One could be forgiven for assuming the Black Peaches are an export of the Southern U.S. after a listen to the band’s debut, Get Down You Dirty Rascals. While there’s no cheesy faux drawl to singer/songwriter/guitarist Rob Smoughton’s vocal delivery, he and his five bandmates—Londoners all—have obviously done their homework when it comes to the distinctly below-the-Mason-Dixon-Line sonic patois that permeates the album, further exaggerated by the warm, compressed, and excellent ’70s-style production aesthetic in which it basks.
Get Down You Dirty Rascals is a dynamic journey through dance-worthy boogie-rock grooves that recall the hottest moments of a Little Feat set; swampy, voodoo-possessed psychedelic incantations that harken to the atmospheric wonders of Night Tripper-era Dr. John; and Latin-infused rhythmic melees with a shot of jazz—all delivered with a tandem guitar attack that is often athletic, but always smooth. And while the musicians in Black Peaches wear their influences proudly, their sound remains organic and original.
Smoughton has other gigs. He’s best known for holding down drum duties for electro-pop heavyweights Hot Chip, and he’s also a longtime hired gun for British new wave stalwarts Scritti Politti. But Black Peaches’ sonic shaman is an accomplished guitarist in his own right. He has developed a symbiotic relationship with the band’s co-guitarist and pedal-steel pilot, Adam Chetwood, who acts as his foil and sparring partner within Black Peaches’ playfully retro/nuevo mélange.
Premier Guitar spoke with Smoughton and Chetwood to discuss the recording of Get Down You Dirty Rascals (which was chiefly tracked live), their shared influences, and, of course, the gear essential to making the album.
Rob, Black Peaches’ music is a major departure from most of your resume.
Rob Smoughton: Yeah, definitely! What I’ve been involved with more over the past few years has been other people’s music, really, and this is me getting to make something that I’ve always wanted to do and be in the kind of band I’ve always wanted to be in. It doesn’t really feel so much like forging new ground as finding my way to where I should’ve always been.
How did you get into the American Southern roots music from the ’70s that the band references?
I lived in Canada for a little while, and there I met some people from the States—from Mississippi, specifically. And they led me to North Mississippi blues music. As a teenager, country-influenced rock music was kind of my big thing, like Buffalo Springfield and the West Coast stuff. When I started playing music professionally, people always needed a drummer and I like disco music and could handle it. So I wound up working with Hot Chip and playing more funk-oriented stuff, but I’ve been into country music, rock music, and jazz since my teens. I just never found much of an outlet for it.
Adam, how did you get into this style of music and playing pedal steel? I know that it’s difficult to get involved with that instrument in Europe.
Adam Chetwood: I’ve always loved anything that fuses virtuosic country players and virtuosic jazz players, so when Rob showed me the early demos of these tunes, I thought they had that flair and we clicked straight away. I got what he was going for immediately, and I immediately celebrated being involved!
As far as getting involved with pedal steel is concerned, I met a guy named Gerry Hogan, who is a British steel player with Albert Lee. Gerry has a shop in a small town called Newbury, and he sells them. I went down there and bought one, and that’s where it began.
Smoughton: We had the pedal steel on a couple of other tunes that unfortunately didn’t make it onto the final album. The only track with pedal steel featured that made it is “Double Top,” because we were keen to make it a single album.
Chetwood: Though there’s a few slide bits from you on the record, Rob.
Smoughton: One of the guitarists I really love is Clarence White [of the Byrds]. I’m influenced by his way of trying to get pedal steel sounds out of a regular electric guitar.
The chicken pickin’ on “Double Top” is fantastic. Which one of you played that part, and what gear did you use to cop the tone?
Smoughton: That’s me playing the leads, and I used Adam’s sunburst Telecaster Custom to record it. I play a lot of chicken pickin’ in open G tuning, which kind of shows the influence Little Feat had on me.
Chetwood: That guitar is a true vintage one from 1977.
YouTube It
“Suivez-Moi” from Black Peaches’ debut, Get Down You Dirty Rascals, displays leader Rob Smoughton’s way with a groove—a talent he also brings to his gigs with Hot Chip and Scritti Politti. Dig the Latin-tinged percussive intro before the song breaks into an eclectic jazzy jam driven by an acoustic rhythm guitar.
