Green Dirt

Vacations always seem to make me forget what day it is… Here I am continuing 90’s month with a band that was very influential in my earlier music. Green Day’s F.O.D. really spoke to me as an angsty youth. So why not talk about it?

 
Billie Joe Armstrong, of Green Day, is know to use 2 dirt pedals. A Boss BD-2 and an Ibanez TS9 are commonly found on his board. To me, it sounds like he’s starting with a slightly dirty amp (Marshall JCM800) and kicking in one of the dirt pedals when the song picks up.

Having owned all of the above equipment, I can vouch for either pedal throwing the JCM800 to the correct level of saturation. So I think picking up either would do just fine if you have a JCM800, or similar amp. The way to set these pedals is probably more of a dirty boost. If you start the amp slightly dirty, you want only enough gain to push the amp that last little bit.

If you don’t have a good tube amp, I’d suggest stacking the two pedals. Stacking the pedals will add enough dirt together to make a somewhat similar sound. In this case, you make want to set the TS9 a little more dirty and use the BD-2 to boost it.

Our Clumsy Lady

I like doing themed months. It makes it easier for me to come up a topic to write about. This month we’ll cover throw-backs to some of my favorites from my youth. Some 90’s rock. So, to kick it off I’m going to start with Our Lady Peace’s “Clumsy”.

 
Steve Mazur primarily uses 2 pedals in this song: the BOSS SD-1 and the TR-2 (with a twist). Research shows that he uses Robert Keeley modified pedals. Keeley takes these classic circuits and improves upon them. For the SD-1, he changes the chip to coveted 4558 and adds a switch that lets the player switch between LED and Ge clipping diodes. For the TR-2, Keeley cleans up some noise issues and adds a volume knob.

So what does this mean for you, the reader? Well my suggestion is to pick up the Keeley modified versions of the pedals. It will run you a pretty penny, but I think it’s well worth it. If you can’t quite swing them, I would just buy the pedals stock. The SD-1 and TR-2 are relatively cheap compared to most of their boutique counter parts. Plus, you can always send them into Keeley later on and have them upgraded.

La Fuzzy Puta

You know what gives me a big smile? Finding a Tone Lab request in my email. So much so, that I’m throwing out my planned article and addressing Travis’ concerns first. Travis, a faithful reader, would like to know how to get a proper fuzz sound similar to that of Puta Madre Brothers. He sent me a few clips and I think my favorite is:

Travis is rocking a Fulltone OCD going into a Squier SP-10’s gain channel and would like to know what fuzz type pedal can get him there. Well, from the first clip I listened to, to the last, all I heard was a germanium fuzz. Will that sound good in an SP-10? I don’t know. But, if you do try that out, I’d go with the clean channel over the “overdrive” (quoted because I think it sounds more like a distortion than overdrive). And even though I heard the germanium fuzz tone (and still think a Ge fuzz through a solid state will give you a similar sound), I have come to second guess that assessment.

So, in the vast world of germanium fuzzes, which is closest? NONE. Many of the germanium fuzzes get too much low end break up for this sound. With that in mind, I went deeper into images and videos that show the Brothers’ gear. It looks like both guitarists use an MXR GT-OD. With this pedal in your rig, and with the right settings, you should be able to get that extra mid-high breakup that the Brothers have, even without a fuzz. My suggestion is to EQ the amp and/or the pedal on the more treble side of the spectrum. And for the love of God, crank that gain knob (on the pedal)! High gain plus the right amp settings should achieve exactly the tone you want.

Keep On Derek Trucks-ing

The last request from Will’s email was for me to take a look at Derek Trucks. If you aren’t familiar with Derek and his work, he is a child prodigy and a master of slide guitar. So, for Will, I’m going to take a look at Derek’s tone in “Sahib Teri Bandi”.

 
Derek uses no pedals. Article over.

Just kidding! From my research, it looks like Derek uses primarily American style amps. So, we have to figure out how to recreate the sound of a very driven american style amp. Despite the crunchy elements, I’m going to suggest a slew of overdrives in this article. Starting out with the Fulltone Fulldrive 2. This will be a very applicable pedal since it has a built in boost. Derek plays a lot with his volume knob and pickup dynamics, so having a pedal that you can change the intensity with a single stomp will help you get part of the way there.

Now, If the Fulldrive isn’t your bag, I’d suggest either an Ibanez Tube Screamer or a BOSS BD-2. These are both great overdrives that can hedge on the crunchy side. For both of these, I’d suggest turning down the volume some and cranking the Gain. Cranking the Gain should get you to the crunchier levels of drive. Toss any of these in front of a dirty amp, and I bet you’ll start to hear some of that Derek style tone.

