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.
The Pedal Lab 