Why is WHITE PONY’S guitar tone so hard to replicate?
Why is Stephen Carpenter’s guitar tone on the Deftones album White Pony so hard to replicate?
In this video, I dive head first into what gear Stef was using for this record, how Terry Date produced the album and the last part looks at my attempt to re-create the iconic sound with the tools I have available to me at home.
There seems to be a lot of guess work and misinformation as to what Stef’s gear was around this era, so to try and be as accurate as possible, I found an old Guitar One magazine from July 2000 that had a great interview with Stephen talking all about his equipment. I also found an old EQ magazine from August 2000 that has an excellent interview with Terry Date about his recording process.
With the information I managed to uncover from these interviews, I tried my best to re-create these tones at home.
I hope you enjoy this deep dive into White Pony’s amazing guitar tone!
WHITE PONY IR
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1E5uVVb3WxHbKcPfyFg2w-adqGtfjY4A0/view?usp=sharing
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The gear I’m using in this video ????
GUITAR
Ibanez RG3550MZ GK
AMP
JMP Pro by Nembrini Audio (Not an affiliate link)
JMP Pro Valve Guitar Amplifier
CHAPTERS
00:00 Intro
00:20 Part 1 – Stef’s Gear
04:30 Part 2 – White Pony’s Production
07:10 Part 3 – My Attempt
13:21 Example 1
13:54 Example 2
14:26 Example 3
15:08 Example 4
15:36 Example 5
16:07 Outro
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Originally posted by UCPAK6V8_CcHLkfk0Y2u_mTA at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HAe3mUY-bA
You also must consider that When White Pony was being produced a lot of gear during that time was not designed for extended ranged instruments and excessive drop tunings like they are now. Tone shaping for Seven Strings and drop tunings on Six Strings that went past two whole steps and beyond was challenging and required a bit more creative patience and tinkering with the equipment available at the time, which produced great sonically rich music like you hear on White Pony but is also why your hearing something that seems out of the ordinary, and never forget, the musician who’s playing the music is making a difference as well.
As a history buff, respect your research as part of the process! I actually still have my copy of that Guitar One magazine! Nice video and great tones!
The tone for this album was actually inspired by Hums Youd prefer an astronaut!
Its not hard, youre just not very good.
did you put new strings on?
You're pretty much there, dude. Compared to yours, Stef's tone is just a little brighter overall. Especially on Feiticeira, though interestingly enough, your tone seems to be slightly brighter than Stef's on the other tracks. ????
Good job either way. ????????
bro surgical eqing guitar tones nailed hard here
Why didn't you use all 4 IR's athe same time to mix them ? That would ease whole process. Just load all 4 , cut some frequencies to match and "viola".
The FZ2 is only used for the boost mode, used on ATF as well…. great EQ'able Jfet boost that packs a punch. The SF300 is IC based…. barely a clone. Stef still has the FZ2 in his rack seemingly after veiwing his play throughs in recent years… that boost mode goes into cranked Model T land on its own. Nick Raskulinecz also uses the FZ2 boost on most of his stuff as well.
Fuzz sounds like garbage, outside of Electric Wizard riffs.
can you replicate Adrenaline guitar tone?
Because there is no guitars,
Its just distortion
Deftones are the best
It almost sounds like you're not getting enough of the low-mids out. I'm probably wrong about this but Steph's tone has a fizzyness to it and a quality in the high end that reminds me of a sonic maximizer. I have to say your tone sounds better to my ears, but the original is thinner and sits better in the mix.
