Taking Flight with Mark Lettieri | Dipped in Tone Podcast
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Mark Lettieri’s Fearless Funk
It’s virtually impossible to make a living in 2019 as just a guitarist. You need to be a composer, audio engineer, videographer, tour manager, educator, and more to put a dent in guitardom.
“In high school the idea of being a professional musician means you’re a rock star or something,” says Mark Lettieri. “Because of the naivety of youth, you don’t really know about all these other things that you can do or different ways to make a living doing it.”
But today, Lettieri has learned them all. In the past year, he has hopped between recordings and tours with Snarky Puppy, crafted his riff-showcasing “Baritone Funk” videos (on Instagram and YouTube), done sessions for everyone from Kirk Franklin to Erykah Badu, played Radio City Music Hall with Dave Chapelle, cut an EP with Vulfpeck spin-off the Fearless Flyers, and led his own trio on international tours. Each one of these situations calls for Lettieri to adopt a different approach and mindset.
There’s a whole middle class within the music business that Lettieri didn’t begin to explore until after college. At Texas Christian University, he chose not to be a music major, but rather to head into the family business of public relations and advertising. “The music thing was a really important hobby at that point,” he remembers. “It was a hobby that I was really passionate about, but the idea of doing it as a career wasn’t my focus.” After college, PR and advertising jobs were scarce, so Lettieri joined up with a locally based touring country band that lead him to a brief cameo in a Bud Light commercial.
Lettieri would hit the blues jams on Sunday nights in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and take any gig he could get—including one that found him performing a single song for a corporate retreat. A pharmaceutical company had re-written the lyrics of Kelly Clarkson’s “Stronger” into an ode to synergy, meeting quotas, and corporate strategy. It was a very bizarre gig. “I showed up and got paid, like, $800 for one song. But the band was slamming,” he says.
It wasn’t until 2008 that he entered the Snarky Puppy ecosphere. The collective was centered around Denton, Texas, and, more specifically, the music department in the University of North Texas. Through a series of musician friends, Lettieri received a call from head Puppy, bassist Michael League. The band was working on Bring Us the Bright and League needed some seriously funky guitar. Lettieri was on an R&B gig when the call came, but headed over to the studio at midnight and played a couple of passes on “Strawman” and went home.“A bit later, Michael called me for some gigs. I had to learn some really hard tunes in, like, three days for a Mardi Gras gig,” says Lettieri.
Since then, Lettieri has become a member of the seemingly ever-growing Snarky Puppy circle, and trades off on gigs with other two guitarists: Chris McQueen and Bob Lanzetti. The Pups hit the road—hard—and especially this year, after the release of their latest album, Immigrance, which features Lettieri, McQueen, and Lanzetti throwing down at the same time. With 12 to 15 or more members, depending on the day, it can be hard to find a musical place within such a large and dynamic group. A testament to Snarky Puppy’s composing and arranging is how well each member gets time to shine somewhere on every album. On Immigrance’s “Chonks,” a League composition, Lettieri rips through the mid-tempo stomp-groove with a rhythmic precision that extends throughout the arrangement.
Between Snarky Puppy gigs and sessions, Lettieri prepared two completely different solo albums for 2019. The first was Deep: The Baritone Sessions, which came out in March and was born of his newfound life as a baritone funk guru. In late 2016, Lettieri started to post brief videos of original funk riffs on a baritone guitar. They started as practice vids, played to either a ’70s funk classic or an EDM-ish loop that Lettieri programed in Logic. Lettieri later realized he was actually doing a form of pre-production.
Things of that Nature, set for release this fall, is Lettieri’s fourth full-length album as a leader and is easily his most progressive and melodic. If all you know of his playing is super-hip funk with deep shred influences, then you’re in luck, because it will give you exactly what you want and more. The album features his longtime trio of Jason “JT” Thomas on drums and Wes Stephenson on bass, along with cameos by fellow Snarky Pups Shaun Martin, Bobby Sparks, Justin Stanton, and Bob Reynolds. Before a recent trio tour of Europe, PG caught up with Lettieri to discuss his early days in the Dallas R&B scene, his approach to composition, and learning from David Crosby.
