This week’s Tone Lab Comes from Twitter. Nick wants to know how Ira Kaplan from Yo La Tengo gets his dirty tone in “I Heard You Looking” — specifically during their live performances. Sadly, I couldn’t find a live clip up to my standards of quality (but I did base my suggestions off of the multitude of clips I watched).
Kaplan has several dirty tones. This says to me that the dirtier his tone, the more pedals he’s stacked to reach it. After some research, I was able to turn up 3 sources that I trust with images of Kaplan’s board. All three sources show the same pedals in the dirt section.
Courtesy of MegaTom (Harmony Central)
Kaplan uses 2 different dirt pedals — two Proco Rats and a BOSS OD-2 (discontinued). Presumably, he uses the Rats as his heavier distortion. The OD-2 is more of a crunchy overdrive. A pair of stacked Rats can get real nasty. So, the stacked Rats will cross the tone from overdrive to distortion.
In my opinion, Kaplan does one of two things. Either he uses the Rat on the left of the Wah (set real dirty) and rolls back on his volume knob in the start of the song. Or he starts the song using the Rat on the right of the Wah (set to a light dirt) and kicks on the left Rat once the song picks up. I tried both options and either seemed to work. If you’re strapped for cash, go with the first option. If you want to have a little more wiggle room with your dirt, the second is your best bet.
Nick tweeted @thepedallab with his question. If you’d like us to research your favorite artist’s tone, simply send us a message with the artist and the song, and we’ll do our best to help build a similar tone.
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