I am writing this column for two reasons: One, I was asked to and I thought "why not?" and two, I am a pedal geek. But I am serious about pointing out that, with all the chatter and obsessiveness surrounding equipment generally, and effects pedals specifically, all that matters is what you like.
That could just as well be an amplified wire hooked to a eucalyptus tree going into an old radio or some fabulous overpriced vintage guitar combined with a boutique amp and 23 Illuminati-approved effects pedals. Freedom of expression is what I am about, and gear is innocent fun! But please, let me invoke the brilliant Neil Young lyric that opens "Hippie Dream" before I undertake my arduously-considered mini-list of "essential" effects pedals" (I wish the number had been 10, and I already cheated and combined distortion, fuzz, and overdrive as one!): "Take my advice: don't listen to me"....
1. Volume
I have owned several volume pedals since the '70s. My first was a Morley with the photo-sensor system, and though cumbersome as hell and AC-powered, it was great. After compromising over the years with ones that are lighter and rather structurally unsound, I have ended up with the Boss FV-500. It looks like something on Buck Rogers' spaceship, and I have only broken two of them—which, for me, feels like victory. I use the volume pedal constantly and have ever since I got wind of Steve Howe and Robert Fripp in the early '70s. Constantly shaping/changing volume while keeping the same tone, the "violin effect" (swelling up just after picking), and keeping any single coil-derived 60-cycle hum at bay are just a few reasons why I rely on this item so heavily. That said, holding one foot on the volume pedal while keeping my weight on my other foot has taken a bit of a toll on my aging skeleton, though I am able to use either foot.
2. Distortion/Fuzz/Overdrive
This could quickly become overly complicated ... but I like distortion, and nowadays we delineate between "fuzz," "overdrive," and "distortion," so I will cave and do it as well.
Fuzz: I own a zillion fuzzboxes. I don't often acquire them as part of a search for "classic" fuzz sounds, however. This is a beautiful time for boutique effects pedals, and there are so many great ones out there, and I love them: the Fulltone '69 (classic), Uglyface (ultra-wild), Creepy Fingers MkI (classic), Catalinbread Octapussy (classic), Mid-Fi Electronics Random Number Generator (super sick), and the Devi Ever Soda-Meiser and/or White Spider (classic and sick) are just a few favorites. But the one I always bring along is the Z.Vex Fuzz Factory. Henry Kaiser turned me onto this thing ages ago, and I use it both in its wild, aleatoric mode and in a narrowed, "castrated" mode (after other pedals, which tames it) with equal effectiveness and joy. With Wilco, I use it in "tamed" mode for near-infinite controlled feedback and serious grunge. The pedals themselves are now rather legendary for their fabulous look—I treasure my custom-painted little Z.Vex boxes. I also use the Fuzz Factory on many an improvised music gig for all kinds of sonic mayhem—from sublime to vile. I rely on it!
Overdrive: I am one of those Klon Centaur cultists. This is another box that Henry Kaiser turned me on to years ago—when one could actually buy one! Back then (late '90s), it was the most expensive pedal I'd ever bought at more than $300, but now ... forget it! The thing is so great sounding, versatile, has plenty of gain, cleans up nicely, yet can drive hard. But what to do if you can't spend $650+ on the rare one you might see on eBay? Simple: get a Sarno Music Solutions Earth Drive. I have never seen one in a store, and I am not sure that Brad Sarno and his lovely wife are ready for an onslaught of orders (should I be sorry?), but the thing is inexpensive and almost as fabulous as a Centaur. It's much smaller, so it's what I bring on trips with my own band/improvisers (I must travel with lots of little pedals wrapped in socks in a little Pelican case when not with mighty Wilco).
I admit to not understanding the Tube Screamer thing—that mushy, underpowered green box. Sorry! So take this (and everything I write here) with several grains of salt. I've also enjoyed overdrive items by Crazy Tube Circuits, Fairfield Circuits, JAM Pedals, Catalinbread, and Walrus Audio. Henry K. even showed me the delights of the Tech 21 Randy Bachman pedal! But again, just use what works for you.
Distortion: I ended up loving the '70s-era Marshall Guv'nor distortion after many Pro Co Rat years. But the input/output jacks disintegrate and nothing fits into those big holes left after that plastic decays. The Z.Vex Box Of Metal almost stole my heart with its super-shaping tone knobs and cool gate option (it is good). Then I discovered the Crazy Tube Circuits Starlight, which is just as rich and creamy as a Rat or Guv'nor but has even more oomph—more presence (whatever that means). Made in Greece and marketed by Tone Concepts in Toronto, it's a killer. I am still a bit baffled as to why there are so few "distortion" options as opposed to "fuzz" and "overdrive," but as a previously-admitted Howe and Fripp guy, sometimes I want loud, creamy-with-definition, sustaining distortion for soaring, non-screeching melodic wailing. Between my old Guv'nors and the Starlight, I can get it.