You grew up in the Bay Area. What initially inspired you to play guitar? Did you grow up in a musical household?
My dad plays a little bit of guitar just as a hobby. He had an acoustic guitar in the house that he would play every now and then, and I’d just mess around on it. Obviously, I didn’t know what I was doing. I was around 12. It’s just one of those adolescent things where you’re at the age where you discover music for yourself and with your friends. Thankfully, my parents had really great taste in music, so I grew up with great music around the house: everything from Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder to the Eagles and Jackson Browne and the Byrds. But you know, when you’re 12 and you’re hanging out with your buddies, you just want to go listen to the alternative rock station.
At what point did you get friends together and start to play?
It happened almost immediately. The first time I ever played a gig was in my backyard for a family member’s birthday party. My friend and I were both learning guitar at the same time and ended up with the same guitar teacher, Alison White, who taught us how to read tab. She had a recital for all her students, and the two of us played an instrumental version of Everclear’s “Heartspark Dollarsign.”
When did you veer off and start to play music that wasn’t on the radio?
My friends and I were learning songs and jamming, and we are always playing stuff like Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan. Everyone got into Joe Satriani, since he was a local guy. The biggest guitar experience of my life was seeing him on Halloween night in San Jose in ’98. We would play the Third Eye Blind stuff, because we knew girls at parties would like it.You can’t necessarily just play Joe Satriani’s “House Full of Bullets” at a high school backyard party.
Many musicians view the transition from high school to college as a way to get really serious about music. Was that the case for you?
I was a different breed of musician, in that I was pretty academic, but athletics were also important for me in college. I wanted a degree that was interesting and useful, which in my case was advertising and public relations. That’s what my parents did. They were both PR people. The music thing was a really important hobby at that point. It was a hobby that I was really passionate about, but the idea of doing it as a career wasn’t my focus. I was there to study and do sports and find a band and play on the weekends.
Your college band was well before you joined Snarky Puppy, right?
Yes. It wasn’t a jam band, but we jammed. It was sort of like a funk-rock-pop thing. We brought in our own tunes and we were, to my ears, one of the only power trios that was really grooving. The drummer was a friend from the TCU gospel choir, so he had a little bit of that sound.
Was that the point where your funk-rock influences came out in earnest?
Yeah. By the end of high school, I had started listening to Stevie Wonder and George Clinton and Steely Dan. I remember my friend got a Brothers Johnson album and we’d freak out over it. Of course, there’s guitar involved in all that, but the focus is the groove, and the chord progressions were different than what I was hearing in Megadeth.
When did you first get into baritone guitar?
I think the first time I played one was on a recording with this band that I continued to be a part of outside of college. We were just recording a tune that was a rock ballad thing, and the engineer was like, “You want to try a baritone guitar?” I didn’t know what that was. He brought it out and I got a feel for it and I played this very basic thing. And I thought, “well, that was neat” and then completely forgot about it. I used one on a few Snarky Puppy songs, but it was still just a chordal, textural thing. The idea to use it as a groove instrument was something that I just discovered. The light bulb went off and I thought “Why am I not playing funk on that?”
Let me back up. In the summer of 2015, I wrote this tune called “Jefe” on baritone and I thought it might work for Snarky Puppy. It was a groove thing on a baritone guitar, and there was something about it that was really satisfying to me. I love bass. I love bass players. I love bass playing. But I love funky guitar and groove guitar playing, so it’s kind of a happy medium. Then I started doing those silly internet videos.
Those videos on Instagram really took off. What was your process for putting those together?
I think the first Instagram stuff I ever did was all done with an iPhone. I didn’t know what I was doing. When I started doing the baritone thing, I was running through a Kemper and recording it in Logic and then syncing up the audio to the video. All the drums are programmed by me, and I played everything. It was simply, “Here’s a goofy kind of little funk track,” and the response from people was not something I expected at all. Once I noticed people were really responding to it, I felt I had to make it into an album because I would have been wasting a lot of stuff if I didn’t.