That song has some very interesting, ghostly guitar textures over the jam section. How did you make those sounds?
Chetwood: That’s the pedal steel through a Roland Space Echo. There are two tracks of pedal steel going simultaneously, and we sent them through the desk into the Roland Space Echo, which is feeding back on itself, which creates that ghostly, dreamy soundscape. That part works well more because of the textures you can get out of those particular pieces of equipment together than the parts themselves, though I think there are some beautiful little snapshots of melody in there that echo around and add a lot to that section of the song.
Adam Chetwood, slamming his 1977 Fender Telecaster Custom onstage with bassist Susumu Mukai, joined the band after hearing Smoughton’s demos of the tunes that would become Get Down You Dirty Rascals. Photo by James White
How much of the album did you track live?
Smoughton: We recorded as much as we could live and then overdubbed vocals, the occasional bits of guitar, and some extra percussion. So the core of the songs was recorded live. The songs are recorded the way we’d been playing them live, and we felt like that was the most natural way to capture them. I also like the idea of catching little bits of instruments on what isn’t necessarily the “right” mic. You try to get some isolation, but there’s bleed that catches things like guitar amps in drum mics, which we like, so we went for that.
How did you plot out the extended jam sections before hitting the studio?Smoughton: The more we played the songs together, the more we got into a natural length for things. After we realized how long a section sounded at its best without going on too long or shorting it, we developed our own little cues, which usually come from the drums, that help us live, and we used those in the studio.
The weaving guitar parts on “A Fire & Water Sign” are exceptionally cool. How did you both develop those parts, and who played the solo? The tone is really killer.
Chetwood: The main, Keith Richards-style playing evolved through our rehearsal process and trying really hard to deliberately get that weaving thing going, and it was a natural fit for that song. The solo was me and I used a Roland JC-50 combo with the chorus on, and the guitar I used was a Les Paul Custom from 1981. We did a few takes of the solo, and it was an overdub that Rob comped under. It’s pretty cool that both the guitar and amp used were probably made around the same time.
Smoughton: That weaving thing originated with much more playing going on. We focused on working out more space for each other’s little guitar parts. We had an RCA ribbon mic in the room, and when it came to mixing the track, the room mic was quite high in the mix and a lot of the room sound was captured on that solo, which I think really helped to get that interesting, lively sound you hear.
Rob Smoughton’s Gear
Guitars2014 Epiphone Wildkat with P-90s
1982 Hohner Professional SE 400 with Kent Armstrong Humbuckers
2009 Vintage VSA535 12-String
Sigma OOOR-42 acoustic
Amps
Vox AC30
Fender Princeton
Vox AD50VT
Effects
Mooer Yellow Comp
Mooer Acoustikar acoustic guitar simulator
Mooer Ninety Orange phaser
Mooer Pure Boost
Mooer Rumble Drive
Z.VEX Fuzz Factory kit-built clone
Jim Dunlop Cry Baby wah
Boss DD-3 Digital Delay
Roland RE-201 Space Echo
AMS DMX 15-80S Broadcast Delay
Strings and Picks
Ernie Ball Hybrid Slinkys on the Hohner
D’Addario EXL110 Nickel Wound, Regular Lights (.010–.046) on the Epiphone and Vintage
Martin M-540 (.012–.054) Phosphor Bronze Lights on the Sigma
Dunlop 1.0 mm Big Stubbys (electric)
Dunlop 0.5 mm (acoustic and 12-string)
Adam Chetwood’s Gear
Guitars1977 Fender Custom Telecaster with Mastery M3 Bridge
1981 Gibson Les Paul Custom with a Bigsby
’90s Gibson Les Paul Standard with a Bigsby and Bare Knuckle Mississippi Queen P-90s
’80s Greco Spacey Sound with Bare Knuckle Apache single-coils
MJT Nashville T-style with Florance Voodoo pickups (ST60 middle, TE59s bridge and neck), Callaham and Kluson hardware
Carter Starter 10-string pedal steel
Amps
Matchless DC-30
Torres-modded Fender Bassman 4x10
Roland JC-50
Effects
Boss TU-3 tuner
JHS Mini Foot Fuzz
Strymon OB.1 Optical Compressor & Clean Boost
Keeley-modified ProCo RAT
JHS-modded Electro-Harmonix Soul Food overdrive
Green Ringer ring modulator clone by Jake Feinberg of Goldsoundz Electronics
Boo Instruments CE-2 chorus
JHS Panther Cub analog delay
Boss DD-2 Digital Delay
Mooer Trelicopter tremolo
TC Electronic Hall of Fame Mini Reverb (loaded with Albert Lee's toneprint)
Roger Mayer Voodoo Vibe
JHS A/B (to switch channels on Matchless)
Fender ’63 Tube Reverb
Radial J48 D.I.