Stroud’s Rat…atat

Let’s talk about another one of Will’s suggestions from the email I mentioned last week. He also asked if I could take a look at Mike Stroud of Ratatat. Well yes, Will, I can. So let’s talk about “Seventeen Years”

 
I love when I can find a picture to back up my theories. In that photo (in order) Mike is seen using an Ernie Ball Volume pedal (with a BOSS TU-2 in the tuner out), Proco The Rat, Colorsound (maybe Solasound) Tonebender Fuzz, Roger Mayer Octavia, and (what looks to be) a Dunlop Crybaby wah.

To my ears, it sounds like he just uses the Tonebender for the entire song. So, as is a common problem with my tone labs, how do we create the sound of a pedal that is no longer in production? If you’re feeling adventurous, see if you can track down a Monsterpiece MKII. It is a beautiful pedal, but they’re a bit hard to come by and will take some patience to acquire. There is a guy who lurks around guitar forums who makes them. A little easier is the MJM Brit Bender or the Throbak Stone Bender. I’d stay away from the Stone Bender because a lot of the Tonebender’s soul comes from being able to tweak the tone of the pedal. Therefore I’d suggest staying with a clone that has the tone knob as an option.

Of course, if all of that seems wrong to you (or out of your means), you could try doing it with The Rat. The Rats are hard to come by these days — so you may want to pick up the Rat2. It won’t be the same, but you can certainly try to get the same sound by tweaking.

Phoenix Effects Liszt

A few days ago, our newest writer, Will, sent me an email. He wanted me to dissect a a few different tones — one of which is that of Phoenix’s Lisztomania. Challenge accepted Will!

In an interview with Music Radar, Laurent Brancowitz (One of Phoenix’s guitarists) admits to only using using one pedal — which is a customized Tube Screamer clone. Now, if you’ve watched that video as closely as I did, you noticed there is more than one pedal (so some changes must have been made since the 2009 interview). Upon closer listening however, in Lisztomania, the guitars are clean. Most of the ‘effects’ sounds are coming from the keyboardist. But still, that’s an impressive clean tone.

So, how can we achieve such a smooth cleanliness? In the interview, Laurent talks about how important their preamps are. But we aren’t about preamps here. We’re about pedals. So how do you get a sweet clean tone? EQ and Compression.

If your amp doesn’t have a good Equalizer built in, you may want to check out the MXR 10Band EQ. A popular pedal on the forums, the MXR 10 Band really lets you hone in on each frequency and mold it to the tone you’re looking for. This song is very Mids centric — so I’d definitely start with boosting them.

Compression is a tricky beast. A lot of people say, “It’s a good compressor when you can’t tell it’s on.” I agree with that to an extent. The point of a compressor is to clean up the outlying frequencies in your signal and make an over all tighter sound. It’s a bit pricey, but I highly suggest the Empress Compressor. You can get a deeper level of customization to your compression and dial in the kind of tone you want. Next best (and middle of the cost spectrum) is the Diamond Compressor. Again the forums love this pedal for its transparency and smooth compression. If all that is out of the question for you, there is the classic MXR Dyna Comp. I think this pedal should be everyone’s first compressor. It is a good example of compression, but is known to be noisy. If you aren’t sure whether or not you want/need compression, start with the MXR. It will give you a good idea of what you should be expecting from the effect.

Dirty Stone Shelter

Closing out this lovely Classic Rock month with one of my favorites from the era. This song definitely helped a lot of our troops through the Vietnam War, and helped even more guitarists find their passion and drive to play. So, in an homage to a great band and a great song, today I am going to disect Keith Richard’s tone in the 1969 hit “Gimme Shelter”

 
As with just about everybody else I’ve covered this month, Keith doesn’t use a whole lot of effects pedals (just delay and phase). In fact, he doesn’t use any effects in this song — it’s purely amp tone goodness. Keith almost always plays through 2 amps at once. A Fender Bassman and Twin are his main providers of dirt and tone. So, as with the other artists this month, we have to figure out how to simulate the driven tone caused by an amplifier (or 2).

In this case, I’m going a little outside of the box. I’m going to suggest you pick up an Analog Man AstroTone. If dialed in properly for your amp, this pedal can mimic a smooth overdrive that gets real hairy with a louder guitar input. Just fiddle with the Bias and Fuzz knobs until you have your amp sounding driven nicely. If you’re not feeling Analog Man, you can probably get away with using an Ibanez TS9. If you go the TS9 route, I’d suggest dialing down the Drive some and using the Level knob to push your amp.

Well, that’s it for Classic Rock month. If you liked this themed month, and want to see more like it, send us an email (thepedallab@gmail.com) and make a suggestion. Perhaps Metal Month or Jazz Month, or something else completely!

