

“When I joined the band, I knew I was stepping into a band that has a certain status. Also, I was extremely young at the time, and my heart wasn’t really with music anymore. I actually didn’t want to do something like that anymore. But then Helloween came, and that of course had a huge impact, and Weiki and I clicked immediately. He immediately became my buddy. We noticed we had a similar sense of humor, and we liked similar things.

I thought that was very exciting, also because I have known the band since my school days, of course. That made a certain impression. And then, of course, I was a bit scared of the personal side of it. But that vanished in thin air immediately. They made me feel comfortable right from the start. I have to admit: I haven’t had the warmest reception from the fan community. It was very difficult in the beginning, and that is something you have to survive first.

It was very clear that I was helping to elevate Weiki, and everything else will come over time. Weiki has always openly said that I am the much better guitarist out of the two of us. That was never a secret. But the fans didn’t want to hear that. And I’m not the type of person that just goes out and says that about himself. That’s not what it was about for me.

What was more important for me was having a good time, and making good music together. Also, there was the fact that they encouraged me to be a songwriter from the very beginning, using my ideas from the very first album I did with them. That was much more important to me than everything else.”

Not a Stereotypical Metalhead

“There are so many things outside of metal music that inspire me. I like it when artists have the music on one side, but also an artist’s personality on the other. David Bowie wasn’t only about the music, and I like that. I was always a little against the grain. I have always tried not to be a stereotypical metalhead. That was always my thing. Even in Freedom Call: that’s when I had an Ernie and Bert patch on my jeans. I have always thought: if everyone walks that way, I’ll have to walk the other way.

Metal as a music genre is just one part of my heart. Playing guitar is also a part of my heart, but it isn’t everything. That’s why I always say that I’m not a guitarist anymore when people tell me that I can play solos really well. I stopped being a guitarist at some point. I play guitar, and I enjoy doing it, but it’s just a part of what I do.

Once I got older, I started getting interested in so many different things. Also because of travelling, of course. When you tour the world with a band, you experience a lot of impressions. I am always wandering around and meeting people. That’s how I discovered photography at some point. After that, I partly forgot to play guitar for a while. There are so many things that interest me, and my life is too short to do everything.”

Creative Sound Design

“The eighties are the biggest musical decade for me, in terms of songwriting, production, and performance. In every genre. Optically, people were very courageous as well. That has always fascinated me. And I have always wondered: how can I introduce that to this style of music? Back in the day, when I had just started out, that was just impossible.

Even just after I had joined Helloween: ‘You have to let your hair grow’. But doesn’t that already exist? I don’t need that once again. Finding a way to be myself and still being compatible with the band: that was what was important to me.

My role in the band does transcend the theme of guitars a little bit nowadays. At some point, I discovered collecting old reverb machines and synthesizers from the eighties, which make the sound really broad in an awesome manner. And then things happen in the productions, and Charlie sends me dry vocal tracks, to which I add the vocal effects. That’s not a producer’s role, that would be too much honor for me, but it is a creative sound design role.”

Wanting What Someone Has to Offer

“I am proud of playing in a band in which all members are great guys. That’s our benefit. Why would I be jealous of a singer or another guitarist? It just makes me enthusiastic. That’s why I always think such friction is nonsense. Same with if someone insists on doing his own thing. That always makes me think: why don’t you become a solo artists instead?

Freedom Call was like that for me, for instance: every solo note was sung to me. I wasn’t allowed to play how I play. It was simply: no, I want to have it like this, and you have to play it like this. Every little string hit was scrutinized. In that case, you don’t want to have me; you want to have what you do, but played my someone else. That doesn’t make any sense to me.

When I ask someone to join my band, I want to have that specific person. It would be illogical to me to do it any differently. Why would you ask someone to join the band, and not want what they have to offer? I never wanted to supersede anyone in the band. Having a good time and making good music together is much more important to me.”