Walter Schreifels has played foundational foil for over 25 years, with his focused, angular, coarsely melodic guitar grounding his more adventurous, effected counterparts in Quicksand, Vanishing Life, and Rival Schools. (The later even released an album in 2011 called Pedals.)
"Originally in Quicksand, my background was coming into music through a straightforward hardcore perspective, so I took on that simplified aesthetic, similar to Fugazi," says Schreifels. "Both our bassist Sergio Vega and other guitarist Tom Capone were adding in pedals, so I earthed the band playing the straight man and opted for the more direct tone."
The Quicksand quartet rose from the ashes of New York City's late '80s hardcore scene, featuring guitarist/singer Schreifels (Gorilla Biscuits and Youth of Today), Vega (Absolution and Carnage), Capone (Beyond and Bold), and drummer Alan Cage (who was in Burn with Capone, and Beyond). A self-titled four-song EP scored them a major-label deal with Polydor, where they released the seminal 1993 classic Slip. (It even landed in Decibel's Hall of Fame.) Both recordings are equally abrasive and melodic. Then the quartet moved to Island to release 1995's Manic Compression, an album unrelenting as a sledgehammer. But as quickly as they rose, the band dissolved into the time capsule of N.Y.C.'s once-rich alternative music scene. Yet they still influenced the Deftones (where Sergio now splits time playing bass), Thursday, Glassjaw, At the Drive-In, Torche, and many others.
Schreifels went on to form other two-guitar bands, including Rival Schools with Ian Page and Vanishing Life with Rise Against's Zac Blair. And he's continued to flourish as a frontman and the midrange mattress, allowing his fellow guitar mates to bend solos, color outside the lines, and leave the pocket.
However, life has a way of challenging us and putting us out of our comfort zones. (I mean, hello, 2020!) Ian left Rival Schools, Tom departed from Quicksand, and Walter formed the bluesy, psych-rock Dead Heavens, engaging in celestial spaces and thick, sizzling guitar parts.
"At that point, I sorta had to become the 'pedal' guy, so I was like, 'screw it, I'm gonna get a wah wah. [laughs] I've heard a lot of good things!'" That led to a delay, then a tremolo, then a phaser, and now he reserves a row on his pedalboard for experimentation and tone testing. "I slowly became an effects guy, still knowing I needed their applications to our music to be tasteful. And with Dead Heavens, I wanted to broaden my palette by getting better as a player and creating a space where I could really indulge the sounds in my head."
What sort of positives has Walter recognized from his pedal liberation? "Understanding how to use a piece of equipment that before was mysterious or intimidating, and now, by having broken through that mental barrier, you can get to some new shit and create something you otherwise might not have."
And his longtime straightforward, get-the-job-done, hardcore DNA has avoided any gear-snob blind-spots and pitfalls. "I sound just lazy, but I don't have any care or concern about how I get to a result if I'm happy with it. If it takes a long time, and there's something I have to shelve for a bit, that's fine. If it's with a Roland CUBE practice amp that inspires a song or tone, that's fine, too. I just don't care."
These new gear avenues and the rekindled Quicksand officially downsizing to a trio are creating new paths for Schreifels. "I'm just really excited to continue telling Quicksand's story, carrying on from Interiors, but also through our OG catalog, and a focus on growth has been improving my playing guitar and finding new ground to break."
In this episode, Quicksand's founding frontman details why oft-forgotten Fenders and a "spooky" gold-foil Harmony were 6-string cornerstones for Distant Populations. He explains how an 8" practice combo was an ace up his sleeve while recording, and chronicles his slow embrace of effects and how they've shaped his sound and vision.
[Brought to you by D'Addario XL Strings: https://www.daddario.com/XLRR]
Preorder Quicksand's Distant Populations (out 8/13 digitally; 9/24 vinyl)
And watch videos for their two singles:
1960s Harmony Holiday Bobkat
"The gold-foils in this Harmony Holiday Bobkat have a muddy, spooky, ghostly quality that really complements and fills out around the Fenders I typically use in the studio and onstage," says Schreifels. While speaking with PG in 2018, he mentioned that the above mid-'60s Harmony and a Fender Kurt Cobain Jag were the heavy hitters for 2017's Interiors, but the forthcoming Distant Populations saw it paired with a Fender Player Lead III (which we'll meet in a minute).
"Another cool thing about the Harmony is, even though I'm not a lead player, it's really comfortable and easy for me to get around the fretboard and sound like I'm doing something," admits Schreifels.
He's had the guitar for nearly 10 years, and beyond Quicksand he's used it in the studio for Dead Heavens and Vanishing Life. Typically, all of Walter's guitars take Ernie Ball Slinkys (.010–.046) and he usually lives in standard or drop-D tunings. However, "Fire This Time," off Interiors, has the low E string dropped to A, creating unison between the neck-top two strings—something he absorbed after seeing Baroness in concert.