Ernie Ball volume pedal (for pedal steel)
Peterson StroboFlip Tuner (for pedal steel)
Strings and Picks
D’Addario NYXL (.011–.049)
Dunlop Graphite Jazz 3
Jeffran College thumb and finger picks
Dunlop 921 Tonebar
The album really captures the charm and very specific compression of the records from the periods and genres you’re referencing, but it’s a higher-fidelity version that still captures the personality of that music.
Smoughton: We definitely had a sound we wanted to go for, and that was us playing live with some bleed. But we wanted to use the nicest equipment we could get our hands on. So we went to a nice studio in London—Tin Room Studios—that had a collection of great vintage mics and a nice board, and enough top-notch outboard gear to get that warmth and compression. But it was mixed digitally, so that might lend itself to the higher fidelity, and we weren’t limited to how much we could fit on tape or anything. The point was to create something with that ’70s warmth, but to layer the way you can with modern technology and use enough room and ambient mics to capture the energy of a band actually playing.
Rob, how much responsibility did you place on yourself to say something fresh within this style, which claims so many iconic bands?
Smoughton: When you’re talking about bands like Little Feat or the Southern rock that informs our sound, that’s just one part of what we do. We take a lot of influence from Latin rhythms and Brazilian percussion, and we take that country-rock-boogie thing down a very different road with that Latin influence. And even with some of the jazzier sounds we use. We weren’t trying to remake an era of music. We were trying to draw from influences that happened to mainly come from the ’70s. However, we wanted to create something that sounded like our band, and that’s freeing because you don’t have to sort of tick off all the boxes of remaking a classic sound. You can pull from so many different things.
Also, from a songwriting perspective, when I first started sending things to the rest of the band, they were half-finished songs and simple ideas. They only came into the proper light when the rest of us played them together. Everyone’s bringing something in the way they play and with their individual musical personalities. It’s not too anachronistic. It’s not too much of an homage. We just wear our influences plainly and visibly.
The fiery guitar on “Below the Waves” is some of my favorite playing on the album. Who played it and what gear was used?
Smoughton: That’s actually both of us! That’s a real mix. I think we swap off for a bit with a call and response, and then it’s both of us at the end. We tracked it together live, rather than overdubbing, and there’s a little bit of bleed in there between the amps. I believe I used my old Hohner SE 400, which is like a Gibson hollowbody, but made in Germany around 1982. It has two humbuckers, and I was playing that guitar through a Vox AC30 that belonged to the studio.
Chetwood: I was using a 4x10 Fender Bassman that was modified by a company called Torres Engineering, so it was hopped-up a bit and it did sound particularly good.
There seems to be a really great synergy between the two of you as guitarists. Was that naturally there? What is it about your styles that allows you to work so well together?
Smoughton: Adam’s more versed in jazz guitar than I am, and my parts require more sketching-out beforehand. Adam is a bit more off-the-cuff and a better improviser, and has a more explosive style than mine, which seems a little restrained by comparison.
Chetwood: We definitely hit it off immediately with where the guitar fits into the sound of this band, and we share a lot of common ground with our influences. I think since the band’s evolved, we’ve picked up little bits of each other’s styles. I’ve started creatively playing bits that wouldn’t have come to me had I not been working with Rob. We’re both big Larry Carlton fans!
