Bands you love that have "tame" pedalboards

[Monkeyboard]

Just remembered.

Blur/Graham Coxon

Mostly amp dirt with one dirt pedal I think. very occasional random modulation

I think he had a Rat of sorts.

That would be the one dirt pedal. But man did he get good dirt tones out of that.

[dubkitty]

Jimi Hendrix.

[proroby]

Jimi Hendrix.

For his day his pedal board was HUGE...I think...

[Blurillaz]

Blur/Graham Coxon

Mostly amp dirt with one dirt pedal I think. very occasional random modulation

Nothing here is trooooo

[The4455]

Jimi Hendrix.

For his day his pedal board was HUGE...I think...

Ya, Hendrix was the first person to chain pedals together, so STFU please.

[futuresailors]

Weezer just used sans amps for a while?

[Monkeyboard]

Blur/Graham Coxon

Mostly amp dirt with one dirt pedal I think. very occasional random modulation

Nothing here is trooooo

Damn it. LET ME BE KNOWLEDGEABLE!!

I'd be delighted to know what he uses though.

AFAIK it's Tele or SG with P-90's into pedalboard into orange.

[dubkitty]

back around Parklife Coxon was using a 52 reissue Tele and a black Les Paul Custom into an old-style Marshall; all i remember offhand was that he used a Rat (correction: apparently he uses two Rats in series! ) for most of his fuzz and a Shin-Ei Companion for the totally OTT stuff. when you need to be more OTT than two Rats in series.

[Monkeyboard]

back around Parklife Coxon was using a 52 reissue Tele and a black Les Paul Custom into an old-style Marshall; all i remember offhand was that he used a Rat (correction: apparently he uses two Rats in series! ) for most of his fuzz and a Shin-Ei Companion for the totally OTT stuff. when you need to be more OTT than two Rats in series.

AFAIK He rarely used the LP Trimm Trabb and Popscene being two examples of it being used. He switched to Oranges for his solo stuff and he uses occasional modulation (like the flange on You & I)


Anyway. So the Fuzz tone on Music Is My Radar is two rats in series?


I have to get myself a Rat Clone

[dubkitty]

after poking around the internets for awhile, the general consensus for Graham's Blur setup seems to be two Rats, a bunch of Boss stuff--BF-2 flanger, VB-2 vibrato, TR-2 tremolo or PN-2 trem/pan, DD-2/DD-3 delay--and later the Shin-Ei and/or a DOD Punkifier, into two Marshall Super Lead half-stacks with attenuators. apparently one amp was active and one used as backup. he later had that stuff built into a custom board, per a quote reproduced on TGP from a 2006 magazine piece:

"Coxon's custom-made pedalboard has the innards of numerous classic pedals stuffed inside: they include a BOSS NS-2, a DOD Punkifier, a BOSS CS-2 Compressor/Sustainer, DD-3 Digital Delay, DD-2 Delay, VB-2 Vibrato, a PN-2 Tremolo/Pan, a BF-2 Flanger plus main fuzz/distortion weapons - a 1960s Japanese Shin-Ei Fuzz and two ProCo Rat IIs; 'The Shin-ei's a great pedal and I use that in conjunction with a Rat when soloing, but for my rhythm distortion sound it's usually Rats'"

a more recent piece shows a non-custom board with one Rat, TR-2, BF-2, RV-5, T-Rex Mudhoney, Akai Headrush, Baggs acoustic DI, and tuner and switching boxes.

so not a "simple" board, but perhaps "tame" in the sense that all his best-known stuff was done on boxes cork-sniffers would disdain.

[Monkeyboard]

Wow that's some great info there.

So basically those grogeous tones from tracks like Chinese Bombs are just a RAT > Marshall?

My respect for the RAT jsut grew!

[Blurillaz]

Still missed a few

[Spiteface]

AFAIK He rarely used the LP Trimm Trabb and Popscene being two examples of it being used.

I'd like to clear a few things up about Coxon's guitars, if I may.

A Tobacco burst Les Paul custom was his main guitar throughout recording and touring "Leisure" and "Modern Life is Rubbish". He started using a Tele at some point during the "Modern Life is Rubbish" era. I've seen footage of the band from about 1993, and Graham used a black Squier tele (unsure of the specifics) on "For Tomorrow" and an early version of "Parklife". I think this is the one he's using in the "Girls & Boys" video as well.

Apparently Graham borrowed a Telecaster from producer Stephen Street during the recording of "Parklife", and really liked it, and then bought and used two '52 reissue Teles as his main guitars pretty much right up until he left Blur in 2002. He would continue to use the Les Paul for some stuff and actually had two LPs that he used live, the Tobacco Burst one, and a black one - I saw them on the first night of the Singles tour in 1999, and the black one was capo'd (2nd fret) and used on "There's No Other Way". The rest was all Teles except "No Distance Left to Run", which was an ES-335 , and "MOR" which was an SG.

On the reunion dates from last year, the Tobacco LP was Capo'd and other LP duties were handled by a sweet-looking '56 goldtop reissue with P90s. The '52 Tele replaced with a 70's Tele deluxe.

The pedal stuff brought up here, is as far as I know, pretty much true. The twin Rats/distortions is something I've heard him talk about, especially since he retired the '52 teles. At one point he used to put really hot pickups in his teles, but later found them a bit much, and he was losing a lot of dynamics with them. For his post-Blur solo stuff he tends to use a stock 60's relic tele, and a '68 tele with neck humbucker, and a little bit of crank from the amps, and two distortions to give different levels as and when needed.

I love his Les Paul sounds though, especially "She's So High", and even cleaner tones like "Oily Water"

As far as bands I like with "Tame" pedalboards - has to be James Dean Bradfield from the Manic Street Preachers. Nearly all Boss pedals (one of his favourite sounds to use is a Boss FZ-2 on the gain boost setting into a Marshall JCM900), and until 2004, he didn't even operate them himself - he got a roadie to do it for him.

This is a recent setup of his pedals, I've also seen on occasion lately an MXR Fullbore Metal pedal in there, and some pics I've seen of a recent Australian tour show a Way Huge Swollen Pickle on his board now. The welsh pedal, described in the link as a "secret weapon" is actually a distortion/Fuzz of some sort. Some people are theorizing that it might be a similar kind of thing to the Analogman Sunlion pedal. He has a ton of goodies, but that's his live stuff.

[snipelfritz]

Keith Levene from PIL used no pedals or just an Electric Mistress iirc.
JFK from DFA1979 didn't use any pedals live (and I think he only used a chorus in the studio for the feedback in Turn It Out)
Steve Drozd from The Flaming Lips uses a Boss GT8, Line 6 FM4, and a Line 6 DL4 live to recreate everything on the albums.

Mind = Blown. Was that all just natural overdrive???

[mutmoo]

Mind = Blown. Was that all just natural overdrive???

All solid state too.