For this edition of Gear Factor powered by Sweetwater, we're going to let the music do the talking. Grim Reaper's Nick Bowcott is delivering a blistering Pantera / Damageplan medley in honor of his late friend Dimebag Darrell.

Bowcott has a long history with Pantera dating back to the mid-'80s when the Texas rockers opened for Grim Reaper on the "Fear No Evil" tour. Bowcott recalled to Blabbermouth, "The guitar player kind of looked like me but shorter… and he could drink more than me too, which was actually quite impressive. The drummer was his brother, so there was this Van Halen thing. And I watched them and they blew me away. The guitar player gave me a tape afterwards; it was called Projects in the Jungle. The band was called Pantera."

The guitarist would later become part of the Pantera family, working with Dimebag Darrell on his hugely popular, long running Guitar World column, "Riffer Madness," which later became a best-selling Hal Leonard book. "I got to hang out with Dime for countless hours and he'd show me exactly how he played every single riff and lick that appeared in his column... so I could transcribe them as accurately as humanly possible," Bowcott recalls. "It was the best gig ever."

In this Gear Factor edition, Bowcott shows exactly how adept he is at Pantera's catalog, working through some of the licks and finding that undeniable groove that made the band so special. To get Dime's tone, Bowcott plugged his Charvel into a Boss Katana Artist amp, used an EVH flanger pedal by MXR and a DigiTech Whammy 5 Pitch Shift pedal. For recording, Bowcott used a Zoom H6 recorder.

The 14th anniversary of Dimebag Darrell's death passed earlier this month. Enjoy this medley in celebration of his work. And for all your gear needs, be sure to check out Sweetwater.com.

See Dimebag Darrell in the 66 Greatest Rock + Metal Guitarists of All Time

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