Cline's late 2011 Wilco pedalboard is home to some of his favorite overdrive, distortion, and fuzz pedals: the Klon Centaur, Z.Vex Fuzz Factory, and Crazy Tube Circuits Starlight, among other tone toys.
3. Compression
I use the humble and sometimes maligned Boss CS-3 compressor pedal and have for ages. I played with two guitarists in the '80s who turned me on to the advantages of the compressor pedal: Nick Kirgo (in a band I was in called BLOC) and Bill Frisell (when we played together with Julius Hemphill). I usually use the compressor as a clean boost plus sustainer. It brings idiomatic sounds out of my guitar such as harmonics and string sounds behind the bridge and above the nut. It enables me to play a clean sound over any looping (my old looper requires a constant balancing act between the loop and the playing levels). And sometimes the compressed tone is just damn pleasing. I like the latch on/off on Boss pedals a lot—especially on the compressor when one can kick it in midstream and it just squishes on rather than pops on. I also really dig the Pigtronix Philosopher's Tone, which Jimmy Vivino turned me on to. I think it sounds better than the CS-3. but I'm an old dog.
4. Delay/Echo
The inimitable Electro-Harmonix 16 Second Digital Delay on Cline's board.
I used to always use an Echoplex for delay until it became too unwieldy—and back in the late '80s people actually ridiculed me for using it along with "stompboxes" instead of rack units and MIDI controllers. I sigh sadly as I ponder how many of those alleged "essentials" are rusting in landfills as I write this. Anyway, I now prefer a Keeley-modded Boss DD-3 pedal. The Keeley modifications provide some "warmer" delay effects choices while I am still able to get my old DD-3 weirdness happening (as in, really fast, heavy repeat-laden, digital-sounding, electro spazz-outs that I can cut on and off with no trail off). And, of course, I can get simple, tasteful bounce. I can get by with a plain old DD-3, too, but the Keeley one is just a bit better. I am not married to delay and reverb the way many guitarists seem to be, but I do want it when I want it. I also adore the Electro-Harmonix Deluxe Memory Man, Fulltone Tube Tape Echo, and the like, but try carrying all that stuff around in an under-50-pound suitcase! Runner up in the "Super Cool" and "Original Delay Dept.": the new Catalinbread Echorec, which has wild multi-delays and warble modeled on the classic Binson Echorec—beautiful. And it's small!
5. Looper
This last pick was almost a tie between the DigiTech Whammy Pedal and the mention of my antiquated and super-scarce Electro-Harmonix 16 Second Digital Delay (which would have been even more cheating on my part). I use them both all the time. I much prefer the original Whammy (the smaller red one) and have had some really aggravating experiences with the newer, "reissue" (the big red one that's not really a reissue at all—it's just red). But I am so lost without my old EH 16 Second. I have used it since Bill Frisell showed me his (he is the master) back in 1985. It's always recording, one can drop sounds into the loop non-destructively, do reverse (everything does reverse these days, but alas), it's small, It's magic. It's also rare as hens' teeth, and after writing this column it may be even more difficult to get! Too bad. To me, it's one of the coolest things ever, and I rarely leave home without it. I have tried other things; the nice folks at Electro-Harmonix even gave me a wonderful 2880 to mollify me since their "reissue" also wasn't a reissue and didn't do what the old one did at all, and I'd whined loudly and irritatingly about it. I think it was the first gratis piece of gear I ever got, and it came with a sweet note from Mike Matthews and everything—amazing! But sadly for me, the EHX 16 Second DD is all I like (try to find one and then try to afford one—my first one I got used for $225). It's become a part of my playing and my sound, especially in my own music (The Nels Cline Singers, et al), and with improvisers.
Well, that's it. Take from it what you will. I am just ... me. I hook up all my stuff and think to myself every time: "I have so much fun wherever I go!" Enjoying, making, manipulating, surrendering to the world of sound. You can do it with almost anything—clap your hands together, or hum, or whatever it is you do ... just enjoy.
[Updated 11/8/21]
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Onstage, Tommy Emmanuel executes a move that is not from the playbook of his hero, Chet Atkins.
