āSometimes, Iād like very much for my guitar to sound exactly like a supa cobra.ā
Luthier Creston Lea tells us about his favorite dirt pedalāan Athens, Georgia-made stomp that lets his guitar be a hero.
Letās face it: Nobody can tell what overdrive pedal youāre using. Whether youāre in a carpeted suburban basement accompanying the hired clown at your nephewās fifth birthday party or standing on the spot-lit monitor at Wembley, not one person knows whether the pedal at your feet cost $17 or $700, has true bypass, or has an internal DIP switch. Nobody leaning against the barn-dance corncrib or staunching a nosebleed up in the stadiumās cheap seats is thinking, āHeavens yes!! THAT is the sound of a silicone diode!ā
So, why buy another overdrive pedal? Or six more? Are they different? (Iām asking myself.) Of course theyāre different. (Iām telling myself.) A Turbo Rat is not aKlon. ATube Screamer is not a DS-1. Or is it? I canāt keep track. Why? Because itās fun to see what the talented manufacturers of the world have to offer. And because any reader who picks up a guitar magazine for any reason other than to swat a fly is curious about whatās new and what other players are using to good effect. You can blow your savings on a guitarāIād be happy to build you oneāor an amp (or vacation or college or discount merlot or a regrettable whole-back tattoo), or you can spend $100 to $300 to satisfy your curiosity. Will anybody in the audience notice? Unlikely. Will you feel better for five minutes or the rest of your life? Maybe. Seems worth rolling the dice from time to time. Nobody gets hurt. And sometimes youāll find a pedal that pulls something good out of your playing simply by responding to the way you play ā¦ which makes you play in new ways, etc., etc., in an infinite loop of delight. Or at least infinite till the next pedal comes along. It feels good. In a troubled and imperfect world, is it so wrong to feel good?
I bought my first overdrive pedal, a well-usedMXR Distortion+, for $25 in 1991. Surely, I could have stopped there. But many others have come and gone in the years since. Have I bought a pedal, sold it, bought it again, sold it again? More than once.
Iāve mostly, finally outgrown the desire for new pedals, but Iām not immune to the occasional itch. Sometimes a trusted brand introduces something I just haveto hear for myself. Thatās particularly true in the case of smaller-scale builders whose ears Iāve learned to trust. Iām going to like everythingChris Benson of Benson Amps or Brian Mena of Menatone ever makes, for example, so why not hear it all? Sometimes itās alluring copywriting that makes me reach for my wallet. Sometimes they just look cool.
Maybe in my case, I just canāt resist a name like Supa Cobra. Sometimes, Iād like very much for my guitar to sound exactly like a supa cobra. When Greer Amps first introduced their Supa Cobra six years agoādescribed as delivering āchewy medium gain overdrive to awesome crunchy grind!āāI was immediately intrigued.
Oh, how I love the Supa Cobraāa woefully underappreciated pedal now only available from Greer by special request. Iām sure there are smart players who have discovered the joys of its lower-gain settings, but for me itās perfect for punching through sonic mud and letting my guitar be heard. It lets my guitar be a hero.
I like it best with its 3-way clipping switch set to the middle position, which, according to Greer, bypasses the other modesā clipping diodes and lets the op ampās natural drive come through. I canāt say I know exactly what that means, but I know itās loud and clear and compressed in just the right way to let sustained notes really sing out in a natural, power amp-y manner.
The Supa Cobraās greatest feature may be the body control that dials in low-end presence without adding any murk. At higher body settings, the notes push on my chest in a way that I find thrilling. I like it around 60 percent with the gain knob turned nearly full up. Perhaps excessive, but life is short. When itās time to sound big, itās the biggest-sounding pedal Iāve found. Lots of overtones, but not at the expense of clarity. Itās quick to jump into harmonic feedback at the gain-y settings I like best, but in a beautifully controlled way.
As a matter of fact, I think people do notice what overdrive pedal Iām using. Not that they know itās a Supa Cobra, but it makes my guitar leap out in a way that so many other pedals have not. To borrow a word from Greerās Lightspeed Organic Overdrive (also fantastic), it sounds organic. Or, very much unlike a wasp in a tuna can. I think it sounds like music. Loud music.
This hollowbody has been with Jack since the '90s purring and howling onstage for hundreds of shows.
Our columnistās Greco 912, now out of his hands, but fondly remembered.
A flea-market find gave our Wizard of Odd years of squealing, garage-rock bliss in his university days.
Recently, I was touring college campuses with my daughter because sheās about to take the next step in her journey. Looking back, Iāve been writing this column for close to 10 years! When I started, my kids were both small, and now theyāre all in high school, with my oldest about to move out. Iām pretty sure sheās going to choose the same university that I attended, which is really funny because sheās so much like me that the decision would be totally on point.
The campus looks way nicer than it did back in the ā90s, but there are similarities, like bars, shops, and record stores. Man, our visit took me back to when I was there, which was the last time I was active in bands. Many crash-and-burn groups came and went, and it was then that I started to collect cheap guitars, mainly because it was all I could afford at the time, and there were a lot of guitars to find.
In that era, I was using an old Harmony H420 amp (made by Valco), a Univox Super Fuzz, and whatever guitar I was digging at the time. I was so proud to pull out oddball guitars during shows and just have this totally trashy sound. Squealing and squeaking and noisy as heck, my style was reminiscent of Davie Allan, Ron Asheton, and Chuck Berry. Of course, I was way worse than all of them, but I did have a frenetic energy and I covered up my lack of skill with feedback. During the ā90s, there was a great punk revival, and I loved bands like the Mummies, Teengenerate, the Makers, the New Bomb Turks, and a bunch of others. Bands were embracing lo-fi, and I was planted firmly in that vein. Plus, the guitars I liked to use already sounded lo-fi.
