“At that time, my guitar sound was garbage”: Stephen Carpenter recalls tone struggles during this Deftones album era
Deftones guitarist Stephen Carpenter feels his tone was “garbage” during the band’s Koi No Yokan album era, despite receiving compliments on his sound at the time.
The album, which was released back 2012, houses well-loved tracks Rosemary, Tempest, Swerve City and more. Though Carpenter reassures he’s not trying to slate any specific gear brand of that time, he does remember having some teething problems with his Fractal Axe-Fx.
READ MORE: “I’d go all that way and then get stuck out there and then they’d jab me with something”: Stephen Carpenter blames pandemic anxiety for why he doesn’t tour internationally with Deftones
In conversation with Rock Feed, he talks about first making the switch (via Ultimate Guitar): “I went through some learning curves on that thing, like everyone does, but I had a couple occasions where I’d done a lot of programming on it and stuff like that, and I made the mistake of updating it while on tour and it just wiped out all my settings.
“I’m like ‘what the?! never again will I do that.’ I couldn’t believe that happened. And I did that twice. It was the second time where I was just like, ‘all right, that was it.’ I have a lot of gratitude for that period because I’m amazed and I’m grateful that we got through it. Everyone kind of just forged through it. Because at that time, my guitar sound was garbage.”
He adds, “I was struggling with it. It was not satisfying to me personally. But then I only get compliments at the end of the shows, people like, ‘That sounded so sick,’ blah, blah, blah. And then one day, a little thing triggered, and I made an adjustment, and it ended up being the thing that made all the difference in using that piece of equipment.”
Carpenter says it was the effects blocks in the unit that caused him most of the issues. “My rig has always been, and most guitar player rigs are always in mono but I always used at least two cabinets, and it would always be left and right, but without me even being conscious of it or really thinking much about it,” he adds.
“I’ve always been running a mono-mono sound, so even though I’m looking at two cabinets, it’s the same signal coming out of both of them, and it would only become a stereo signal when I added a stereo effect.
“When I was building all my new patches during that time and setting everything up, I had set it up with a stereo cab block in there, and that was dividing up my signal and splitting it, giving it the stereo sound — the width, if you will. To me, it was sounding hollow.”
Watch the interview below:
The post “At that time, my guitar sound was garbage”: Stephen Carpenter recalls tone struggles during this Deftones album era appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
