PG’s Chris Kies met up with the Barbarians of California at the Exit/In in Nashville, one show into a tour behind their second record, Megatons. Eric Stenman, Zach Irons, and Dave Amezcua walked through a setup shaped by fly dates, borrowed backline, and a band with no techs. Have a look at some quick highlights below, and tune into the new Rig Rundown for all the details.
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Good Hammer
Stenman calls the Les Paul the core of most of what he does, going back to seeing pictures of Jimmy Page holding one. This one has Slash pickups in it, and he’s honest about the tradeoff: they don’t stay in tune especially well, but they feel cool. The band lives between drop C and drop B-flat, which used to mean hauling four guitars to cover a main and a backup in each. With no budget and no techs on fly dates, they now keep everything in one tuning and pitch-shift between songs from their floorboards. Stenman’s strings are .012–.054; when he had a dedicated B-flat guitar he ran .014–.056.
Second String
His other guitar is an ESP LTD TED-600T Ted Aguilar signature, which he says plays better than the Les Paul—quicker and easier under the hand. Which one comes out depends on the week.
Valhalla Rising
Valhalla sent three heads out with the band for this run, two guitar and one bass, delivered to their Oklahoma date a few days earlier. Everyone’s still learning them. Stenman does his tone-shaping digitally, but says he still wants an amp onstage so he can feel the air and the tubes.
Double Helix
The Line 6 Helix is the brain of Stenman’s rig. He leans on a Rectifier model, switches to an ENGL setting for certain songs, and piles delay and reverb onto the leads—he traces the washed-out stuff to Britpop and shoegaze.
Whammy Wanted
Irons found this 1985 Carvin V220, Kahler and all, online during a Deftones tour and bought it sight unseen—being left-handed, he rarely gets to try anything first. He wanted a bar for dive bombs and Dimebag squeals, which he’d been approximating on a hardtail and hating. It’s never been set up and it works. The dip switches are coil taps, and the pickups are staying put.
Zach Irons’ Pedalboard
Irons found his Empress Heavy by typing “best heavy metal pedal” into a search bar and buying the first result; it’s the only distortion he’s used in this band, pushed by an MXR Micro Amp. A Boss XS-1 handles the drop tunings, while the wah is a Triangulo Lab WH-X clone of an Ibanez WH-10, sent to him by the Italian builder who makes John Frusciante’s replicas. An EHX Holy Grail covers reverb, and a Moog MF Delay gets used for between-song infinity washes. A Boss TU-2 keeps everything in tune, and a Voodoo Lab Pedal Power 2 Plus assures everything’s running.
Party P
Amezcua’s 1978 Fender Precision is completely unmodified and has been with him through Under the Influence of Giants, AWOLNATION, and now this band. Strings vary depending on who’s giving them away, though usually Ernie Ball.
What’s Left
Amezcua calls his board the one that could have been. A rained-out set at Shiprock took out a delay, an EHX pedal, and an octave, so he’s down to an Aguilar DI for tone and punch, a Strymon Zuma power supply, and a Boss TU-3 tuner — which he needs, since he’s the only one in the band tuning by hand between songs.
