California heavy music veterans Deftones have announced they are set to return to Australia for a run of national headline shows this November, to be joined by none other than homegrown progressive favourites Karnivool.
Deftones recently celebrated their first ever Australia No. 1 album when they unveiled the critically hailed Gore last month. The album has been acclaimed as a unique triumph of the alternative metal genre.
Meanwhile, the band’s live chops have never been better. They are currently in the midst of a massive world tour and their upcoming Australian shows will no doubt be packed with all the songs fans know and love them for.
We recently caught up with bassist Sergio Vega to talk about how he and the band crafted the sound of Gore and how they recreate it on the live stage, as well as discussing the guitar gear he simply couldn’t live without.
Back To Basics
Well, if I was forced to tour in just a small van or car, I’d need a bass for sure, right? That’s just assumed. I’d take either a Fender Jaguar or a Fender Bass VI, I could deal with either. My rig would honestly just consist of an Orange combo amp and a Fractal Audio Axe-FX and a MIDI controller. I use a beefier version of that for playing in general, so I’d just shrink that down.
Evolution
The previous album was basically the same rig, the only thing I switched up on was using the OB1 amp heads by Orange. Before that I was messing around with a lot of different heads from like Orange amps to reissues of classic amps. But I’ve been using the Axe-FX for a while now. Stephen and I got those on tour some years back.
Hitting The Studio
I think my rig is about 99.9 percent the same when shifting between the studio and the live stage, honestly. The beauty of using the Fractal Audio thing is that it’s a small unit but a really powerful unit. I have one at home, I have it with my band, and when you’re making patches and doing things, working on them and developing them at home, you’re getting a fairly accurate sense of what you’re gonna get in the studio and it’s the same for live performance.
So the only real difference is that live you have to condense things. When you’re in the studio you have a little more room to play with routing things and going through different cabinets and things like that, as well as having a lot of individual patches per song. So what I started doing was reducing them in the studio as well so that when we play live it was the same patches as in the studio.
Back In The Day
My first bass? I can’t even remember what brand it was. But I guess my first one when I really started putting together rigs and stuff was a Rickenbacker 4001. Before I could really own an amp, we would rehearse at hourly practice places that had their own amps and then when I played shows I would rent amps, until I was actually able to buy an amp and store it in a place. Living in Manhattan and that, I didn’t really have a place to store gear, so I started with the Rickenbacker and then rent like an Ampeg SVT or something.
Inspiration
What I think happens… I know for me that coming from the hardcore scene, you’re inspired by the wave of kids that came before you and they sort of become what you aspire to have. So once you get to a certain point you start to experiment a lot more on your own and hang out at music shops or you make friends and you start trying out pedals and stuff.
I come from a background where the people around me were super effects-heavy and big on pedals, but the basic pedals I had were basic pedals and basic pickups, so I was inspired like the Cro-Mags and Bad Brains and British bands like Discharge, so I was drawn to distorted bass sounds and playing with a pick.
Getting Weird
The weirdest thing I have pedal-wise right now is a Blue Sky pedal, it’s a sick little reverb pedal I have that I like using when I record stuff at home and it’s by Strymon. It’s the Blue Sky reverberator. It’s pretty awesome. It’s not weird so much as the fact that it’s shimmery and awesome and you can use it for settings that can give you sort of My Bloody Valentine-style guitar and that’s probably the coolest pedal I’ve got in my rig.
See Deftones do their thing live on Australian stages when they embark on their national tour with Karnivool this November – check below for dates and details!
Deftones Australian Tour Dates
Tuesday, 8th November 2016
Metro City, Perth (18+)
Tickets: Megatix | Oztix | 1300 762 545
Thursday, 10th November 2016
Thebarton Theatre, Adelaide (All Ages)
Tickets: Ticketmaster | 136 100
Friday, 11th November 2016
Festival Hall, Melbourne (All Ages)
Tickets: Ticketmaster | 136 100
Saturday, 12th November 2016
Hordern Pavilion, Sydney (All Ages)
Tickets: Ticketek | 132 849
Sunday, 13th November 2016
Riverstage, Brisbane (All Ages)
Tickets: Ticketmaster | 136 100
