Let me apologize right off
the bat for using a headline
that shamelessly bastardizes
Shakespeare’s famous
Hamlet
quote for the quadrillionth time
in modern history. I assure you
my thoughts here are nowhere
near as compelling as that
amazing soliloquy, but what the
hell—I’ll sashay forth anyway.
A little over a year ago, I had
an epiphany in the middle of
a jam session with my pal and
drum guru, Jeremy (who’s also a
great guitarist). I faced the classic
challenge confronting every
guitarist with more than a tuner
and an overdrive in their signal
chain. You probably know what
I’m talking about. It’s the idea
that if you just hit one more
pedal (or some super-ingenious
combination of pedals and settings
never before concocted
by humankind), maybe—just
maybe—aural ecstasy will ensue.
If you haven’t been there yet,
just wait—you will. Or maybe
you’re just much more focused
and/or in touch with your
muse than I am. Who knows.
The point is, I was letting way
too damn much of my creative
energy, mental capacity, and
groove be siphoned off by the
shiny, brightly colored boxes on
my pedalboard.
The thing is, it’s not like I
had that many on there. Five,
maybe six. I’d already jettisoned
my DigiTech Whammy a
couple of years before, but I still
had a distortion pedal, a fuzz, a
wah, a badass new reverb pedal,
and my trusty tremolo pedal—
one of the earliest, most iconic
in the boutique world.
Yes, that’s all it took to
befuddle this ol’ twangin’ bastard
and convince me to simplify.
It’s pathetic, I know. But, hell,
everyone knows Jeff Beck is just
about the most expressive guitarist
on the planet—and he hardly
ever steps on a stomp. Same goes
for Brian Setzer, one of my other
all-time favorites. So, I ripped
the wah off my ’board, sold the
fuzz and the distortion, and
decided I was going to get all I
could out of a cranked tube amp
and reverb and tremolo pedals.
I don’t have any scientific
before-and-after recordings that
I can reference to make an open-and-shut case for the effectiveness
of this exercise in simplicity,
but I can say with absolute sincerity
that I’m really,
really glad I
did it. I’ve never been one to sit
down and figure out what my
favorite guitarists and bands are
playing, so it’s not like I’ve spent
the last year trying to conjure
the magic that Beck gets with his
incredible use of a Strat’s tremolo—I’m not trying to be a virtuoso,
anyway. But I did approach
the instrument with the idea that
I’d figure out how to alter my
attack and use a different part of
my thumb or fingers to get some
portion of the expressiveness
that Beck taps into with such
aplomb. I improved my Travis-picking
technique. I got so adept
at tucking my pick up between
my index-finger knuckles while
I fingerpicked that I didn’t even
realize when I was doing it. I
got pretty good at snapping the
strings in a way that’s like a cross
between a Tele-wielding hillbilly
and a funk bassist. And recently
I hit on the gritty, darker articulation
you get when you flip
around one of those picks with
the raised gripping surface and
use the broad side rather than
the pointed end.
And yet … recently I’ve been
hankering for one of those new
Whammys. A few years ago I
wrote a tune that begins with
an echo-drenched power chord
having its harmonized thirds
slowly bending into fourths,
and then an inverted chord
doing the same. The effect was
simple, otherworldly, and gorgeous—
and there are precious
few pedals out there that can do
something like that. Plus, the
new Whammys are true-bypass,
and therefore don’t suck out
high end like they used to.
Besides, as the editor of a
magazine and website that sees a
steady stream of incredible gear
go in and out of its doors, it’s
pretty hard to not lust. Especially
given how much I love effects
masters like Vernon Reid,
Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood
and Ed O’Brien, David Torn,
Tom Morello, and J. Mascis.
I guess what I’m saying is
the question of stomping or not
stomping is just like anything
else—if you’re such a hard-ass
purist that you think there’s
only one good way to do things,
you’re just going to miss out
on a lot of cool stuff and come
across as a jackass in the process.
Don’t get me wrong. I’ll
always treasure and take advantage
of everything I learned over
the last year of relative effect
celibacy, but my tastes are too
diverse to warrant walking any
sort of puritanical path.
The other night I got out
my wah, put it back on my
pedalboard, played it, and …
promptly ripped it off again. I’m
just not a wah guy, I guess. But
the boost pedal and compressor
I recently added have already
yielded big dividends. Yeah, I
know they’re pretty much the
tamest effects on the planet, but
their powers are exponential
when combined with a carefully
considered approach.
And don’t you worry, I’m
carefully plotting my next pedal
moves. Because I’ve realized
the answer to the question, “To
stomp, or not to stomp?” How
much one stomps is going to
vary from player to player, but
as long as you use them as an
inspiration rather than a distraction
and a crutch, you’re kind
of crazy not to take advantage
of them—especially considering
how many ingenious and
incredible-sounding designs are
coming out these days.
Shawn Hammond
shawn@premierguitar.com