Smoughton:Especially his Steely Dan work. And since Adam and I have been playing together, we’ve gotten really good at harmonizing, and we’ve worked out how to play leads together in that way. There’s an intuition that’s come around from us playing together now for a couple of years that we’ve carved out. It’s something that came to us organically.
Duane Denison of the Jesus Lizard, EGC Chessie in hands, coaxing some nasty tones from his Hiwatt.
The Jesus Lizard’s sixth album, Blue, served as the band’s final statement from the frontlines of noisy rock for the next 26 years. By the time of their dissolution in 1999, they’d earned a reputation for extreme performances chock full of hard-hitting, machine-like grooves delivered by bassist David Wm. Sims and, at their conclusion, drummer Mac McNeilly, at times aided and at other times punctured by the frontline of guitarist Duane Denison’s incisive, dissonant riffing, and presided over by the cantankerous howl of vocalist David Yow. In the years since, performative, thrilling bands such as Pissed Jeans, METZ, and Idles have built upon the Lizard’s musical foundation.
Denison has kept himself plenty busy over the last couple decades, forming the avant-rock supergroup Tomahawk—with vocalist Mike Patton, bassist Trevor Dunn (both from Mr. Bungle), and drummer John Stanier of Helmet—and alongside various other projects including Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers and Hank Williams III. The Jesus Lizard eventually reunited, but until now have only celebrated their catalog, never releasing new jams.
The Jesus Lizard, from left: bassist David Wm. Sims, singer David Yow, drummer Mac McNeilly, and guitarist Duane Denison.
Photo by Joshua Black Wilkins
Back in 2018, Denison, hanging in a hotel room with Yow, played a riff on his unplugged electric guitar that caught the singer’s ear. That song, called “West Side,” will remain unreleased for now, but Denison explains: “He said, ‘Wow, that’s really good. What is that?’ And I said, ‘It’s just some new thing. Why don’t we do an album?’” From those unassuming beginnings, the Jesus Lizard’s creative juices started flowing.
So, how does a band—especially one who so indelibly captured the ineffable energy of live rock performance—prepare to get a new record together 26 years after their last? Back in their earlier days, the members all lived together in a band house, collectively tending to the creative fire when inspiration struck. All these years later, they reside in different cities, so their process requires sending files back and forth and only meeting up for occasional demo sessions over the course of “three or four years.”
“When the time comes to get more in performance mode, I have a practice space. I go there by myself and crank it up. I turn that amp up and turn the metronome up and play loud.” —Duane Denison
the Jesus Lizard "Alexis Feels Sick"
Distance creates an obstacle to striking while the proverbial iron is hot, but Denison has a method to keep things energized: “Practice loud.” The guitarist professes the importance of practice, in general, and especially with a metronome. “We keep very detailed records of what the beats per minute of these songs are,” he explains. “To me, the way to do it is to run it to a Bluetooth speaker and crank it, and then crank your amp. I play a little at home, but when the time comes to get more in performance mode, I have a practice space. I go there by myself and crank it up. I turn that amp up and turn the metronome up and play loud.”
It’s a proven solution. On Rack—recorded at Patrick Carney’s Audio Eagle studio with producer Paul Allen—the band sound as vigorous as ever, proving they’ve not only remained in step with their younger selves, but they may have surpassed it with faders cranked. “Duane’s approach, both as a guitarist and writer, has an angular and menacing fingerprint that is his own unique style,” explains Allen. “The conviction in his playing that he is known for from his recordings in the ’80s and ’90s is still 100-percent intact and still driving full throttle today.”
“I try to be really, really precise,” he says. “I think we all do when it comes to the basic tracks, especially the rhythm parts. The band has always been this machine-like thing.” Together, they build a tension with Yow’s careening voice. “The vocals tend to be all over the place—in and out of tune, in and out of time,” he points out. “You’ve got this very free thing moving around in the foreground, and then you’ve got this very precise, detailed band playing behind it. That’s why it works.”
Before Rack, the Jesus Lizard hadn’t released a new record since 1998’s Blue.
