The Grammy-winning duo takes Premier Guitar through their live rig.
For more than two decades, trailblazing acoustic guitarists Rodrigo Sánchez and Gabriela Quintero have been blending metal, flamenco, pop, and jazz with their Grammy-winning duo Rodrigo y Gabriela, and they’re not showing any sign of slowing down. They’re currently on the road in support of their seventh full-length album, In Between Thoughts…A New World, released in April. It’s a characteristically adventurous endeavor, arranged as a single, album-length composition and augmented with electronics and orchestral elements.
The eclectic guitar maestros toured PG’s John Bohlinger through their respective rigs before their show at Nashville’s Historic Ryman Auditorium.
Brought to you by D’Addario Pro Plus Capo.
Nylon Niceness
Sánchez’s main acoustic guitars are custom-built Yamahas based on the company’s NX series. They are the latest in a line of different versions and prototypes; his current stage models are the sixth and seventh iterations. They run in stereo, with one channel running the signal from the pickup beneath the saddle. The other boosts a series of Piezo pickups placed in strategic positions within the body for when Sánchez keeps rhythm on the guitar like a cajon. Sánchez replaced the undersaddle Yamaha pickup system with an LR Baggs Element Active system.
Sánchez’s Yamahas feature nato wood (AKA eastern mahogany) back and sides, with spruce tops and rosewood fingerboards, which are strung with D’Addario EJ45 strings. When he’s not fingerpicking, Sánchez goes for Jim Dunlop 47R3S Nylon Jazz picks. The duo’s veganism means they don’t use any genuine leather straps.
Silver and Black
In the past, Rodrigo y Gabriela have always performed with both players on acoustics, but Sánchez started bringing electrics into the mix beginning in 2020—including this all-stock Gibson Les Paul Custom Silverburst he bought in Nashville in 2008. Sánchez strings his electrics with D’Addario EXL115s, and switches to Jim Dunlop 44R1.0 Nylon picks.
Blue Cats
Sánchez also hauls two gently modded dark blue Fender ’60s Jaguars with a sparkle finish. There’s not much messing around with them—the top and bottom switches stay taped in place.
Slidin' Down Broadway
The final electric in Sánchez’s tour arsenal is this stock Gretsch G5700 Electromatic Lap Steel, finished in Broadway Jade. It features a Gretsch single-coil pickup and a mahogany body.
Rack City
Sánchez’s acoustic signals leave his guitar via a stereo jack into two Shure transmitters. The two signals are then sent to two different inputs: the undersaddle pickup goes to the input of his Fractal Axe FX XL+ via his pedalboard, and the body’s piezos go straight to a separate channel via DI box. For the acoustics, the Fractal is simply used on a basic bypass patch, with no effects beyond a noise gate on the input and a dB boost on the output.
This same rig is used when switching to electric. The wireless frequency channel used for the undersaddle on the acoustic is used to send the Jaguar or Les Paul to the Fractal, where the Axe FX’s basic Marshall- and Fender-style amp and cab sims are engaged along with some delay, reverb, and occasionally the odd flanger or overdrive out front.
Above Board
The pickup return from the wireless rack goes to the volume pedal via a Lehle 3at1 switcher, then out to a Lehle P-Split signal splitter. The direct out from the P-Split goes to another Lehle splitter, while the ISO line out runs to the rest of the pedals before ending up at the Fractal. (The ISO out of the first splitter goes to the JHS Mini A/B pedal into the BOSS OC-3, then to a separate channel on the desk.)
Pardon The Quinterruption
Quintero tours with two Yamaha prototypes based on the manufacturer’s NTX series, with spruce tops and nato wood backs and sides. Over the years, Quintero has swapped in different undersaddle pickups, but like Sánchez, she’s settled on the LR Baggs Element system for nylon-string guitars. Quintero’s Yamahas take D’Addario EJ45s, which are plucked only with fingers.
The guitars have five custom-made Yamaha piezo pickups loaded directly onto the soundboard in different places, plus an extra piezo directly under the fingerboard inside of the body. These piezos are run through a three-channel Yamaha preamp, and out on the ring of the stereo output jack. That’s not all: there’s also a DPA 4099 mic fitted inside the guitar.
