While on the surface, you may think you know all there is to know about Rodrigo y Gabriela, there is far more than meets the eye with this unique Mexican guitar duo. For starters, their style, while acoustic, is anything but traditional.

Rod and Gab, who hail from Mexico City but began their careers in Ireland, play a dynamic fusion of flamenco, rock, and heavy metal, combined with a unique playing style that includes percussive flourishes played on the body of the guitar.

Even their rig is deceiving, because, as Rodrigo Sanchez tells Tone Deaf, it’s a surprisingly electric and complicated custom setup, one that few other performers can stake a claim to. In order to find out more about this singular duo and their exclusive setup, we spoke to Rodrigo ahead of their Australian tour this March.

This Isn’t LA

“My first guitar was a terrible guitar. I grew up with an acoustic guitar at home, but they were not that good. They were from my dad. But eventually my brother and I got to buy our first electric guitar. I don’t even remember the brand, it was terrible. But it was probably a Mexican-made guitar. We got an amplifier from the same brand.

“It was very sad to realize that if I’d had the chance to get a proper instrument and proper amp back in the day, I would’ve developed more skills earlier. But since we grew up in a different place — it wasn’t LA — we later realized that. Later on it was like, “Oh, okay, this is a Marshall amplifier. That’s why we couldn’t sound that good.” That was like five years later.”

The Problem

“When we first started playing as a duo and playing proper shows, we realized that we had already developed different sounds. We had a normal acoustic guitar — this is like 15 years ago so piezos and that were pretty rare — but it was a nylon string guitar.

“We started to play in Ireland, like 1,000 to 2,000 capacity venues, and we started to realize that our normal Yamaha guitars wouldn’t do the work, because we didn’t even have piezos, which means Gabriela’s acoustic percussions on the body of the guitar just wouldn’t happen.

“I mean, she would do them and when we started playing pubs, people would be quiet to hear it, but when we started playing amplified, Gab’s percussions were totally lost.”

The Solution

“I think when we started playing outside of Ireland in 2006, when we signed a record deal internationally, we went to Japan quite early, in 2007, and Yamaha in Japan were so interested in working with us and tried to come up with a proper guitar, because we were having problems. The last problem we had was when we supported Muse at Wembley Stadium, that was our first stadium show and we had guitars that had this massive problem, playing stadiums just wasn’t gonna happen.

“So Yamaha worked for a couple years making prototype guitars and we started developing a unique system that didn’t exist. So it is now more common to have the pickup and the piezos, but basically our guitars have seven piezos around the body of the guitar, because otherwise it wouldn’t be possible to pick all of the sounds from the board.

“So it’s a normal pickup and seven piezos, but there’s a little computer inside the guitar that mixes all of the piezos in and separates them in groups of two and three, so our sound engineer is able to do that as well, to give different levels to each part of the guitar when needed and separate the wood from the strings. The strings are taken from the normal pickup, which is also customised.”

The New Problem

“Now we have like 12 guitars each, we don’t tour with those 12, we tour with six, but when the computer breaks, it is a problem, because our guitar techs cannot get in there. It is a very complicated system. So the only thing they’re good for is for normal stuff, like jacks and all of that, but the computer is untouchable. We have to send it to Japan. We send it out and we have the guitar back in a couple of weeks.

“It makes the output and all of the rig very complicated. We have a split signal, a split cable that comes out from the guitar, a stereo cable, one for the piezos, one for the guitar, and then go through a process of pre-amps, splitters, and then I get lost.”

Collaboration

“We still work directly with Yamaha. There’s actually a signature guitar coming hopefully at the end of the year. It’s not exactly the same, because not everyone needs seven piezos – we need it because of the places we play.

“But for a hobby player, it’s the same shape and with a few differences. It’s pretty much the same theory, with three piezos instead of seven, and the same shape as my guitar and the same shape for Gab’s.

“We have different shapes – Gab uses a little bit more of a classical shape and I use more of a rock, electric guitar shape, very thin with a very thin neck, totally customized and handmade.”

Step On It

“Nowadays, I do have a Digitech processor, which I use on occasions for some distortion or more aggressive sounds without really affecting… I’m not trying to make an acoustic guitar sound like an electric, I just want sort of a different sound. And Gab uses a wah-wah.

“Last year, we actually were touring… not 2014, but 2013, we were touring with three big Marshall stacks, but they were backstage because we had different lines for the pickup, because we wanted a warm sound from the Marshall, going through the Digitech, so when I’m using the whammy, for example, I want more of an electric sound instead of going direct to the pre-amps.

“But now we don’t use the Marshalls anymore, because last year, since the album came out, we decided not to use distortion anymore, so we’re kind of going acoustic, but we have these beautiful pre-amps, which really help to warm up the sound of the guitar on big stages.

Acoustic Love

“I honestly like a very acoustic sound, but we can’t do that when we play a 5,000 or 10,000 capacity guitar. We can’t just use microphones, forget it. We run around the stage and our crowd is not quiet, our crowd is standing, so it had to be amplified in a different way.

“But honestly, Gab and I really enjoy when we do radio shows or something and we can just sit down and use mics and it sounds so cool, you can use all of the dynamics of the guitar.”

Hitting The Studio

In the studio, we record directly to a microphone. That’s the beauty of that. The last album, I mean, we’ve done some experiments here and there, but the last album was totally acoustic. The 11:11 album and the first album, we did record direct to mic, but we had a line, another microphone in some other room, with a line of what was coming out of a couple of acoustic amplifiers and speakers, just to mix them.

“But I’m not sure if we ended up using it or not, I don’t think so. I think most of the time we’ve gone only with the microphones and the sound of the guitar.”

The Tale of the Irish Luthier

“We went to the Pacific side of Mexico, to this resort place and we started playing background music in the hotels, but the guitars were the ones we’d brought from Mexico City. They were kind of acoustic, but so bad. We had sold our electric guitars, we sold everything, and ours were so bad.

“So when we got a deal to play in the hotel, we said, “Now we need guitars.” So we went back to Mexico City and the MPX Yamaha models had just come out and we bought a couple of those, this was in ’98. Those guitars were very unique. I bought them because they kind of looked like an electric and this was the guitar that eventually became my signature model guitar.

“It’s funny, because after a couple of years after using this guitar in Ireland or whatever, we got this luthier, an Irish luthier, who wanted to build guitars for us and he built a very beautiful couple of guitars that we used all the way up until we recorded the first album. But the problem with these beautiful guitars was that there were no pickups.

“But he based those guitars on that first Yamaha that I bought and the sound was not as loud acoustically, because it was so thin, but it was very comfortable to play, because he improved the shapes and everything. And when Yamaha approached us, we gave them the Irish luthier’s guitar and now they base their guitars on his design.

Rodrigo y Gabriela will soon touch down in Australia for a series of performances, including an appearance at Byron Bay Bluesfest.

Rodrigo y Gabriela Australian Tour Dates

Sunday, 29th March 2015
West Coast Blues & Roots Festival, Fremantle WA
Tickets: West Coast Blues & Roots Festival

Saturday, 4th April & Sunday, 5th April 2015
Bluesfest, Byron Bay NSW
Tickets: Bluesfest

Tuesday, 7th April 2015
The Palais, Melbourne VIC
Tickets: The Palais | 136 100

Thursday, 9th April 2015
Sydney Opera House, Sydney NSW
Tickets: Sydney Opera House | 9250 7777

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