How did your musicianship improve after doing a whole album of baritone funk?
It helped me learn how to arrange guitars. A lot of what I do here at the home studio is produce my own guitar parts for records. Almost everything that comes through here is remotely done with varying degrees of direction from clients. Sometimes they’re very specific, but most of the time I have to read someone’s mind, which is really hard to do. The album was just another extension of arranging parts and stacks and different things to get the most out of a tune without maybe overdoing it—even though on a couple of songs I overdid it on purpose.
It sounds like “Stoplight Loosejaw” was one of those.
There are a ton of guitars on that song—on purpose. I wanted people to be looking left and right when they heard that song on headphones. And then when you try to play it, they would be like, “There’s no way I can play all this. I need 42 guitar players to play this live.”
Do you think any of these songs will make it into the trio’s live set?
That’s the problem I’ve created for myself. Tell you what, if people buy the record instead of stream it on Spotify, there’s a chance I can afford to put together a band large enough to come play the record in your town.
What type of band would you need to pull it off?
I could do with a keyboard player who had a couple keyboards, a drummer, a bass player. Then it gets difficult. Probably three guitar players. “Stoplight” is baritone, standard guitar, and 7-string guitar. I could maybe do that one with a 7-string and baritone, but the baritone record has so many stereo stacks, which are essentially horn parts, played on guitar. It’s not impossible; it’s just a logistical nightmare.
From what you described, that college band sounds a lot like what you are going after with your solo albums.
Yeah, it probably is an extension. That’s always been my thing: instrumental guitar stuff with melodies, harmonies, and riffs. But I try to keep an emphasis on the tunes, at least in some respect. Maybe I have split personalities or something. For example, if you go to my Instagram, you probably have no idea what kind of guitar player I am because there’s all kinds of crap up there.
When you write a tune, do you have a specific group or instrumentation in mind?
I try to make everything work for the smallest amount of people possible. Maybe subconsciously. Most of the stuff I write would be a stretch to think it would work for a large ensemble. I just haven’t matured in that way yet. A majority of the writing I do, I plan on using for the trio because I have an outlet for it and the ability to play it with people and for people. I have to be honest with myself. I need to get that music out because deep down inside there’s a 13-year-old kid and that’s what he wants to do.
I can totally hear you cutting through everything on Snarky’s “Bad Kids to the Back.”
I played baritone and regular guitar on that. I’m trying to think how they mixed it. Sometimes it’s kind of weird who they put to what side. I have to go back and listen to it. Well, I should listen to it, since I have to play it on tour. [Laughs.] But yeah, there’s definitely some Lettieri-esque comping rhythm, but Justin [Stanton, trumpeter and keyboardist] actually programmed a lot of that stuff for us to play with our interpretation.
Also, I thought that was you playing the second solo on “Chonks.”
A lot of people did. Bobby [Sparks, keyboardist] played that through my Supro Statesman head. I don’t know what he used for pedals, but it’s Bobby, so he probably turned them all on. He phrases like a guitar player, which is really cool. Bobby’s really funny. He’s like “Man, you know, I love guitar but, like, the feeling of the strings makes my skin crawl, man. I can’t do it.”