Denison’s guitar also serves as the foreground foil to Yow’s unhinged raving, as on “Alexis Feels Sick,” where they form a demented harmony, or on the midnight creep of “What If,” where his vibrato-laden melodies bolster the singer’s unsettled, maniacal display. As precise as his riffs might be, his playing doesn’t stay strictly on the grid. On the slow, skulking “Armistice Day,” his percussive chording goes off the rails, giving way to a solo that slices that groove like a chef’s knife through warm butter as he reorganizes rock ’n’ roll histrionics into his own cut-up vocabulary.
“During recording sessions, his first solo takes are usually what we decide to keep,” explains Allen. “Listen to Duane’s guitar solos on Jack White’s ‘Morning, Noon, and Night,’ Tomahawk’s ‘Fatback,’ and ‘Grind’ off Rack. There’s a common ‘contained chaos’ thread among them that sounds like a harmonic Rubik’s cube that could only be solved by Duane.”
“Duane’s approach, both as a guitarist and writer, has an angular and menacing fingerprint that is his own unique style.” —Rack producer Paul Allen
To encapsulate just the right amount of intensity, “I don’t over practice everything,” the guitarist says. Instead, once he’s created a part, “I set it aside and don’t wear it out.” On Rack, it’s obvious not a single kilowatt of musical energy was lost in the rehearsal process.
Denison issues his noisy masterclass with assertive, overdriven tones supporting his dissonant voicings like barbed wire on top of an electric fence. The occasional application of slapback delay adds a threatening aura to his exacting riffage. His tones were just as carefully crafted as the parts he plays, and he relied mostly on his signature Electrical Guitar Company Chessie for the sessions, though a Fender Uptown Strat also appears, as well as a Taylor T5Z, which he chose for its “cleaner, hyper-articulated sound” on “Swan the Dog.” Though he’s been spotted at recent Jesus Lizard shows with a brand-new Powers Electric—he points out he played a demo model and says, “I just couldn’t let go of it,” so he ordered his own—that wasn’t until tracking was complete.
Duane Denison's Gear
Denison wields his Powers Electric at the Blue Room in Nashville last June.
Photo by Doug Coombe
Guitars
- Electrical Guitar Company Chessie
- Fender Uptown Strat
- Taylor T5Z
- Gibson ES-135
- Powers Electric
Amps
- Hiwatt Little J
- Hiwatt 2x12 cab with Fane F75 speakers
- Fender Super-Sonic combo
- Early ’60s Fender Bassman
- Marshall 1987X Plexi Reissue
- Victory Super Sheriff head
- Blackstar HT Stage 60—2 combos in stereo with Celestion Neo Creamback speakers and Mullard tubes
Effects
- Line 6 Helix
- Mantic Flex Pro
- TC Electronic G-Force
- Menatone Red Snapper
Strings and Picks
- Stringjoy Orbiters .0105 and .011 sets
- Dunlop celluloid white medium
- Sun Studios yellow picks
He ran through various amps—Marshalls, a Fender Bassman, two Fender Super-Sonic combos, and a Hiwatt Little J—at Audio Eagle. Live, if he’s not on backline gear, you’ll catch him mostly using 60-watt Blackstar HT Stage 60s loaded with Celestion Neo Creambacks. And while some boxes were stomped, he got most of his effects from a Line 6 Helix. “All of those sounds [in the Helix] are modeled on analog sounds, and you can tweak them endlessly,” he explains. “It’s just so practical and easy.”
The tools have only changed slightly since the band’s earlier days, when he favored Travis Beans and Hiwatts. Though he’s started to prefer higher gain sounds, Allen points out that “his guitar sound has always had teeth with a slightly bright sheen, and still does.”
“Honestly, I don’t think my tone has changed much over the past 30-something years,” Denison says. “I tend to favor a brighter, sharper sound with articulation. Someone sent me a video I had never seen of myself playing in the ’80s. I had a band called Cargo Cult in Austin, Texas. What struck me about it is it didn’t sound terribly different than what I sound like right now as far as the guitar sound and the approach. I don’t know what that tells you—I’m consistent?”
YouTube It
The Jesus Lizard take off at Nashville’s Blue Room this past June with “Hide & Seek” from Rack.
