Stephen carpenter
Backstage at Wembley, everything is as calm as can be. Forget whatever headlines you’ve read about Deftones being at each other’s throats or guitarists Stephen Carpenter and Chino Moreno waging war against each other over the direction of their band’s sound – today it’s smiles all round. The Grammywinning alt-metal quintet have recently started serving up fresh cuts from Gore, and naturally, as their sound evolves, so does the equipment they use to attain it. TG joins Stephen and frontman Chino – who began incorporating his own layers of shoegazey guitar from 2000’s White Pony onwards – on stage at Wembley, just hours before 10,000 fans arrive, to take a guided tour around the gear behind the latest chapter in the Deftones story.
ESP STEF B-8 1
“This one is drop-tuned to E, so a full octave lower than your standard tuning. I believe it’s made out of mahogany or alder, I’m not sure. Never when I pick up a guitar do I consider what type of wood it’s made out of, other than the fretboard, because I love ebony. That’s literally the only wood I ask for. I’ve read up on comparing types of wood and all that, but I believe you should plug in, dial up and have fun. If you get caught up in all the technicalities of gear, you’ll just get beat up forever. You’ll never get anywhere, you’ll just sit there squashing numbers, doing stuff that don’t meaning nothing to even 1 per cent of that crowd. I can guarantee you there’s less than 0.1 per cent of tonight’s audience that give two fucks what kinda wood my instrument is made out of. Can you imagine someone stood there going, ‘Man, is that rosewood?'”
2 ESP STEF-T7B
“I got two of these in 2006, so they’re 10 years old but still in great shape. Actually, there’s nothing beat-up in my collection. I take care of my gear for simple reasons – firstly I like my stuff nice, and secondly, it’s really inconsiderate to bash shit up when it takes so long to make and I have to wait longer for more. Nah, that’s dumb! I used to use EM G pickups, now I have my own signature Fishman pickups fitted into all of my guitars. The Tele is a classic shape and classic design... to be honest, the only design I’ve never been interested in since picking up the instrument is a Les Paul. I have literally zero interest in them, none whatsoever. I couldn’t give two fucks if someone handed me one saying, ‘Enjoy this!’ I’d just give it away. You’ll never catch me playing a Les Paul, guaranteed!”
3 ESP STEF B-7
“Louis Vuitton made that design, so we stuck the paintjob on it! I’m a metalhead and Louis Vuitton is meant to be posh... It’s being obnoxious and having fun is what that is. I also have one in yellow, which always looks beautiful on a guitar because of how it glows! When I was a teenager, I loved all that 80s Vai stuff with bright guitars. That was the scene I was into, and it’s what made me want to be a musician. We got to do Rock In Rio in Vegas and Brazil, I believe Steve Vai came to both, but after Vegas I got to hang out and talk to him. He’s such an awesome human being, truly amazing even if you forget the fact he’s a genius on the instrument.”
4 ENGL POWER AMP
“I was using the Jim Root Orange heads at one point before I got the Engl, but they didn’t have enough power for the punch I’m used to. And also nowadays, with Chino running a 100-watt head, blasting that motherfucker at full crush, I’m like, ‘What the fuck is going on?! No more of that, I’m running four cabs and 100-watts my end!’ I like using Engl for the controls, it’s got depth, presence, individual volume controls, but most importantly… they’re available! I don’t have to scour the earth to find one, they’re still being produced! I can order one right now and have it in days if my current one dies.”
5 Fractal AXE-FX II
“I can’t carry a pile of heads around, they’re like boat anchors. They weigh too much and take way too much maintenance. The Axe-Fx is exactly the same every day, everywhere… there is no fail. In fact, the only thing that will fail is the Engl because it’s got some primitive-ass tubes in it, still. So the real amp is the only thing that’s fragile. Around Diamond-Eyes, I started using actual heads in the studio just to tone match and hear it. Then I would dial it in, tone match it, put the amp away and record using the Axe-Fx.”
6 ORANGE CA BS
“Tone-wise my rig isn’t what it looks like from the crowd. You only see the Orange cabs from out front, which have Vintage 30s in them, same speakers in all four cabs. I use two Axe-Fx units, running one left and one right. We use two different signals to create different sounds, that’s pretty typical throughout our recordings, for more distinct, custom sound. The Axe-Fx can do that in a single unit but my issue is finding another sound, I run out of amp blocks and would have to go to what they refer to as the XY. Which for me has just enough delay so I can’t use it. I can’t perform with the thing cutting out while I’m still playing. There’s no dead space or anything, but I can hear it switch and that’s enough. I don’t wanna hear it switch. I want it all instant, I don’t to hear it morph or cross, I want the motherfucker to change at the button push.”
7 TC ELECTRON IC DITTO X2
“I can record whatever I want with the Ditto, then change my sound, then record more on top of it. On the new record, there’s two songs I do with looping… It’s impossible to keep it in time. I gave up on that. We don’t play to click, our tempos are dependent on our personalities, level of inebriation and sleep!”
8 RA DIAL JDX48
“From the Axe-Fx, my signal goes into the Radial JX48s, which is where I get my actual signal from. The blend of the two is the sound that gets fed into my cabinets, we spent time getting everything right. I used to hate my tone, at one point it was operational purely so I could get to work and clock in! I did a few interviews on the last cycle where I was really hating on my shit. Something was totally phasing out my signal and I was wondering what the fuck I was doing wrong. Then I had a simple revelation one day –I switched from stereo to mono cabinets and the middle instantly filled in. Suddenly I had a guitar again!”