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All-Star Pedalboards 2017

From classic-rock simplicity to indie-tweaker’s delight: Premier Guitar chronicles the most noteworthy stomp stations from last year’s Rig Rundowns.

Chris Robinson Brotherhood
Jordan Rigg at JRIG Pedalboards built the tone station that sits at Neal Casal’s feet every night. Before hitting the board, his signal goes through a Sarno Steel Guitar Black Box tube buffer. From there, it goes to a Road Rage looper that accesses various combinations from a big pile of effects, including several pedals from BearFoot FX (a Honey Beest OD, a Pale Green compressor, and a Baby Pink booster), Catalinbread (an OctaPussy, an Echorec, a Montavillian echo, a Belle Epoch Tape Echo, and a Topanga reverb), EarthQuaker Devices (a Terminal fuzz, an Arpanoid pitch arpeggiator, and a Grand Orbiter phaser), and Strymon (Lex rotating speaker pedal and Orbit flanger), as well as a Dunlop Cry Baby 105Q bass wah, a 3Leaf Audio Proton envelope filer, a Chase Bliss Audio Gravitas trem, and a Korean Klon Centaur clone. All the cables were built by Kidd Candelario, amps are switched with a Divided by 13 Switchazel A/B box, and tuning is accomplished with a TC Electronic PolyTune 2 Noir.

Billy Corgan shining with his Reverend Z One.

The Smashing Pumpkins frontman balances a busy creative life working as a wrestling producer, café/tea company owner, and a collaborator on his forward-thinking, far-reaching line of signature guitars. Decades into his career, Corgan continues to evolve his songcraft and guitar sound for the modern era on the band’s latest, Aghori Mhori Mei.

“Form follows function,” explains Billy Corgan when asked about the evolution of his songwriting. These three words seem to serve as his creative dictum. “Early Pumpkins was more about playing in clubs and effecting a response from the live audience, because that’s where we could get attention."

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The effect of ecommerce on CopperSound's shipping room.

Our columnist ponders the business-to-consumer model, and how the design of online stores might be more crucial to the stompbox industry than we’d like to admit.

Let’s open things up with a TV/movie trope. The character on screen has a speech that they’ve been preparing for once they’re called up onstage to address the audience. When they finally get up to the lectern to deliver it, they pause, give the attendees a look over, and rip up their script in a dramatic fashion before pursuing an off-the-cuff, heartfelt message that goes on to invigorate the crowd and inspire a roaring ovation. For right now—I’m at least doing the first part of that. I’m abandoning my planned topic. Consider this me ripping up my finely curated index cards.

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Loud, evil, searing hot, and unexpectedly versatile, the Fuzz War’s demented bass cousin has a bold and more-complex personality all its own that sounds radical with guitar, too.

Evil. Just plain evil. Unexpected and vast variation. Responds interestingly to bass volume and tone attenuation. Wet/dry mix control. Sounds amazing (and extra evil) with guitar.

None.

$195

Death By Audio Bass War
deathbyaudio.com

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If you like your fuzz measured in megatonnage, the Death By AudioFuzz War is one of life’s great joys. And if you’re a bass player with similar predilections and accustomed to watching guitar players have all the fun, the new DBA Bass War will be sweet revenge.

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Originally introduced in 1975 as part of the Schaffer-Vega Diversity System (SVDS) wireless system, this mini boost pedal originated from a 1/4” headphone jack intended for monitoring purposes.

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