THE AXEMEN SERIES : Dalton Castro / Ignited

1.Tell us your name and the band you play for

My name is Dalton Castro and I play at Ignited band.

2.Who made you want to pick up the guitar

There were some guys who did this, but the most important was Steve Vai. Since the first time I saw a VHS from Sevilla Expo 92 which has Joe Satriani, Brian May, Joe Walsh, and off course, Steve Vai. I was twelve years old and that was a milestone to going deeper on my guitar studies.

3.Are you self taught or did you take lessons?

  

The two worlds, there were some stuffs I learned by myself and others studying with guys who helped me a lot in cleaning my technique, which they are Hussein Haddad and Jon Neto. Also, I have some books and methods which helped me a lot, including music in general (not metal methods).

4. Can you read music, Can you read tab?

Actually no, I don’t know too much about reading sheet music. Tab is easy, but a mess because we are decorating useless information instead of training our ears to catch the notes from a guitar phrase, by example, and I never forget what was learned.

5.Do you feel like you have your own sound / tone ?

Yes, nowadays I guess I have my own tone inside my head, a kind of a goal to reach every time I turn on the amplifier or a virtual amp. But I am always tweaking up and improving the sounds I generate. Sometimes, even using the same setup with the same configuration, it seems like my ears doesn’t work as well as I expect for different reasons such atmospheric pressure or weather, by the way, this contributes to a worse playing once the instrument suffer by climate changing consequences.

6.Tell us about your guitar ( brand ,model . year , color )

 

I have a Jackson guitar, Pro Series Dinky with an original Floyd Rose system and two Seymour Duncan pickups, JB e 59. Maple fretboard (that is so cool!) and a transparent black paint. The year I do not know exactly.

Also, I have more two Jacksons being restored, one of them is a R10 model.

7.What about pickups? Passive or active ? Tell us about them

The Seymour Duncan bring into life some colors that I particularly like a lot. Using this configuration I said before, there are a very wide variety of tones you can get when tweaking the pickups selector. They are passive pickups but they have a lot of gain and fits perfectly with a high gain amplifier!

8.Lets get into amplification, Same drill brand , model , speakers etc

 

I own a Laney Iron Heart model, with 120 watts. The speakers HH Custom are manufactured by Laney itself and have I smashing and crisp tones.
It is a very loud amplifier, and no need to use the maximum potency on stage. Just if you are playing at Wacken Open Air, maybe one day…(rsrsrs)

9.Do you have a pedal board? Tell us about that badboy

Yes, I use these three pedals only: Landscape Delay, Boss CS-3 for getting a little bit more rounded sound and BOSS NS-2 to cut out the noise and some noise floor interferences.

10..Now tell us your Dream Rig in detail…..

I guess I have nice tools here to obtain a nice sound and would be nice to test some new Jackson models or other high gain amplifiers.

11.What guitarist can you not stand?

None. I really haven’t a name to say (rsrsrs)

I12. Is tone more important or is technique?

Them both are important and required to produce a nicely sound as possible. It is needed some balance between those subjects in order to make music alive and humanized.

13. Name your top 5 guitarist

Steve Vai, 
Jeff Hanneman, 
K.K. Downing, 
Tony Iommi 
and Randy Rhoads

14.Who is the most overrated guitarist

 

I really don’t know a name to mention. I never thought this way, maybe there are some guys, but just maybe. That is really hard to think about it (rsrsrs)

15.Who would you like a one hour private sit down lessons with anyone dead or alive?

Randy Rhoads for sure. Just ten minutes! And then I shall be happy forever like a ten years old child.

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