Gear Acquisition Syndrome

As we move through the summer and I record songs for the next album, I’ve been revisiting a lot of the guitar “toys” I’ve collected over the years. Funny thing — some of them are now considered officially vintage.

I posted about this on Instagram, and the response made me think I should give a little tour of my gear – at least the pedals and other fun things (we can do guitars and amps later if you want).

For fellow guitar players, much of this will be familiar. For everyone else, here’s the gist: ever since guitars were plugged into amplifiers, inventors have been creating little devices — pedals — that sit between the guitar and amp to change the sound. Early examples, like fuzz boxes (think “Satisfaction” by The Rolling Stones), made the guitar sound gritty and distorted (Dave Davies of the Kinks just took a knife to the speaker to get a similar effect). Since then, pedals have evolved to do all sorts of things, like adding echo, shifting pitch, layering harmonies, or even completely transforming the original sound.

I currently use two active pedalboards — one large and one small. A pedalboard is basically a tray that holds a bunch of pedals and connects them in a specific order, and also takes care of the power (otherwise you go through a stupid number of 9V batteries). The large board is my main recording rig, and the small board is portable enough to take to live shows (but I also sometimes use it for recording). I’m going to tag YouTube videos for a few of these pedals so you can hear what they do.

The Large Board (Recording Focused)

• Ernie Ball volume pedal
• TC Electronics tuner
• Squeezer Compression pedal (smooths out dynamics)
• “Glendale”* overdrive (adds a warm, crunchy tone)
• Purple Pedal (extra gain for solos)
• Ultimate Octave overdrive (adds harmonic richness… or insanity, depending on the setting)
• Small Clone chorus (makes the guitar sound wider and more “shimmery”) – this gets swapped back and forth with the Moog one described below.
• Dunlop wah pedal (classic “wah-wah” sound)
  

The Small Board (More Portable)

• Notadümble preamp
• Mini tuner
• Mini wah
• Tumnus overdrive
• Golden Fuzz (gritty, saturated distortion)
• TC Electronic chorus
• Ditto looper (lets me record a section and play over it live)
  

That’s a lot of tone options, and you’ve likely heard all of them on my recordings (they’re all there!).

I also have a trunk full of pedals that I use less often, usually for specific songs or sounds. Here are a few standouts:

• Rockman X100 – Made by Tom Scholz of Boston, this pedal delivers the iconic “80s arena rock” tone, like what you hear on Def Leppard’s Hysteria. Play it and you’re instantly transported to 1986.

• Roland Boss OD-1 – The first pedal I ever bought. One of the earliest overdrive pedals, it now fetches around $250 on eBay. I still remember running it through a terrible Yamaha amp when I was 14.

• MXR Distortion + – Because Alex Lifeson used it (and honestly, I used this exclusively until I added the Glendale and the Tumnus).

• Moog Fooger Chorus – A gift from Chris Censullo. It adds a lush, shimmering quality to the guitar sound. Not super practical on a small stage, but magical in the studio.

Some of my pedals aren’t available commercially. Thanks to my dad — an amateur radio operator and electronics hobbyist — I learned to solder early and can follow schematics. I’m not an expert, but I can find kits or diagrams and (kind of) tweak them to create the sound I want.

The Squeezer (compressor), Glendale* (Klon copy), and Purple Pedal on the big board are either kits or kit adaptations. The Golden Fuzz on the small board is based on the Electro-Harmonix Big Muff (think Siamese Dream-era Smashing Pumpkins). The Purple Pedal is similar to that fuzz, but adds an extra gain stage — perfect for solos, though it does generate some background noise.

*Jen did the graphic for the Glendale. Anyone recognize what that’s from?