51 Years Ago Today: Daron Malakian of System of a Down Is Born

Daron Malakian was born in Hollywood, California, on July 18, 1975, the only child of Armenian parents Vartan and Zepur Malakian. He wanted to play drums as a kid. His parents said no, reasoning that you can't turn drums off, and handed him a guitar instead. He was 11. For the first year and a half he learned entirely by ear, and by 16 or 17 he'd built a real reputation as a guitarist at his Los Angeles high school, the same one that produced his future System of a Down bandmates Shavo Odadjian and original drummer Andy Khachaturian.

Malakian's teenage listening was a genuine grab bag: Slayer, Venom, and Metallica on the thrash side, Pantera and Sepultura for groove, and, running alongside all of it, the Beatles, whose John Lennon he cites as a major songwriting influence, plus the Kinks and the Who. He's also been open about a less-discussed influence on his playing: the Armenian, Arabic, and Greek music of his childhood, including singer Umm Kulthum, whom his mother sang constantly while pregnant with him. "As a guitar player, I play Arabic scales," he told Revolver. "It comes more natural to me."

Malakian met future System of a Down vocalist Serj Tankian in 1993 in a shared rehearsal studio. Their early band Soil broke up, and Malakian, Tankian, and Shavo Odadjian, who switched from guitar to bass, formed a new group under a name drawn from a Malakian poem. That band became System of a Down, and Malakian has written or co-written the bulk of its catalog since, largely in drop-C tuning, while co-producing every album alongside Rick Rubin. Guitar World later ranked him 30th on its list of the 100 Greatest Heavy Metal Guitarists of All Time; Loudwire placed him 47th on its own ranking, and MusicRadar had him at number 11 on a poll of the 20 greatest metal guitarists ever.

Onstage today, Malakian rotates through a set of Gibson Custom Shop instruments finished in his signature black-and-gold scheme, an SG loaded with Seymour Duncan Custom Shop pickups, an ES-335, a Flying V built with the Les Paul-style headstock he always admired on Albert King's own V, and an Ibanez Iceman running Seymour Duncan Custom Shop Pearly Gates pickups, according to Premier Guitar's 2025 rig rundown onstage at Chicago's Soldier Field. He runs two generations of Friedman BE-100 amp heads simultaneously, one dialed for clean tones and one for dirty, into Marshall 4x12 cabinets, and keeps his pedalboard deliberately minimal: just an MXR Phase 90 and a Boss DD-6 delay, no drive pedals, since all his gain comes straight from the Friedman.

Premier Guitar's rundown documented Malakian's live strings as a custom Ernie Ball set, roughly .010 on the high E to .050 on the low string, without naming the exact middle gauges or the alloy. That top-to-bottom spread lands almost exactly on one Ernie Ball catalog set built for the same job, thin enough on top for lead runs, reinforced on the bottom for drop tuning.

Ernie Ball

Skinny Top Heavy Bottom Slinky (.010-.052)

.010 – .052

Price tier: $

Why this one: The closest Ernie Ball catalog gauge to what Premier Guitar documented on Malakian's own live rig, a light .010 top for lead lines with a reinforced low end for drop tuning.

Drop DD StandardMetal

View on AmazonFull review →