This article series is about the tools of popular guitarists. What are their favorite guitars and how is it related to them? This time with Juliano Ribeiro (Semblant).
When you start guitar playing and do you remember your first guitar?
I started playing acoustic guitar when I was seven. At the time, I used to have some group lessons in school. It wasn’t really good and I couldn’t really play anything properly, so I decided to start taking electric guitar lessons with a teacher that lived in the same apartment building as me, but it still took me a few years to take it seriously. When I was around ten/eleven years old, I got my first electric guitar as a gift from my mother and from that moment on, I officially became obsessed with guitar playing. I still have this first guitar. It’s a Memphis Tagima guitar, a brazilian brand. It’s a great guitar for a beginner and the first time I played a real concert was with this guitar, so it holds a special place for me.
What are your influences and which guitar players are your favs?
Alexi Laiho and Michael Amott are probably my favorite guitar players. They are extremely influential to me and helped shape my style of guitar playing and songwriting. I’m not sure I would play the way I do and the style of music I do if it wasn’t for their influence. The fact that I’m playing a V-shaped guitar nowadays is absolutely a result of their influence as well. When I started playing the guitar, Kiko Loureiro was a huge inspiration. He certainly inspired many guitar players in Brazil. Besides him, in the early years, all the guitar players from Iron Maiden, Bruce Kulick, Hugo Mariutti and Joe Perry were also very important for increasing my interest in the guitar.
How many guitars do you own and what are your favorite models?
Currently I own 4 guitars. The most recent one and my main guitar is a Solar V2.7C. I’ve been looking for a V-shaped seven string guitar for a long time and the Solar appeared at the perfect moment. I feel very comfortable playing it and I couldn’t be happier with the way it sounds and plays. Before getting the V, my main guitar was an Ibanez RGA7 that I used to play non-stop for ten years, ever since I joined Semblant. I recorded the last three Semblant albums with this guitar, including the most recent one „Vermilion Eclipse“ that was released last April. Besides the two seven strings, I also have two six-strings. A Silvertone PSAP-2 Apocalypse, an older Paul Stanley’s signature guitar, and the Memphis Tagima. Apart from these four electric guitars, I got a few acoustic ones and two bass guitars.
What do you think makes the perfect guitar and amp?
A perfect guitar would be a V-shaped one with a pair of EMG pickups. This is perfection to me! Hahaha It’s hard to say something about a perfect amp. There are so many great options to choose. Getting a Kemper with as many amps as possible profiled would be the solution for me I guess.
How do you feel about the question of modeler or tube amp?
Honestly when it comes to playing live, I’m always looking for what is the most practical, so modelers are the way to go for me. But it’s not like I have anything against tube amps. It’s only a matter of how much gear I want to carry from town to town. In the studio, we practically only use tube amps for re-amping the dry signal from the guitar. But again, it’s the same thought process behind this decision. It’s the most practical for the situation.
Which guitars and amps were used on the new album or for recordings?
I recorded pretty much the entire new album with the Ibanez RGA7, except for a couple leads and the cleans. For those parts, I used two different Ibanez that were available in the studio. As Semblant uses low-tuning, I decided to put an eight-string set of guitar strings on my Ibanez. It made it extremely difficult to record a few songs, but it made a huge difference in the end result. It sounds really heavy and aggressive. As far as amplifiers go, we didn’t use one during the album tracking. When Adair Daufembach, our producer, returned to his studio in Los Angeles, he re-amped all the guitars using the D.I. This process saved us some time because we just had to worry about getting the best takes possible.
When you only can choose one guitar, which one will you take?
Ever since I played with it for the first time, the Solar V is my weapon of choice. I can’t wait to bring it on the road with me when Semblant gets to Europe for the first time in July.
