While Deftones' Stephen Carpenter was an early adopter of Axe-Fx, Kempers, and the Line 6 Helix, these days he prefers a slightly more traditional setup – which means he's moved away from amp modelers and re-incorporated tube amps into his rig.
Speaking in a new interview with Premier Guitar, Carpenter explains he made the massive overhaul because “the amps never fail.”
“I've had too many fails with my digital world,” he tells Premier Guitar in his latest Rig Rundown. “When I went to the all-digital realm, that's when I took on a world of pain that I was not expecting. I was in a bad place with my equipment, [I] just hated how everything sounded.”
After going through different setups, Carpenter previously settled on a compromise hybrid rig running his Helix into a Fryette power amp. However, one decision in particular revolutionized his love-hate relationship with amp modelers, and consequently, his tone.
“One day, when we were gearing up for the last leg of this tour earlier this year, when we were rehearsing, I reset my amp blocks and all my presets,” he explains.
“I was like, ‘Just put it back to the factory state.’ And it turned out that the factory programming of the amp block itself was perfect. I was like, ‘Don't even touch it.’ And that's been my mentality when it comes to all the equipment.
“For instance, I have the Strymon BigSky, Timeline, and the Mobius. I only use the factory presets and I don't touch any knobs no more.”
His reasoning is simple: “I'll give you all this advice – if your gear ever craps out and you ain't got it backed up, them sounds are gone for life. Factory presets, however, are right there. If anything happens, breaks, act of God, whatever... go get a new one, plug it right back in. Boom!”
Working on Deftones' latest record, private music, also saw the guitarist actually using the “whole pile of amps” he's been collecting over the past decade.
He continues, “When we went to go do this one, I was like, ‘You know what? I think I bring all those down.’ Because I was like, ‘How can you fail?’ These are 100-watt tube amps. I got all the stuff I need.”
“With every take we did, we put on another amp. We just kept going through them. Greg's [Dubinovskiy, his guitar tech] in there [the studio], I'm literally just sitting around playing. I never touched the amp once. Greg did everything on the amps in the studio, and I didn't have no complaints.
“The actual organic sound of these amps, the feel, the whole thing, the response when you're playing,” he gushes. “I was like, ‘Yeah, that's it.’ And that's when we were like, ‘All right, we're rebuilding this shit.’”
Now, his live rig is headed up by Bogner Uber-Ultra heads, loaded with KT88s and paired with a wall of Bogner cabs.
Deftones have just released their highly anticipated 10th album, private music, last month – a record which saw Carpenter and Chino Moreno, in particular, chasing sounds before crafting songs.
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