Fender Classic Player Jazzmaster Special
During the band's original '90s heyday, Schreifels would get down on bucker-brandishing guitars like Les Paul Deluxes and H-S-S Strats. He saw losing his Gibson overseas (and his body deterioration from playing heavier instruments) as a sign. Eventually the transition dovetailed into a relationship with Fender, and he began bonding with their humbucker guitars, like the aforementioned Cobain Jag. He scored the above Fender Classic Player Jazzmaster Special, but didn't fall completely in love with its stock JM Special Design Hot Single-Coil Jazzmaster pickups, so he slammed a set of brand-unknown humbuckers in for a bigger, bolder sound. To enhance its playability, he swapped out the original bridge for a Staytrem.
Fender Player Lead III
Ahead of recording the new album, Walter spied the announcement of Fender's updated Lead II and Lead III instruments, and was instantly intrigued. He reached out to Fender and they sent over the above Player Lead III model finished in a stunning purple metallic and featuring Player Series humbuckers that can be split.
Fender Blues Junior
The band's last U.S. tour saw Schreifels using a 50-watt Marshall JMP 2x12 combo loaded with Celestions. He's gotten familiar with and fond of Orange half-stacks, too, but as with his guitars, he's been condensing amps—especially when it comes to the studio. Above is the Fender Blues Junior that resides at his N.Y.C.-based home, but it went recording with him for the new Quicksand album.
Roland Micro Cube
The shocker of his setup has to be this Roland Micro Cube combo. In the Rundown, he remarks that "it's just so damn convenient." Because of its basic layout and built-in effects, it allowed him to forget about the gear or tone, dial in some reverb, delay, or chorus, and try to usher out the ideas in his head. And when tracking overdubs with it for Distant Populations, he used its "cheap" sound as an asset to layer in another accent.
Walter Schreifels' Pedalboard
This is a pedalboard that's 20-plus years in the making. As he admits early in the Rundown, he shunned pedals for much of his early career. The cornerstone of his sparse stomp station is the Dunlop Cry Baby Standard wah. He'll engage the Cry Baby to create tension or lock the sweep to alter the guitar's EQ and voice.
The next two are industry standards and seen in countless Rundowns: the Xotic EP Booster and MXR Carbon Copy Delay. For a little wobble and wiggle, he'll kick on the Mooer Spark tremolo, which he's kept around because he says the depth control is special. And the Electro-Harmonix Mel9 still finds a home on his board, because of its role in Interiors. It usually toggles between the strings and orchestra modes, but he has found some inspiration in the flute mode, too.
Already rests on a Pedaltrain Novo 24 board and is juiced by the Voodoo Labs Pedal Power 2 Plus.
Walter Schreifels' Bonus Pedals
Here are some pedal provocateurs that made notable spotlights on Distant Populations. The EHX Synth9 creates the aerial-assault warning sirens on "Missile Command," the MXR Phase 90 headlines the song "Phase 90," and the DigiTech FreqOut adds eerie, phantom feedback.
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Chops: Intermediate Theory: Intermediater Lesson Overview: • Learn different ways to arrange scales. • Combine various sequences to create more intersting lines. • Solidify your technique by practicing unusual groupings of notes. Click here to download a printable PDF of this lesson's notation. |
Neutrik’s Timbre plug, made for toggling between capacitors.
Let’s begin with some typical additional capacitance values that certain lengths of cable (or capacitors) can bring to your system:
• 10’ vintage coiled cable (approx. 3 meters) -> 1 nF
• 15’ vintage coiled cable (approx. 4.5 meters) -> 1.5 nF
• 20’ vintage coiled cable (approx. 6 meters) -> 2.2 nF
• 30’ vintage coiled cable (approx. 9 meters) -> 3.3 nF
• Ritchie Blackmore-style, ultra-long vintage coiled cable -> 4.7 nF
I listed standard values here, so you should have no problem getting caps to match them in any local electronics store or online; the type of cap doesn’t really matter and will mostly be dominated by size, but I’ll share more about this in a minute.
Let’s quickly summarize the first installment of this column from last month’s issue: From a technical point of view, added capacitance shifts down the resonance frequency of the pickups, so they sound fatter, especially when using overdrive. This is exactly the reason why a lot of distortion and fuzz boxes with a vintage voicing use an additional cap at the input section; the resulting overdriven tone is fat and warm.