Moar Marr

I know that I have previously talked about Johnny Marr, but the man has been such an influence on Ryan and I (and millions of others) that I think he needs another look. More specifically his tenure with The Smiths and the sweet sounds of “The Headmaster Ritual.”

 
In a recent interview with Fender Johnny talks about how he likes to have a “big and clean with attitude” amp tone. He later explains that, essentially, he likes to set his amp to just before breakup. That way his pick dynamics can push the amp to overdrive and with the help of a boost (or light OD) he’s able to push the amp even more. In other interviews, Johnny has said that he used a lot of BOSS pedals with The Smiths. So if you’re looking for a Johnny sound, I’d start there.

Johnny talks about owning a couple of BOSS overdrive pedals, including the OS-2 and OD-2. Since the OS-2 was first produced in 1990, it’s safe to assume that (at the time of this video) Johnny was using the OD-2. To mimic it, I’d pick up either the BOSS SD-1 or BD-2. Either can be used as a sort of boost or overdrive (depending on how you set up your amp). If you’re obsessed with tone (like I am), definitely grab the BD-2 — there are a lot of mods out there to make the pedal more transparent and full.

courtesy of smithsonguitar.com

A mainstay of 80s and 90s rock is the use of Chorus. It’s a great way to make one guitar sound like many or just give an extra level of wow and flutter to your tone. Johnny wasn’t a huge fan of his Roland JC-120, but still he used it to handle the high end and add a bit of chorus. Again, he primarily used BOSS pedals with his Fender Twin. Specifically, the BOSS CE-2. Sadly, BOSS doesn’t make good choruses anymore (purely my opinion). So I’d suggest looking elsewhere. In fact, I’d suggest the ModTone Aqua Chorus — a pedal I very much love. It’s comparable to BOSS prices and tone and should be able to nail that 80s chorus tone.

We have one more week of Classic Rock Month. If you have anyone you’d like me to analyze, send an email over to thepedallab@gmail.com or drop us a tweet @thepedallab.

Young Dirt

To keep up with a classic rock theme for September’s Tone Labs thus far, today we’re going to talk about Angus Young. Specifically, his tone in AC/DC’s 1991 performance of “You Shook Me All Night Long”.

 
The best part about old school rockers is they didn’t use many pedals. (In fact Angus doesn’t use any.) His tone is really just a guitar, a jacked up amp, and mojo. So, how do we mimic the tone of a throttled Marshall (Angus’s amp of choice)? You can try one of the options I’ve suggested in previous post and pick up the AMT M1 or Mad Professor Mighty Red Distortion. But I think we can get something a little more Anugus-y.

As with any famous tone, there is plenty of debate over how to capture the true essence of Angus’s tone. A lot of people will say the ZVEX Box of Rock is perfect; others say the Wampler Plextortion. I agree more with the later. Angus’s tone, to me, has that classic plexi sound to it — so it only makes sense to use a plexi mimicking pedal. I’d go for the Wampler Plexidrive. For a lower-cost option, I’d go with the BOSS Power Stack. There is a quality difference, but I always feel like offering a less expensive alternative.

Queen

When I’m working on a Tone Lab post, I usually spend the first 5 or so minutes trying to think of a catchy or funny title. Everything I’ve come up with has been unworthy of a band like Queen. This past Monday was Freddie Mercury’s birthday. The internet has been buzzing with all kinds of tributes and Queen-related content. It’s reminded me how much I loved Queen growing up and how influential they’ve been for me. So today, I’m going to focus on Brian May and his effectology in “Some Body to Love”.

Pedal variety is a relatively new craze, so it’s no shock to hear that Brian May doesn’t use much in his signal chain. May’s most commonly used pedals are a Foxx Foot Phaser, dual custom delays and his treble booster. Only the boost is active in this song. The key to Brian’s tone here is in the combination of his driven Vox AC30 and his Red Special guitar. So there’s the question: How do we emulate an AC30 set to 10 with a treble boost pedal in front? Well if there was a commonly agreed upon answer, you wouldn’t be reading.

That being said, there are plenty of pedals on today’s market that can be used to push your amp (or make it sound like it’s being pushed). Even the BOSS SD-1 would work for this tone. The SD-1 has made its way onto many pro pedal boards not only because it’s built like a tank, but because it can hit such a wide range of overdriven tones. (It just takes some tweaking.) If you are not into BOSS and have some extra cash, try the Carl Martin AC-Tone pedal. This pedal has gotten great reviews for offering AC30 style drive. And remember, if you need to adjust for more treble, dial down the bass in your tone knobs or use an EQ for a slight low end scoop.