Guitars
Don Grosh NOS Retro
Fender/Don Grosh hybrid Stratocaster
Ibanez AZ2204
PRS McCarty 594
Collings I-35 LC
California Artist Guitars Artist Series T
Kiesel Solo 7
Bacci Leonardo
Danelectro ’56 U2
Supro Hampton
Martin 000C-1E
F-Bass Hammertone
Amps
Supro Statesman
Naylor Duel 60
Pure Sixty-Four Mean Street Gen III
Kemper Profiler
Suhr Reactive Load
Effects
J. Rockett Melody overdrive
J. Rockett GTO overdrive
J. Rockett Dude boost/overdrive
MXR Bass Octave Deluxe
MXR Blue Box
MXR Super Badass
MXR Phase 90
TC Electronic Nova delay
TC Electronic Hall of Fame
TC Electronic Brainwaves pitch shifter
TC Electronic Sub ’nʼ Up octaver
Way Huge Conquistador fuzz
Vertex Dynamic Distortion
Empress Effects Tremolo
Keeley Monterey rotary fuzz/vibrato
Line 6 M5 Stompbox Modeler
Strings and Picks
Dunlop Nickel-Wound (.095–.044, .010–.046)
Dunlop Nickel Wound for baritone (.013–.068)
Dunlop celluloid heavy picks
Let’s talk about the Jeff Beck influence on “Seuss Pants” from Things of That Nature. You really nailed how to phrase vocal-style melodies with the whammy bar.
I hope I don’t get sued by Jeff Beck. [Laughs.] I was practicing some new intervallic melodic things and just happened to have the whammy bar in my hand. That song came together in about a day or two. And then the title was just named after the pair of my wife’s pajama pants that have this really wild print on them. We just call her “Dr. Seuss pants.”
One thing I hadn’t heard you do on a recording is play acoustic and slide. Both are featured on “Ojai.” Did you write that in Ojai, California?
No, but the inspiration for that tune was David Crosby. It uses a tuning that he taught me. The tuning is C–G–D–D–A–E. It’s like an open 6/9 chord. I’m super self-conscious of my acoustic playing because I never really do it publicly, although I do some fingerstyle stuff on pop and gospel sessions. I just wanted a simple thing based around that tuning. I almost didn’t put it on the record because I was so nervous about my playing.
With so many different sounds and projects coming out this year, what’s your guitar/amp setup like? Other than the baritone stuff, do you start with a certain combo and move from there, depending on what’s needed?
I took almost everything to the studio. The guitar tracks are a blend of either a Supro Statesman, Pure Sixty-Four Mean Street, or a Naylor Dual 60. My engineer and I blend those amps all the time, so that was a big part of it, and I used a Kemper on a couple of songs.
Did you run a stereo setup with multiple amps or just a dual mono?
Yeah, dual mono. Exactly. In fact, I think all of the guitars on “Seuss Pants,” for example, were a blend of the Kemper and the Pure Sixty-Four, which I combined with a Suhr Reactive Load.
What were some of your favorite profiles in the Kemper?
I think I used a 3rd Power profile on that tune. I used all of Michael Britt’s stuff, and going back to the baritone record … that’s all Kemper. There are no “real” amps on that, and I used a bunch of different profiles.
“Naptime,” from Things of that Nature, opens with a hip funk riff. Sounds like the title was inspired by your life as a new dad.
That’s exactly what it is. “Naptime” happened because my kid was asleep for an hour and I felt like I should do something productive with music. I had that main riff stored in my phone somewhere. That song happened very quickly. “Seuss Pants” happened very quickly. “Blockheads” took a little more time because I rearranged a lot of it. Same with “Bubinga,” which is on the 7-string.
As if you didn’t have enough albums coming out this year, the Fearless Flyers just released a new EP, Fearless Flyers II. How did that collaboration come together?
I guess it was [Vulfpeck leader] Jack Stratton’s initial idea, and then I got an email from [Vulfpeck guitarist] Cory [Wong]. I had never met him, and I had never met Nate [Smith, drummer]. Of course, I knew about all the guys. Cory just emailed me through my website. They didn’t say anything about the kind of music, which is interesting. I called him and initially I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to do it, because I just didn’t know what was going on. So we talked, and I was like “Well, let me think about it.” After I thought about it, I realized I would be stupid not to do this. So, I called him back and said, “Yeah, sorry. Let’s do this.”
Going into those sessions, you still didn’t have any real idea about what it was about?