This month’s mod, which involves adding a capacitor to your signal, works best with vintage-flavored single-coil pickups (approximately 2.4 H inductance) or a typical old-school PAF-style pickup (approximately 3.8 H inductance). Modern high-output pickups are often sporting inductances of 6 H to 8 H, and don’t sound very good with this mod—when adding more cable capacitance to such pickups, the result is a dull and wooly tone without any clearness and definition. If you want to make your single-coil guitar sound more Les Paul-ish, you should try a 4.7n capacitor. It will shift the resonance frequency of your single-coil pickups down to the typical PAF ballpark, making for a very cool and usable old-fashioned guitar tone. It might feel a little muffled when playing clean, but ultra fat and punchy when using overdrive! In general, values higher than 4.7n are not recommended.
We have two options for where to install our cap.
On the Guitar Cable
This is the easiest location to add additional capacitance to your system, with several mod options:
1. The lightest mod ever isn’t a mod at all—it’s to simply buy a vintage guitar cable and plug it in whenever you need it! I don’t know of any company that offers modern guitar cables with intentionally high capacitance.
2. The Neutrik company offers a special angled plug, called the Timbre Plug, that you can solder to any guitar cable of your choice. The plug has a 4-way rotary knob on top to toggle between different capacitors. In addition to a bypass setting, the plug offers capacitances of 1nF, 2.2nF, and 3.3nF, letting you simulate different cable lengths on the fly.
3. You can add an additional capacitor to any guitar cable of your choice to convert it into a “longer-sounding” cable. You simply open one of the plugs to solder the cap between the hot and ground—that’s it. Small, 2.5 mm contact spacing ceramic caps are easy to put into a standard plug and are your weapon of choice here. It’s essential to only add the additional cap to one of the two plugs, but it doesn’t matter if you plug this side into your guitar, an effect, or your amp. This method allows you to build yourself some cables that simulate their older, longer relatives.
You can add an additional capacitor to any guitar cable of your choice to convert it into a “longer-sounding” cable.
Photo courtesy SINGLECOIL (https://singlecoil.com)
Inside the Guitar
You can also add a cap (or several) inside your guitar if you only need this mod for one instrument. If you’re looking for added capacitance with all your guitars, you’d be better off choosing one of the techniques mentioned above.
1. The easiest way is to solder your additional capacitor directly to your volume pot; this way it has a fixed value that can’t be changed and is always engaged. This operation is very simple to do, and you can use regular-sized caps for this.
You can add a cap (or several) inside your guitar if you only need this mod for one instrument.
Illustration courtesy SINGLECOIL (https://singlecoil.com)
2. If you want to make the cap switchable, such that you can run it either bypassed or engaged, you can install a SPST mini toggle switch or use half of a push-pull or push-push pot, which usually sport a DPDT switch underneath.
This drawing shows how to make your additional cap switchable.
Illustration courtesy SINGLECOIL (https://singlecoil.com)
3. If you want to use more than one cap to simulate different cable lengths, your weapon of choice is a rotary switch, setting up a kind of Gibson Varitone wiring without the inductor. Because we are switching capacitances, it is essential to run an additional 10 meg resistor in parallel to each of the caps, and to use a make-before-break, not a break-before-make, rotary switch to prevent loud popping noises when using the switch while your guitar is plugged into an amp. Leave the first lug of the rotary switch open for the bypass position without an additional cap.
If you want to use more than one cap to simulate different cable lengths, use a rotary switch.
Illustration courtesy SINGLECOIL (https://singlecoil.com)
4. If you want to make this mod even more flexible, you can add an additional “cable simulator pot” to your system. The pot should have the same resistance as your volume pot, and should be wired to your volume pot. This way, for example, you can add a 3.3nF or 4.7nF cap to the extra pot, and dial in as much cable capacitance as you like.
You can also add an additional “cable simulator pot” to your system.
Illustration courtesy SINGLECOIL (https://singlecoil.com)
On the Pedalboard
The idea of putting a rotary switch or cable-simulator-pot solution into an external unit to create a kind of extra-capacitance stompbox to use with all of your instruments is just around the corner, and yes, it’s possible! However, I don’t recommend this, because it’s physically located after the volume pot in the guitar, which means less volume (no unity gain) and less high end. But don’t worry: If you are looking for a pedalboard solution to simulate different cable lengths (which, as we defined earlier, means to shift the resonance frequency of the pickups), there are some active solutions on the market offering such a feature, usually in combination with a boost or buffer functionality. To name just a few, you should look into the Seymour Duncan Pickup Booster, Stellartone Micro Pedal, or the i2e Audio AG1.0 The PURR. Along with some other brands, these pedals will do the trick, and they’re not difficult to build if you are looking for a DIY solution.
So far, I’ve received several emails from readers asking for some more DIY guitar tools, so next month, we will look into some sustainable and environmentally friendly DIY guitar helpers—all of which you can build yourself easily by upcycling things you already have at home. Stay tuned!
Until then... keep on modding!
