Your 1st pedal?

[Lurker13]

God some of you guys are old.

Ur mom's so old she was servicing Phoencian sailors who did her by the trireme-full.

"Ramming speed!"

[oldangelmidnight]

My first pedal was an Amdek PHK-100 Phaser and it was given to me as a gift in the 1980s.

Here are the too many details:

When I was 12 I lived in Japan and one night one of my father's colleagues invited us to dinner. My father
mentioned that I liked music and playing guitar. The guy spoke very little English and I spoke almost
no Japanese, but he asked me what bands I was into and I said Hendrix, Pink Floyd, etc. and he sat
me down in front of this large TV. He had a laserdisc of The Wall and the subwoofer bass rumble
was actually connected to a seat pad that you sat on so that you felt the bass rumble. It was cool.

He then asked me if I'd heard of Ry Cooder and said that if I liked Pink Floyd, then maybe I'd like The
Alan Parsons Project. A few days after this dinner party he gave my father about six cassette tapes
with albums by Ry Cooder and The Allan Parsons Project and Billy Squier. Which was very kind.

But back to the dinner itself.... after talking about bands, he wanted to show me his guitar gear.

So he had this area in his small Tokyo apartment with a metric shit-ton of guitars and guitar pedals.
He had dozens and dozens of pedals. I was 12 at the time and didn't fully understand how
different pedals made different sounds. So unfortunately I was like an alien in a candy store. I didn't
know enough to test out "rare" things, but he wanted to "jam" and so we we both got on guitars and
he patiently tried to play along to the awkward rudiments of my playing.

One pedal he let me try was some sort of fuzz in a treadle enclosure that had like four stomp switches on it
that I couldn't manage to get anything but feedback out of. He had a double-neck 12- & 6-string guitar.

And then at the end of the evening he laid out about 8 Amdek pedals and asked me to choose which
one I wanted to have. My father and stepmother protested that this was too generous (they had brought
a gift for him hosting us for dinner, but nothing comparable to a guitar pedal) but the guy was adamant.
I said that I'd love to have the fuzz in a treadle because I didn't understand what it did or how it worked,
but he politely indicated that the fuzz pedal was not on offer. I thanked him profusely for his kindness
and chose the phaser.

At that time I didn't even fully understand what the different effect types were or what they did...
but I had liked the psychedelic wash of the phaser, and so I chose that.
I still have the pedal. It is a bit rough around the edges, but it still works.

I love that story. It's like a subplot from some indie comedy.

[Blood_mountain]

Boss TR-2 - I still love tremolo, but have a Strymon Flint now.

[Seance]

I love that story. It's like a subplot from some indie comedy.

I've got a bunch of stories. Now I just need to raise funds for an indie comedy.

[Scruffie]

My first was a Marshall JackHammer I got 'paid' for doing work experience at a music store.

I remember it being a pain in the ass to get a good sound out of but it could do some decent distortion if you fiddled with it enough, at the time I was just happy to have my first pedal, it did the job for battle of the bands (which we won against the proper bands).

I leant it to a friend back in school and all the knobs came back bent so I sold it for spares, I can't say I miss it a bunch but I used the cash to buy a Daphon Delay which I then upgraded to a 3205 chip for double the delay time and thus begun DIY.

[fuzzonaut]

I started out with my brother’s complete bass equipment (bass, amp, cab, pedals).
That included:

Boss BF2 (gone)
Boss OC2 (gone)
Ibanez BC10 (still have it, works fine)
A black delay with 3 knobs, pretty sure it was the Ibanez DL5 (gone)

That was fine for a while .... then I bought a Boss FZ-2 (still have it, still love it).

[Jwar]

God some of you guys are old.

Ur mom's so old she was servicing Phoencian sailors who did her by the trireme-full.

Your moms....

Your moms...


I got nothing.

[fcknoise]

it was one of these



I really did not know how to use it, but man it had some really cool effects in there. The "drone", the weird arpeggiator, the synth sounds were actually super cool. I didn't know anything about effects or anything but it served me well for a while. I kinda wish I still had it around

[comesect2.0]

That's the kind of a gear I always saw lying around some older kids room like a friend's brother or something, some big all in one unit.. when I was a wee little one &would just stare at it like that's some heavy shyot.

[Kacey Y]

First pedal was a Boss BD-2 Blues Driver, because I liked blues, so...this will make me sound like blues. Then a Boss MT-2, because I liked metal, so...this will make me sound like metal. I don't even remember what happened to the BD-2, I might have traded it in against the Metal Zone. The Metal Zone I left on top of my car leaving my house and it fell off somewhere. I even went to go look for it, it was probably fine...but no no dice.

[nogodsnobedtimes]

My first pedal purchase in high school was a Danelectro Fab Tone (I'm pretty sure it was the Fab Tone at least) and a used Cry Baby. I made so much awful noise with those through my little 15w Fender amp. No idea what happened to any of it though.

[codetocontra]

You probably fed it after midnight and it became sentient and ran away to cause sheninagans elsewhere. Fabtones were/are rad.

Actually, most everyone's first pedals mentioned here are cool even by today's standards.

[nogodsnobedtimes]

I hope so, maybe someone out there has it on their board now and is enjoying it.

[Jero]

I hope so, maybe someone out there has it on their board now and is enjoying it.

Fabtone was one of the first pedals I modified. Added a slide switch with clipping options to the bottom. Sat flush inside the rubber. Gave it to a friend at the time as an intro to dirt pedals...wonder if he still has it.

[BetterOffShred]

I still have mine. It's currently disassembled because I did the cap mod and the clipping mods but never drilled the case. Maybe I should. I got it for 2$ when I worked at GC