I remember asking “Do you want me to bring in any songs?" They said we would just do it all there in the studio. I brought a pedalboard that I had put together, specifically to get a lot of sounds from the baritone funk videos I was doing at the time. They said “We’re not going to use any of that. We’re just going to plug into the computer.” Also, we had to wear flight suits and our instruments were on these stands. I was thinking, “When’s lunch?” [Laughs.]
Taking that chance has now led to a gig at Madison Square Garden. What’s it going to feel like when you step out on that stage for the first time?Well, I won’t be able to step that far, because I’ll be standing behind a guitar that’s bolted onto a mic stand. The dream of me running out and playing rocking guitar solos is not going to be fulfilled that day, but I might just have to rip it off the stand and just drag that sucker out there.
This live take on “Seuss Pants” was filmed during a residency in Dallas with Lettieri’s working trio of Jason Thomas on drums and Wes Stephenson on bass. The decidedly Jeff Beck-ish melody was born out of a practice session where Lettieri was focusing on improving intonation with the whammy bar.
A reverb-based pedal for exploring the far reaches of sound.
Easy to use control set. Wide range of sounds. Crush control is fun to explore. Filter is versatile.
Works best as a stereo effect, which may limit some players.
$299
Old Blood Noise Endeavors Dark Star Stereo
oldbloodnoise.com
The Old Blood Dark Star Stereo (DSS) is one of those pedals that lives beyond simple effect categorization. Yes, it’s a digital reverb. But like other Old Blood designs, it’s such a feature-rich, creative take on that effect that to think of it as a reverb feels not only imprecise but unfair.
The Old Blood Dark Star Stereo (DSS) is one of those pedals that lives beyond simple effect categorization. Yes, it’s a digital reverb. But like other Old Blood designs, it’s such a feature-rich, creative take on that effect that to think of it as a reverb feels not only imprecise but unfair.
In this case, reverb describes how the DSS works more than how it sounds. I’ve come to think of this pedal as a reverb-based synthesizer, where reverb is the jumping-off point for sonic creation. As such, the sounds coming out of the Dark Star can be used as subtle sweetener or sound design textures, opening up worlds that might otherwise be unreachable.
Reverb and Beyond
Functionally speaking, the DSS starts with reverb and applies a high-/low-pass filter, two pitch shifters, each with a two-octave range in each direction, plus bit-crushing and distortion. Controls for lag (pre-delay), multiply (feedback), and decay follow, with mini knobs for volume, mix, and spread. Additional control features include presets, MIDI functionality, plus expression and aux control.
The DSS can be routed in mono, stereo, or mono-in/stereo-out. Both jacks are single TRS, and it’s easy to switch between settings by holding down the bypass switch and selecting via the preset button.
Although it sounds great in mono, stereo is where this iteration of the Dark Star—which follows the mono Dark Star and Dark Star V2—really comes alive. Starting with the filter, both pitch shifters, and crush knobs at noon—all have center detents—affords the most neutral settings. The result is a pad reverb, as synthetic as but less sparkly than a shimmer. The filter control is a fine way to distinguish clean and effect signals. In low-pass mode, the effect signal can easily get dark and spooky while maintaining fidelity and without getting murky. On the other end, high-pass settings are handy for refining those reverb pads and keeping them from washing out the clarity of the clean signal.
Lower fidelity is close at hand when you want it. The crush control, when turned counterclockwise, reduces the bit rate of the effect signal, evoking all kinds of digitally compromised sounds, from early samplers to cell phones, depending on how you flavor it. Counterclockwise applies distortion to the reverb signal. There’s a lot to explore within the wide ranges of the two pitch controls, too. With a four-octave range, quantized in half steps, the combinations can be extreme, and Dark Star takes on a life of its own.
Formless Reflections of Matter
The DSS is easy to get acquainted with, especially for a pedal with so many features, 10 knobs, and two footswitches. I quickly got a feel for the reverb itself at the most neutral filter and pitch settings, where I enjoyed the weight a responsive, textural pad lent to everything I played.