“My biggest decision every day on tour is, ‘What do I want to start with? How do I want to come out of the gate?’” Emmanuel explains to me over a video call. “A good opener has to have everything. It has to be full of surprise, it has to have lots of good ideas, lots of light and shade, and then, hit it again,” he says, illustrating each phrase with his hands and ending with a punch.“You lift off straightaway with the first song, you get airborne, you start reaching, and then it’s time to level out and take people on a journey.”
In May 2023, Emmanuel played two shows at the Sydney Opera House, the best performances from which have been combined on his new release, Live at the Sydney Opera House. The venue’s Concert Hall, which has a capacity of 2,679, is a familiar room for Emmanuel, but I think at this point in his career he wouldn’t bring a setlist if he was playing Wembley Stadium. On the recording, Emmanuel’s mind-blowingly dexterous chops, distinctive attack and flair, and knack for culturally resonant compositions are on full display. His opening song for the shows? An original, “Countrywide,” with a segue into Chet Atkins’ “El Vaquero.”
“When I was going to high school in the ’60s, I heard ‘El Vaquero’ on Chet Atkins’ record, [1964’s My Favorite Guitars],” Emmanuel shares. “And when I wrote ‘Countrywide’ in around ’76 or ’77, I suddenly realized, ‘Ah! It’s a bit like “El Vaquero!”’ So I then worked out ‘El Vaquero’ as a solo piece, because it wasn’t recorded like that [by Atkins originally].
“The co-writer of ‘El Vaquero’ is Wayne Moss, who’s a famous Nashville session guy who played ‘da da da’ [sings the guitar riff from Roy Orbison’s ‘Pretty Woman’]. And he played on a lot of Chet’s records as a rhythm guy. So once when I played ‘El Vaquero’ live, Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’” Emmanuel says, laughing.
Atkins is the reason Emmanuel got into performing. His mother had been teaching him rhythm guitar for a couple years when he heard Atkins on the radio and, at 6, was able to immediately mimic his fingerpicking technique. His father recognized Emmanuel’s prodigious talent and got him on the road that year, which kicked off his professional career. He says, “By the time I was 6, I was already sleep-deprived, working too hard, and being forced to be educated. Because all I was interested in was playing music.”
Emmanuel talks about Atkins as if the way he viewed him as a boy hasn’t changed. The title Atkins bestowed upon him, C.G.P. (Certified Guitar Player), appears on Emmanuel’s album covers, in his record label (C.G.P. Sounds), and is inlaid at the 12th fret on his Maton Custom Shop TE Personal signature acoustic. (Atkins named only five guitarists C.G.P.s. The others are John Knowles, Steve Wariner, Jerry Reed, and Atkins himself.) For Emmanuel, even today most roads lead to Atkins.
When I ask Emmanuel about his approach to arranging for solo acoustic guitar, he says, “It was really hit home for me by my hero, Chet Atkins, when I read an interview with him a long time ago and he said, ‘Make your arrangement interesting.’ And I thought, ‘Wow!’ Because I was so keen to be true to the composer and play the song as everyone knows it. But then again, I’m recreating it like everyone else has, and I might as well get in line with the rest of them and jump off the cliff into nowhere. So it struck me: ‘How can I make my arrangements interesting?’ Well, make them full of surprises.”
When Emmanuel was invited to contribute to 2015’s Burt Bacharach: This Guitar’s in Love with You, featuring acoustic-guitar tributes to Bacharach’s classic compositions by various artists, Emmanuel expresses that nobody wanted to take “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” due to its “syrupy” nature. But for Emmanuel, this presented an entertaining challenge.
He explains, “I thought, ‘Okay, how can I reboot “Close to You?’ So even the most jaded listener will say, ‘Holy fuck—I didn’t expect that! Wow, I really like that; that is a good melody!’ So I found a good key to play the song in, which allowed me to get some open notes that sustain while I move the chords. Then what I did is, in every phrase, I made the chord unresolve, then resolve.
Tommy Emmanuel's Gear
“I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head,” Emmanuel says. “So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever.”
