Tone Temple Pilots

We recently caught up with Stone Temple Pilots’ DEAN and ROBERT DeLEO — and their luthier extraordinaire, BRUCE NELSON — to dissect the venerable rockers’ tonal recipe

- ROB LAING

“It’s amazing, I’ve been using the same setup, the same rig since 1990,” Dean DeLeo says. “Every time we plug in, it sounds great.” The guitarist’s soundcheck at a recent London show confirms this. It’s a huge, full-bodied sound, perfect for one of alternative rock’s most versatile players. Favoring reliable rigs and reliable people, the Stone Temple Pilots team are a loyal bunch who Dean and his bassist brother Robert are quick to praise, noting, “You’re only as good as the people around you.”

FOH [front of house] engineer James “Hootsie” Huth has been working with them since the pre-Core days of 1990. Affable tech Bruce Nelson has manned his station side-stage for more than 16 years with STP and also builds the DeLeo brothers’ instruments (as well as guitars for the likes of Joe Perry). “I don’t know where I’d be without [Bruce],” Dean says. “He’s just an amazing person.” So it’s only right that we get Nelson’s “rig tour” input alongside the sibling songwriting powerhouse duo. Read on!

DEAN DeLEO

2009 GIBSON LES PAUL

1 BRUCE: “All the Les Pauls in this rig are 2009. They all have Seymour Duncan Jazz pickups in the bridge; they’re clear and they’re pretty similar to the stock pickups the Seventies Les Pauls have. With this rig I was trying to replicate Dean’s other Seventies Les Pauls, and that pickup was the closest. He’s playing on the bridge 99 percent of the time; the only time he’ll flip to the neck is when they’re jamming or something like that between songs. We’re mostly using gauge 10 strings, but on low alternate tunings we’ll go up to 11s.”