A ver, he leído esa entrevista de Terry, lo que dice realmente es que en una producción con un double-tracking valdría pero que el sonido de guitarras de los discos comerciales es masivo y es lo que se exige en el mercado discografico, ese tipo de estética, y es lo que le piden y a lo que está acostumbrado el oyente y el público y de escuchar algo diferente quizás rechazaría comprar un álbum de metal concreto. Terry ha usado triple-tracking siempre por esto mismo, nunca la tercera pista de la guitarra va al centro exacto de la panoramizacion porque queda horrible y choca con el resto: bajo, bombo, voz, … está desplazada un poco a un lado, podría ser L20 o R20, lo que mejor quede, y luego las otras dos pistas a ambos lados a tope, por ejemplo L100 – L20 – R100, a veces se cierran un poco las pistas de los lados, L90 – L20 – R90. Hay que cuidar que en L20 no haya una pista de hi-hat, tom, … de la batería para que no choque con la de guitarra. La cuarta pista para hacer quad-tracking iría donde está la otra en L20 un poco más baja de volumen, entre 3 – 6 dB, entonces es: L100 – L20 – L20 (-3 dB) – R100. Se usan dos guitarras diferentes para grabar las pistas, entonces es dos pistas con una de las guitarras y las otras dos con la otra. Se puede usar el mismo amplificador, o dos diferentes, o mezclar dos o tres en una sola pista usando un spliter en la grabación, etc …
No es cierto nada de lo que dices. Stephen uso ese pedal fuzz y el Rocktron en todos los discos hasta Saturday Night Wrist por lo menos. Uso un spliter y grabo dos amplificadores al mismo tiempo que luego mezclaba en una sola pista, eran idénticos, dos JMP-1 con los poweramp que mencionas y los cabinets eran Marshall 1960A White con G12-M speakers, grabados con un par de Shure SM57 cada uno. La guitarra que uso Stephen fue una ESP de siete cuerdas pero afinada como una Drop C de seis, tenía pastilla activas EMG. Todo esto se puede ver en Youtube en los vídeos de Studio Report de la grabación de White Poney, además que Stephen ya lo ha mencionado alguna vez. En directo si que a lo mejor usaría las ESP de seis cuerdas con pastillas Seymor Duncan y los Marshall Black con G12-75 por aquella época, que fue lo que uso para grabar Around The Fur, pero no así White Poney
Como que encontraste esa entrevista a Terry Date en una revista de hace más de 25 años que tenías en casa jaja no te creo , esa entrevista está en Gearspace, escanee yo mismo esa parte de la revista que compré en internet y copié el texto y lo pegué en un post, además esa entrevista está dividida en dos revistas diferentes, la parte de las guitarras está en la que mencionas tú, y la otra de la batería y las voces en otra revista donde aparece el propio Terry Date en la portada
Green
the difference in passenger is insane, and as a music producer myself it makes me wonder what kind of technical wizardry terry date used to even pull this off, because some songs sound genuinely impossible to replicate 1 to 1, even after the absolute wizardry you performed yourself. incredible channel by the way, you got an instant sub from me. I thought youd have way more subscribers for the level of effort and quality youre pumping these videos out for, i hope this video hits the algorithm harder man. awesome stuff.
Elite sounded closest… Good effort
I actually prefer the tone you came up with for Elite in example 2
Pink Maggit is a slept on masterpiece.
Franks eerie plucks and droning, clean guitar chords near the end, cymbal scraping, heavy distortion with delay and tuner peg sounds, vocal lines like non other especially before the chorus hit and to finish a heart beat… just phenomenal I can only imagine the writing process of that song, ironic how it was remade to make mini Maggit which is almost polar opposite.
You want the old g12’s. I forget what year, I want to say 2,004, but to be safe, before 2,000.
The modern g12’s suck compared to the old ones. Good speakers on their own, but compared to the OG, no good.
I’m so happy to see you get so much love on this video ❤ you’re one of my favourite YouTubers for the weirdest reasons, I think you deserve more love
knife prty intro is all about chino's gibson sg with some reverb(+chorus maybe?) on bridge position, probably p90s. Imo its sounds so unique so hard to replicate that with any other guitar, yet alone anything digital. Clean parts of Digital Bath were also recorded recorded with same guitar/settings. Intro of Minerva was also recorded by Chino and his SG, 4th album cd has some vids of recording phase which we could see Chino's countless attemps to play Minerva intro flawless 🙂