Photo by Simone Cecchetti
Guitars
- Three Maton Custom Shop TE Personals, each with an AP5 PRO pickup system
Amps
- Udo Roesner Da Capo 75
Effects
- AER Pocket Tools preamp
Strings & Picks
- Martin TE Signature Phosphor Bronze (.012–.054)
- Martin SP strings
- Ernie Ball Paradigm strings
- D’Andrea Pro Plec 1.5 mm
- Dunlop medium thumbpicks
“And then to really put the nail in the coffin, at the end, ‘Close to you’ [sings melody]. I finished on a major 9 chord which had that note in it, but it wasn’t the key the song was in, which is a typical Stevie Wonder trick. All the tricks I know, the wonderful ideas that I’ve stolen, are from Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie, James Taylor, Carole King, Neil Diamond. All of the people who wrote really incredibly great pop songs and R&B music—I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a -half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
I share with Emmanuel that the performances on Live at the Sydney Opera House, which include his popular “Beatles Medley,” reminded me of another possible arrangement trick. In Harpo Marx’s autobiography, Harpo Speaks, I preface, Marx writes of a lesson he learned as a performer—to “answer the audience’s questions.” (Emmanuel says he’s a big fan of the book and read it in the early ’70s.) That happened for me while listening to the medley, when, after sampling melodies from “She’s a Woman” and “Please Please Me,” Emmanuel suddenly lands on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”
I say, “I’m waiting for something that hits more recognizably to me, and when ‘While My Guitar’ comes in, that’s like answering my question.”
“It’s also Paul and John, Paul and John, George,” Emmanuel replies. “You think, ‘That’s great, that’s great pop music,’ then, ‘Wow! Look at the depth of this.’”
Often Emmanuel’s flights on his acoustic guitar are seemingly superhuman—as well as supremely entertaining.
Photo by Ekaterina Gorbacheva
A trick I like to employ as a writer, I say to Emmanuel, is that when I’m describing something, I’ll provide the reader with just enough context so that they can complete the thought on their own.
“You can do that musically as well,” says Emmanuel. He explains how, in his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” he’ll play only the vocal melody. “When people are asking me at a workshop, ‘How come you don’t put chords behind that part?’ I say, ‘I’m drawing the melody and you’re putting in all the background in your head. I don’t need to tell you what the chords are. You already know what the chords are.’”
“Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’”
Another track featured on Live at the Sydney Opera House is a cover of Paul Simon’s “American Tune” (which Emmanuel then jumps into an adaptation of the Australian bush ballad, “Waltzing Matilda”). It’s been a while since I really spent time with There GoesRhymin’ Simon (on which “American Tune” was first released), and yet it sounded so familiar to me. A little digging revealed that its melody is based on the 17th-century Christian hymn, “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded,” which was arranged and repurposed by Bach in a few of the composer’s works. The cross-chronological and genre-lackadaisical intersections that come up in popular music sometimes is fascinating.
“I think the principle right there,” Emmanuel muses, “is people like Bach and Beethoven and Mozart found the right language to touch the heart of a human being through their ears and through their senses ... that really did something to them deep in their soul. They found a way with the right chords and the right notes, somehow. It could be as primitive as that.
Tommy Emmanuel has been on the road as a performing guitarist for 64 years. Eat your heart out, Bob Dylan.
Photo by Jan Anderson
“It’s like when you’re a young composer and someone tells you, ‘Have a listen to Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind,”’ he continues. “‘Listen to how those notes work with those chords.’ And every time you hear it, you go, ‘Why does it touch me like that? Why do I feel this way when I hear those chords—those notes against those chords?’ I say, it’s just human nature. Then you wanna go, ‘How can I do that!’” he concludes with a grin.
“You draw from such a variety of genres in your arrangements,” I posit. “Do you try to lean into the side of converting those songs to solo acoustic guitar, or the side of bridging the genre’s culture to that of your audience?”
“I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a-half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
“If I was a method actor,” Emmanuel explains, “what I’m doing is—I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head. So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever. I always think it has to have that kind of orchestral, not grandeur, but … palette to it. Because of the influence of Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel, and Elton John, especially—the piano guys—I try to use piano ideas, like putting the third in the low bass a lot, because guitar players don’t necessarily do that. And I try to always do something that makes what I do different.
“I want to be different and recognizable,” he continues. “I remember when people talked about how some players—you just hear one note and you go, ‘Oh, that’s Chet Atkins.’ And it hit me like a train, the reason why a guy like Hank Marvin, the lead guitar player from the Shadows.... I can tell you: He had a tone that I hear in other players now. Everyone copied him—they just don’t know it—including Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, all those people. I got him up to play with me a few times when he moved to Australia, and even playing acoustic, he still had that sound. I don’t know how he did it, but it was him. He invented himself.”
YouTube It
Emmanuel performs his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” illustrating how omitting a harmonic backdrop can have a more powerful effect, especially when playing such a well-known melody.
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