"When a guitar is “the one,” you know it. It feels right in your hands and delivers the sounds you hear in your head. It becomes your faithful companion, musical soulmate, and muse. It helps you express your artistic vision. We designed the Les Paul Studio to be precisely the type of guitar: the perfect musical companion, the guitar you won’t be able to put down. The one guitar you’ll be able to rely on every time and will find yourself reaching for again and again. For years, the Les Paul Studio has been the choice of countless guitarists who appreciate the combination of the essential Les Paul features–humbucking pickups, a glued-in, set neck, and a mahogany body with a maple cap–at an accessible price and without some of the flashier and more costly cosmetic features of higher-end Les Paul models."
Now, the Les Paul Studio has been reimagined. It features an Ultra-Modern weight-relieved mahogany body, making it lighter and more comfortable to play, no matter how long the gig or jam session runs. The carved, plain maple cap adds brightness and definition to the overall tone and combines perfectly with the warmth and midrange punch from the mahogany body for that legendary Les Paul sound that has been featured on countless hit recordings and on concert stages worldwide. The glued-in mahogany neck provides rock-solid coupling between the neck and body for increased resonance and sustain. The neck features a traditional heel and a fast-playing SlimTaper profile, and it is capped with an abound rosewood fretboard that is equipped with acrylic trapezoid inlays and 22 medium jumbo frets. The 12” fretboard radius makes both rhythm chording and lead string bending equally effortless, andyou’re going to love how this instrument feels in your hands. The Vintage Deluxe tuners with Keystone buttons add to the guitar’s classic visual appeal, and together with the fully adjustable aluminum Nashville Tune-O-Matic bridge, lightweight aluminum Stop Bar tailpiece, andGraph Tech® nut, help to keep the tuning stability nice and solid so you can spend more time playing and less time tuning. The Gibson Les Paul Studio is offered in an Ebony, BlueberryBurst, Wine Red, and CherrySunburst gloss nitrocellulose lacquer finishes and arrives with an included soft-shell guitar case.
It packs a pair of Gibson’s Burstbucker Pro pickups and a three-way pickup selector switch that allows you to use either pickup individually or run them together. Each of the two pickups is wired to its own volume control, so you can blend the sound from the pickups together in any amount you choose. Each volume control is equipped with a push/pull switch for coil tapping, giving you two different sounds from each pickup, and each pickup also has its own individual tone control for even more sonic options. The endless tonal possibilities, exceptional sustain, resonance, and comfortable playability make the Les Paul Studio the one guitar you can rely on for any musical genre or scenario.
For more information, please visit gibson.com.
Introducing the Reimagined Gibson Les Paul Studio - YouTube
Grissom and Paul Reed Smith’s first collaboration appeared in 2007 in the shape of theGrissom DGT—a signature instrument that’s seenmany iterations since. His Custom 30 amplifier followed five years later. But at 30 watts, that amp is pretty powerful for a lot of folks. So, this year PRS and their lead amp designer, Doug Sewell, unveiled the more club-friendly, tremolo-equipped DGT 15.
The basic architecture of the Indonesia-built DGT 15—single-channel, 2 x EL84 power section, 15 watts, and onboard reverb and tremolo—bears more than a little resemblance to a few important ’60s combo amps. But its 3-band EQ with presence, top-cut, and bright boost controls lends a lot of additional functionality and flexibility without cluttering the control panel or the playing experience. And, unlike some classic amps in this power class, the DGT 15 generates its wallop from a pair of output tubes in cathode bias, driven by three 12AX7s and one 12AT7 in the front end.
Feature Length
If the DGT 15’s control set were made up of just the EQ, presence, and top-cut controls, it would offer impressive tone-sculpting power. But the 3-way bright, boost, and master volume switches add exponentially more colors and gain contrasts. The bright switch is clever. It can be switched to always-on mode or set to disengage when the boost is on. The footswitchable boost, meanwhile, gives the single-channel DGT-15 the flex of a two-channel amp with a lead mode. Better still, you can set the amp up so you can activate the boost and master volume together—enabling access to the most headroom with the boost off and keeping the gain from running wild when the boost is engaged. The tremolo, too, can be activated via a mini-toggle or the included footswitch.