With just the filter and crush controls, there’s plenty to explore. Sitting in the sweet spot between a pair of vintage Fenders, I conjured a Twin Peaks-inspired hazy fog to accompany honeyed diatonic arpeggios, slowly filtering and crushing that sound into a dark, evil low-end whir as chords leaned toward dissonance. Eventually, I cranked the high-pass filter, producing an early MP3-in-a-good-way “shhh” that was fine accompaniment to sparser voicings along my fretboard. It was a true sonic journeyThe pitch controls increase possibilities for both ambience and dissonance. Simple tweaks push the boundaries of possibility in exponentially deeper directions. For more subtle thickening and accompaniment sounds, adding octaves, which are easy to tune by ear, offers precise tone sculpting, dimension, and a wider frequency range. Hearing simple harmonic ideas plucked against celeste- and organ-like reverberations kept me in the Harold Budd and Brian Eno space for long enough to consider new recording projects.
There is as much fun to be had at the highest feedback settings on the DSS. Be forewarned: Spend too much time there and you might need a name for your new ambient band. Cranking the multiply and decay knobs, I’d drop in a few notes, or maybe just a chord, and get to work scanning the pitch knobs and sculpting with the filter. Soon, I conjured bold Ligeti-inspired orchestral sounds fit for a guitar remix of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The Verdict
The Dark Star Stereo strikes a nice balance between deep control, a wide range of sonic rewards, playability, and an always-sounds-great vibe. The controls are easy to use, so it doesn’t take long to get in the zone, and once you do, there’s plenty to explore. Throughout my time with the DSS, I was impressed with its high-fidelity clarity. I attribute that to the filter, which allows clean and reverb signals to perform dry/wet balance and EQ functions. That alone encouraged more adventurous and creative exploration. Though not every player needs this kind of tone tool, the DSS is a must-check-out effect for anyone serious about wild reverb adventures, and it’s simple and intuitive enough to be a good fit for anyone just starting exploration of those zones. However you come to the Dark Star, it’s a unique-sounding pedal that deserves attention. PG
Great Eastern FX Co. has released the limited-edition OC201 Preamp, featuring vintage Mullard OC201 transistors for a unique fuzz sound. Part of the 'Obsolete Devices' series, this pedal combines classic circuits with modern components for optimal tone and reliability.
Boutique British pedal designers GreatEastern FX Co. have released a new pedal. Limited to just 50 units, the OC201 Preamp is an intriguing twist on the familiar two-transistor fuzz circuit, built around a pair of new-old-stock Mullard OC201 transistors.
“The OC201 is a very early silicon transistor,” company founder David Greeves explains. “It was actually the first silicon transistor made by Mullard, using the same method as their germanium devices. It’s pretty crude by modern standards, with very low gain and limited bandwidth, but that’s exactly what makes it so great in a fuzz pedal.”
This little-known low-gain silicon transistor is responsible for the OC201 Preamp’s palette of sounds, which GreatEastern FX say ranges from dirty boost and garage rock drive sounds up to a raw and richly textured fuzz, all with the excellent volume knob clean-up characteristics this style of fuzz is famous for. The circuit has also been tweaked to deliver a healthy kick of volume to your amp.
This limited-edition pedal is the first in a new series that Great Eastern FX are calling ‘Obsolete Devices’. According to the company, the Obsolete Devices series will feature the company’s take on a range of classic circuits, constructed using a mixture of vintage and modern components. It’s a distinct departure from Great Eastern FX’s main range of pedals.
“With pedals like the Design-a-drive and the XO Variable Crossover, we’re really committed to developing original designs that bring something new to the table,” founder David Greeves explains. “I’m always very conscious of choosing parts that aren’t going to go obsolete so we can go on making the pedals for as long as people want to buy them. But I also love messing around with old parts and classic circuits, which is a totally different mentality. The Obsolete Devices series is basically a way for me to have fun modifying these classic circuits and experimenting with my stash of NOS components, then share the results.
