THIS CHARMING SAUCEPAN

Fuzz Wisdom from The Black Lips’ Cole Alexander.

Recently my bandmates and I have been operating under a ‘less is more’ approach when it comes to equipment. Anything pedal-wise that is rarely used is being stripped out and saved for special occasions. This reminds me of another bunch of fuzz-obsessed dudes, The Black Lips, all the way from Atlanta, Georgia. Last year we hit the road and caught their Arabia Mountain LP promoting set in Galway’s finest beerhaus, The Róisín Dubh. They played a killer mix of old and new tracks and the venue was small enough that we could grab a chat with them.

I wanted to know how moustachioed guitar slinger Cole Alexander achieved the tinnitus inducing and impressively distinct tones he was getting, so I quickly stepped in. After the usual awkward fanboy greeting and a few swigs of stout he was more than happy to tell us about his simple rig. On that tour he was playing an Eastwood Town & Country Standard guitar through a hastily borrowed Mesa Boogie Lonestar, “I fucking hate that amp man, they sent it to me after I blew out a Hot Rod Deluxe.” His choice of pedals had me surprised and delighted in equal measure. Not a tuner to be found, but instead an Electro Harmonix Little Big Muff, a Danelectro Pastrami Overdrive and a Danelectro French Toast Octave Distortion. What he’d spent on pedals some gear cognoscenti spend on a single cable. “That little French Toast is a killer pedal man…” He went on to tell me that back home they had crates full of every kind of vintage and modern fuzz imaginable, which I could entirely believe, but that the Danelectro was above and beyond the most fun fuzz he’d ever played. Before we left him I thought I’d chance my arm and ask him what fuzz was used on ‘Veni Vidi Vici.’ He pointed at his pedal board towards the surf green box of madness in question. Happy with a personal music mystery solved we turned and left to the sounds of an inebriated Jared Swilley (bass) being turfed out of the venue for flouting the smoking ban and the charming Ian Saint Pé Brown (guitar) shouting after us to “Get some DeArmond Gold Foil pickups, man!”

The pedal itself is from Danelectro’s Mini Series, all named after 50’s American diner foods. It’s a straight clone of the original Foxx Tone Machine, beloved by folks as varied as Nine Inch Nails, Peter Frampton and Beck. The Foxx Tone Machine was literally covered in felt and good condition originals are as rare as hen’s teeth, so if you’re after the tone but not the tackyness I strongly suggest the French Toast. The controls are simple and intuitive and feature a Level (volume), Dist (amount of fuzz applied) and a versatile enough 1-band EQ. There is also an ‘Octave’ mini-switch which takes your effected signal and catapults it an octave up. This is one seriously addictive sound. For a cool result use your neck pickup with the tone rolled off entirely, this yields a very synthy tone. The best thing about this pedal is also perhaps the worst in that alot of players find Danelectro products to be naff and only worthy of the hock shops or bargain bins. Treat it well and it will give you years of service. With this in mind, let your ears be the judge and your wallet be the winner.

Slapback to The Future

In days gone by if you were a hip, young guitar slinger and wanted some ambient echo or Sun Records style slapback; you would have to carry around great hulking Tape Echo machines such as the WEM Copicat, Maestro Echoplex or Roland Space Echo. These units were as compact as could be but admittedly still huge by today’s standards. They required reels of tape, occasional demagnetization of the tape heads, more replacement tape and a degree in mechanical engineering to fix even the simplest of problems you would face from overuse or from not using the unit enough. Hank Marvin’s echo-drenched Shadows sounds of the 60’s opened the gates for thousands of would-be imitators and so the thirst for echo (and later delay) was seemingly born.

With the constant adoration and industry surrounding these unreliable but beautiful sounding units it was only a matter of time before digital technology was applied to mimic these sounds. The earlier Boss analogue delay, the DM-2, was revolutionary in its size and reliability. This was succeeded by the now ubiquitous range of Boss Digital Delays found on the boards of bedroom plinkers and stadium fillers alike. The Boss delay craze started in 1981 and still continues today; but no company has ever really thrown themselves into creating something with the quirks and prehistoric bells and whistles of the aforementioned Tape Echo units.

The Danelectro Reel Echo has taken a fair stab at trying though. This pedal is a favourite of mine as it has so many useful applications and funky features. I should mention that this is a completely digital unit masquerading as an analogue relic. I have a soft spot for all things sea foam green, Danelectro seem to too, they’ve made it look like the top side of a tape machine from the 50’s. All the pieces are bespoke and unfamiliar, with the dials looking like tape heads, a very nice touch for a non-boutique production line product.

There are no ‘dead weight’ controls on this, everything has a use and specific function; there’s the obvious ‘Mix’ control for blending the effected signal in or out and there’s the standard ‘Repeats’ control. With this being a digital delay it offers you the option of pristine playback via the ‘Tone’ switch, this can be set to ‘Solid State’ or ‘Tube’, the latter option giving a bassier and compressed repeat. This has been taken further with the ‘Lo Fi’ control which can be set so that each following repeat degrades as the top end is removed in a gradual curve. Being one of Danelectro’s more top-of-the-line models this goes even further to imitate a Tape Echo machine in with its ‘Warble’ function. I had a tiny, nerdy chuckle when I read this if I’m honest, but soon realised what it did. This ‘Warble’ function blends in a chorus-like flavour to the effected signal to reproduce the much loved sound of a vintage Tape Echo’s heads running at an inconsistent speed thus giving an even shorter unwanted delay; which we know today is the essence of the ‘Chorus’ effect.

John Martyn’s blend of an acoustic guitar and mind-bending effects are astounding, his unit of choice was the Echoplex; we can hear how he layered phrases and played along with himself on alot of recordings and performances. My favourite example of this is heard here in the track ‘Dealer.’ The Reel Echo, does an eeriely accurate reproduction of that revered sound. The final and most interesting feature of this already jam-packed pedal is the ‘Sound on Sound’ button. With the Lo-Fi at zero and the Repeats set full you can create a loop up to 1.5 seconds and effectively put sounds over sounds. A stereo out is just the cherry on this weird cake. From slapback to Space Invaders, I highly recommend this pedal.