“While it’s basically clear, round, and full, depending on where you set the powerful EQ controls, you can reshape those tones into chunky, chiming, or sparkly variations on the clean theme.”Because the DGT-15 is cathode biased, the output tubes require no re-biasing when you change them. But the back panel includes jacks for monitoring bias levels, which is handy for matching tubes or diagnosing possible issues. The back panel is also home to the 5-pin DIN footswitch jack and three speaker outs for various combinations of 4 ohm, 8 ohm, or 16 ohm cabs. Our test unit came with the ported-back PRS DG 1x12 cabinet, which is loaded with one 60-watt Celestion Vintage 30. The DGT 15 head itself is a little bigger than lunchbox-sized (unless you’ve got a particularly hefty appetite). But it’s still an easy load at just 17.25" x 9" x 9.25" and a hair under 20 pounds. The 1x12" cab is relatively compact too, at 24" x 22.18" x 10.5", and weighs 27 pounds.
Tejas Tone!
If you read only the specs for the DGT 15 (or never had the pleasure of playing a Custom 30), you’ll probably expect a British voice. But the DGT 15’s core tonality leans as much toward the 1960s black-panel Fender camp, and it has a ready-to-rumble personality that shines through whether you match it to an ES-355 or a Telecaster.
With Fender single-coils in the mix, non-boosted settings are very clean right up to around 3 o’clock on the volume, where the amp starts to edge into breakup just a little. That’s a lot of clean room to roam. But while it’s basically clear, round, and full, depending on where you set the powerful EQ controls you can reshape those tones into chunky, chiming, or sparkly variations on the clean theme. Humbuckers push the DGT 15 to juicier, crunchier zones much sooner, of course. Even so, the amp remains crisp and taut without going muddy. With both single-coils and humbuckers, the overdrive and saturation generated by the boost avoid the sizzly sounds you hear from many modern lead channels and overdrives. It’s also very dynamic—easing into light distortion when you pick hard, and shedding its aggressive edge when you use a light touch or reduce guitar volume. Overdrive pedals (in this case, a Klon-like Wampler Tumnus Deluxe, Marshall-style Friedman Small Box, and a multi-voiced Tsakalis Six) gel with both the boost and clean modes, too. The reverb and tremolo are superb. The range of both successfully spans subtle and more radical sounds—and between these, a couple of drive pedals, and the Boost function, a gigging guitarist can wrangle a lot of flexibility out of this amp.
The Verdict
Using the single-channel, 2 x EL84/reverb/tremolo architecture as a jumping-off point, the DGT 15 scales new heights of versatility—not just via flexible switching and tone-shaping power, but by melding Vox-y edge with Fender clarity and body at a very accessible price.
Phat Machine
The Phat Machine
The Phat Machine is designed to deliver the tone and responsiveness of a vintage germanium fuzz with improved temperature stability with no weird powering issues. Loaded with both a germanium and a silicon transistor, the Phat Machine offers the warmth and cleanup of a germanium fuzz but with the bite of a silicon pedal. It utilizes classic Volume and Fuzz control knobs, as well as a four-position Thickness control to dial-in any guitar and amp combo. Also included is a Bias trim pot and a Kill switch that allows battery lovers to shut off the battery without pulling the input cord.
Silk Worm Deluxe Overdrive
The Silk Worm Deluxe -- along with its standard Volume/Gain/Tone controls -- has a Bottom trim pot to dial in "just the right amount of thud with no mud at all: it’s felt more than heard." It also offers a Studio/Stage diode switch that allows you to select three levels of compression.
Both pedals offer the following features:
- 9-volt operation via standard DC external supply or internal battery compartment
- True bypass switching with LED indicator
- Pedalboard-friendly top mount jacks
- Rugged, tour-ready construction and super durable powder coated finish
- Made in the USA
Static Effectors’ Street Series pedals carry a street price of $149 each. They are available at select retailers and can also be purchased directly from the Static Effectors online store at www.staticeffectors.com.