“The name is a little bit of an inside joke,” he continues. “I think what gets labelled as ‘obsolete’ is very subjective. As pedal designers and guitar players, we obsess over obsolete components and what, in any other field, would be considered outdated designs. So the name is a nod to that. I also loved the thought of us coming out with some brand-new Obsolete Devices of our own!”
Alongside the pedal’s new-old-stock Mullard OC201 transistors – which are the reason only 50 of them are being made – the OC201 Preamp uses quality modern components, including high-tolerance Dale metal film resistors and WIMA capacitors. GreatEastern FX say that this hybrid approach, using vintage parts where they make the most difference sonically and low-noise modern parts elsewhere, will deliver the best combination of tone and reliability while also keeping the price from spiralling out of control.
The OC201 Preamp will cost £249 in the UK, $299 in the US and €299 in the EU. It’s available now direct from Great Eastern FX Co. and from the following dealers:
- UK – Andertons
- Europe – Pedaltown.nl
- USA – Sound Shoppe NYC
- Canada – Electric Mojo Guitars
For more information, please visit greateasternfx.com.
Obsolete Devices OC201 Preamp | Great Eastern FX Co. - YouTube
Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.“I do think that PTP circuits should stay that way, and circuits made for PCB sound great and don’t need to be handwired to sound good,” says R2R Electric's Cris Vincent, who is especially adept at creating vintage-flavored fuzz machines.
Do vintage parts make better pedals? Not always.
Treble boosters have been used by legends like Brian May, Tony Iommi, Rory Gallagher, Marc Bolan, Stevie Ray Vaughan—you name it. They have empirically proven their place in the evolution of rock ’n’ roll, and even paved the way for entirely new music genres. Naturally, as a pedal builder, I had to make my own. In fact, I was building treble boosters even before Sehat Effectors was born. Technically speaking, the circuit is simple—just a single transistor and a few components.
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But here’s the catch: The results didn’t meet my expectations. At least, not with the setup I had at the time: an old Japanese Iwama Strat copy and a small solid-state practice amp. The sound was terrible—just downright awful! I kept asking myself, “Did I do something wrong? Or was I missing some secret sauce?” My experiments with the treble booster ended up as a long-abandoned project, collecting dust in my workshop.
Years later, I stumbled across R2R Electric on Instagram, and man, I was blown away by this guy. He’s laser-focused on crafting treble boosters using all kinds of old, recycled parts, and they sound amazing! I couldn’t help but be influenced by what he showcased in each post. It was like a masterclass on how he builds treble boosters and how vintage fuzz pedals work their magic.
This curiosity led me to reach out to Cris Vincent of R2R Electric to ask him about his perspective on treble boosters and vintage fuzz.
Can you share the origin story of R2R Electric?
R2R Electric began officially five years ago. I had been saving old parts from reel-to-reel recorders, old radios, and other vintage audio equipment. I had no experience in building pedals, so I didn’t know what to do with all the parts.
One day, I met Tucker [Krishock] of Lamp Electric and asked him to build a Dallas Rangemaster from the parts I had collected. The first time we plugged in, it blew our minds! So, we began “Reel To Reel Effects.” I began practicing copying the pedal Tucker had made me, and selling them on Reverb under the brand “R2R.” Sadly, Tucker ended up passing away, and so I decided to carry on by combining our two names into R2R Electric.
“If you feel better playing a hand-built pedal versus a mass produced one, there’s something to that. Even if it’s only in your head.”
What fascinates you about treble boosters and vintage Fuzzes?
I became obsessed with vintage effects during my time working in recording. I would always be hunting for new tones or to replicate tones from classic records. I had picked up a Roland BeeBaa, which has a fuzz and a treble booster, and I decided to see what the booster sounded like. I loved it! There is something to the simplicity of these old circuits that I feel give a more natural feel and tone. A vintage boost or fuzz needs to be as equal in your rig as the guitar or amplifier—they have that much impact on the overall performance of a rig.
Do you believe vintage effects should ideally be paired with vintage amplifiers?