āThis was about the trashiest-sounding guitar, but in a good way!ā
For a short spell I was using this Greco guitar and, man, this was about the trashiest-sounding guitar, but in a good way! See, Fujigen pickups (like the ones here) have this echoey voice that I describe as an āempty beer canā sound. My Super Fuzz would just destroy these pickups, and I wish I had some recordings from that era, because it was a real scene! I believe this Greco was a flea-market find but it was much later that I found out it was called a Greco Model 912. This was actually a copy of a German-made Framus guitar, but with a lot more glitz and a crazier headstock. Four pickup selector switches, volume/tone knobs, and a rhythm/lead switch rounded out the electronics. Again, these pickups are instant spaghetti-Western movie tone. Airy and bright, the bridge area is like instant, gnarly surf music. Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine has a similar guitar and John Barrett of Bass Drum of Death was also fond of these pickups. Interestingly enough, these particular Grecos were made in small numbers, ranging between 500 to 600 in total (including all pickup combinations).
The Greco brand was initially owned by the U.S.-based Goya Corporation, but in the late 1960s, Fujigen bought the brand name (for $1,000) and produced a few truly gonzo guitars, including this Model 912. Originally called the GE-4, the four-pickup version sold for $99.50 in 1967. My particular 912 was sold at Sid Kleiner Guitar Studios in Califon, New Jersey (which I learned thanks to the attached store sticker on the headstock).
Aside from the chrome coolness and the four pickups, this model featured a cute little flip-up bridge mute that was all the rage at the time. The body also had some tasteful German carvings around the edges, and as I write this, I am missing this guitar tremendously! But not even close to the way Iām going to miss my girl in a few months. At least I know that she can shop at the same record stores!
Kevin Gordon and his beloved ES-125, in earlier days.
Looking for new fuel for your sound and songs? Nashvilleās Kevin Gordon found both in exploring traditional blues tunings and their variations.
I first heard open guitar tunings while in college, from older players whoād become friends or mentors, and from various artists playing at the Delta Blues Festival in the early mid-ā80s, which was held in a fallow field in Freedom Village, Mississippiāwhose topographical limits likely did not extend beyond said field.
I remember Jessie Mae Hemphill wearing a full-length leopard-print coat and black cowboy hat in the September heat, walking through the crowd selling 45s, and James āSonā Thomas singing his bawdy version of āCatfish Blues.ā Also, an assembly of older gentlemen passing a pint bottle, all wearing vests with the name of their fraternal society sewn on the back: Dead Peckers Club.
I played in master minimalist Bo Ramseyās band from 1988 to ā90. Living in Iowa City, attending grad school for poetry, weekend gigs with Bo were another equally important kind of education. He was the first guy I played in a band with who used open tunings. Nothing exotic: open G or open E, early Muddy Waters and Elmore James. Music I had loved since growing up in Louisiana. This was our bond, the music we both considered bedrock. Some of my first songs, written for that band, featured Bo on slide guitar.
I moved to Nashville in 1992, a city already populated with a few friendsāsome from Iowa, some from Louisiana. Buddy Flett was from Shreveport; Iād loved his playing since seeing him in the band A-Train in the early ā80s. Weād go eat catfish at Wendell Smithās, and inevitably talk about songs. Heād achieved some success as a writer, working with fellow north Louisianan David Egan, employing his own kind of sleight-of-hand mystery in both G and D tunings.
In 1993, I found a guitar that would change my life and my songwriting: a scrappy Gibson ES-125 from 1956, standing in a corner of a friendās apartment in Nashville, covered in dust. I asked if I could borrow it, for no particular reason other than to get it out of there so that it would be played. I wrote a song on it, in double drop-D tuning [DāAāDāGāBāD]. Not a great song, but it got me thinking about open strings and tunings again. I was looking for a way to play solo shows that reflected where I came from, and where the songs came from that I was writing.āThe droning aspect of open tunings always appealed to me, and in the context of solo gigs, the big sound of octaves ringing out helped this insecure guitar player sound a little taller, wider . . . something.ā
So, I put the guitar in open D [DāAāDāF#āAāD], put flatwounds on it, and started figuring out chord shapes (other than barring flat across) that I could use to play my songs, all of which at that point had been written and performed in standard tuning. Iād bought a ā64 Fender Princeton amp years before, when I was 19, but had never found a use for it until now: The 125 through the Princeton on about four was the sound. The droning aspect of open tunings always appealed to me, and in the context of solo gigs, the big sound of octaves ringing out helped this insecure guitar player sound a little taller, wider . . . something. The fingerings I came up with all seemed to mask the third of the scaleāso youād have a big sound which was neither major nor minor. And for my songs, it just felt right. By the time I recorded my second album for Shanachie, Down to the Well, in 1999, I was writing songs in open D (āPueblo Dogā). For the next two albums, released in 2005 and 2012, the majority of the songs were written and performed live in open D, employing a capo when necessary.
As usual, the methods and habits developed while touring fed back into the writing and recording processes. For my latest release, The In Between, though, most of the songs were written and recorded in standardāāSimple Things,ā āTammy Cecile,ā āComing Upāāwith some exceptions, including āKeeping My Brother Down,ā āYou Canāt Hurt Me No More,ā and the title track, on which I play a ā50s Gibson electric tenor archtop in a peculiar tuning: CāGāCāG. Though I canāt say that open tunings make for better songs, they do help me hear chords differently, at times suggesting progressions that I wouldnāt normally think of. One song currently in-progress has these verse changes: VIm / I / VIm / I / VIm / I / II / II. In standard tuning, that VI would sound (to my ear) too bright. But because Iām writing it in open D, how I fret the VI sounds low and dark, appropriate for the lyric and melody, creating the right setting for the lines and story to unfold.