Three different Shure wireless transmitters handle all of this input. The first channel sends out the soundboard’s piezos; the second handles the LR Baggs Element; and the third relays the DPA’s signal. From the wireless receivers, the first two channels are run to Quintero’s pedalboard. The DPA runs directly to a DI, which hits the front of house and monitors.
Do The Splits!
Quintero’s pedalboard funnels the first two channels—the undersaddle and the body’s piezos—into a stereo volume pedal. From there, they run through a Dunlop Crybaby. The signal is then split, with the first side going back to the DI, and the second running through a Dunlop volume pedal into a BOSS OC-3 for an extra bottom octave.
Shop Rodrigo y Gabriela's Rig
Fender Vintera '60s Jaguar
Dunlop 535Q CryBaby Wah
Gretsch G5700 Electromatic Lap Steel Guitar
Lehle 3 at 1
Lehle P Split
Boss TU-3s Chromatic Tuner
MXR Analog Chorus
MXR Micro Amp
Ibanez WH10 Wah
Boss Fv-500H
2-Truetone One Spot
- Rodrigo y Gabriela’s Brave New World ›
- Album Review: Rodrigo Y Gabriela and C.U.B.A. - "Area 52" ›
- Interview: Rodrigo y Gabriela - Busking for Broke ›
It’s almost over, but there’s still time to win! Enter Stompboxtober Day 30 for your shot at today’s pedal from SoloDallas!
The Schaffer Replica: Storm
The Schaffer Replica Storm is an all-analog combination of Optical Limiter+Harmonic Clipping Circuit+EQ Expansion+Boost+Line Buffer derived from a 70s wireless unit AC/DC and others used as an effect. Over 50 pros use this unique device to achieve percussive attack, copious harmonics and singing sustain.
Does the guitar’s design encourage sonic exploration more than sight reading?
A popular song between 1910 and 1920 would usually sell millions of copies of sheet music annually. The world population was roughly 25 percent of what it is today, so imagine those sales would be four or five times larger in an alternate-reality 2024. My father is 88, but even with his generation, friends and family would routinely gather around a piano and play and sing their way through a stack of songbooks. (This still happens at my dad’s house every time I’m there.)
Back in their day, recordings of music were a way to promote sheet music. Labels released recordings only after sheet-music sales slowed down on a particular song. That means that until recently, a large section of society not only knew how to read music well, but they did it often—not as often as we stare at our phones, but it was a primary part of home entertainment. By today’s standards, written music feels like a dead language. Music is probably the most common language on Earth, yet I bet it has the highest illiteracy rate.
Developed specifically for Tyler Bryant, the Black Magick Reverb TB is the high-power version of Supro's flagship 1x12 combo amplifier.
At the heart of this all-tube amp is a matched pair of military-grade Sovtek 5881 power tubes configured to deliver 35-Watts of pure Class A power. In addition to the upgraded power section, the Black Magick Reverb TB also features a “bright cap” modification on Channel 1, providing extra sparkle and added versatility when blended with the original Black Magick preamp on Channel 2.
The two complementary channels are summed in parallel and fed into a 2-band EQ followed by tube-driven spring reverb and tremolo effects plus a master volume to tame the output as needed. This unique, signature variant of the Black Magick Reverb is dressed in elegant Black Scandia tolex and comes loaded with a custom-built Supro BD12 speaker made by Celestion.
Price: $1,699.
Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine is one of the loudest guitarists around. And he puts his volume to work creating mythical tones that have captured so many of our imaginations, including our special shoegaze correspondent, guitarist and pedal-maestro Andy Pitcher, who is our guest today.
My Bloody Valentine has a short discography made up of just a few albums and EPs that span decades. Meticulous as he seems to be, Shields creates texture out of his layers of tracks and loops and fuzz throughout, creating a music that needs to be felt as much as it needs to be heard.
We go to the ultimate source as Billy Corgan leaves us a message about how it felt to hear those sounds in the pre-internet days, when rather than pull up a YouTube clip, your imagination would have to guide you toward a tone.
But not everyone is an MBV fan, so this conversation is part superfan hype and part debate. We can all agree Kevin Shields is a guitarists you should know, but we can’t all agree what to do with that information.