I think they can sound great through both vintage and modern amps. The drawback with some vintage amps is that they weren’t meant to be hammered by a huge fuzz signal. I’ve had to refine several vintage speakers that couldn’t handle fuzz. Most modern amps are designed with pedals as a fact of life and can handle most of the tones you throw at them. So, from a reliability standpoint, modern amps handle old fuzz pedals a bit better. But for those classic tones, the pairing of a vintage amp and vintage pedal is the only way to get there.
What inspired you to use recycled components?
That was all I had. I have no formal electrical experience, so I didn’t realize that old parts could go bad or be noisy. It took a lot of working with them to realize how unreliable they can be. I also feel like they have a sound that modern components can produce too. Using old parts to build old circuits just makes sense to me.
Do you think there's a tonal difference between PCB construction and point-to-point designs?
I don’t think one sounds better than the other, really. I think it comes down to the original design of the circuit and the limitations of that particular construction type. I do think that PTP circuits should stay that way, and circuits made for PCB sound great and don’t need to be handwired to sound good. The old PTP circuits tend to sound better, but that’s just my opinion. I think it all comes down to everyone’s own personal taste. If you feel better playing a hand-built pedal versus a mass-produced one, there’s something to that. Even if it’s only in your head.
Based on this brief interview, I’ve come to realize just how deeply spiritual and immersive the experience of finding the sound in your head can be. It’s a stark contrast to my own initial disappointment with the treble booster I built—it was something I felt was a failure and quickly discarded. Cris, on the other hand, exemplifies someone who devoted himself with unwavering focus, constantly seeking until he reached that moment of enlightenment—the “eureka” moment—that validated what he had believed in all along.
In a way, what I’ve done—like replacing electric guitar strings with nylon strings—was not technically wrong, but clearly not the right fit. The same principle applies to treble boosters, fuzz pedals, and perhaps many other effects pedals. They each have unique tendencies and characteristics that may be waiting for their own “eureka” moment to truly shine.
Marty Friedman and his trusted tech, Alan Sosa, who handles all effects switching manually during the show, showed us the goods.
Brought to you by D’Addario.
Getting in Shape
Not every guitar model looks good on every player. Could Friedman pull off Dimebag’s Dean machines? He doesn’t think so. But a Les Paul body is universally agreeable. “If an accountant picks up this guitar, he’s going to look really cool,” says Friedman. That’s why he went with the LP-style mahogany body on his signature Jackson Pro Series MF-1 with a cracked purple mirror finish. The design, of course, has a “Jacksonized” headstock and Friedman’s logo to set it far apart from its Gibson counterparts.
The guitars come loaded with Friedman’s signature EMG MF passive pickups, and Friedman strings his with D’Addario NYXL .010–.046s. He plucks with Dunlop picks.
On deck in case of emergency is a Jackson X Series Signature Marty Friedman MF-1, a budget-conscious alternative to the flashy Pro Series MF-1.
ENGL
Another signature piece, this ENGL Marty Friedman INFERNO Signature E766 is a 100-watt firebreather that Friedman designed with the German amp makers. Friedman says they started from the company’s Steve Morse signature amplifier, then pared back the elements he didn’t use, resulting in a cheaper but still incredibly powerful product.
Marty Friedman's Board
Friedman asked Sosa to build him a board based on his needs, and Sosa delivered this no-frills stomp station, which he operates backstage during the show. First, Friedman’s signal hits a Revv G8 noise gate which the tech dubs the most important pedal; he has his hand on it the whole show, tweaking its settings for different parts. After, there’s an MXR M87 bass compressor for clean tones, Maxon AF-9 Auto Filter, MXR Analog Chorus, MXR Phase 90, Ibanez Tube Screamer, and a Boss DD-500. Friedman runs to his board via a Shure GLXD6+ wireless system, and a Boss ES-8 switching system helps simplify Sosa’s job.
Settings and effect applications can change from night to night. Sosa will try out different things during the set, and afterward, he and Friedman will decide what worked and what didn’t.