PG’s Nashville correspondent shares his favorite moments behind the camera with some of the best guitar players in the world.
When PG started the Rig Rundown series in 2008, YouTube limited videos to a lean 10 minutes. Now running time is limitless and we've packed hundreds of hours of guitar geekery into more than 450 of these addictive videos, racking up millions of views while giving us all-access to what were formerly trade secrets.
For me, it's not so much about the gear as much as it is the stories behind it that makes these videos fascinating. So, in no particular order, here are my Top 10 Rig Rundowns.
Doyle Wolfgang von Frankenstein
Doyle was in full Misfits' makeup, shirtless, muscled up, and intimidatingly towered over me. This was my first interview ever, so I asked the basic questions about his rig and signed off. Then Doyle says in thick Jersey, "What? It's ov'r? I got all dressed up for this. Ask me more stuff." I realized this big scary monster was just a fun, 50-year-old kid who wants to make every day Halloween.
Mike Stern
In 2016, Stern tripped over construction debris left on the streets of New York, which resulted in two broken arms and nerve damage in his hands. It looked like Stern's reign as a jazz giant was over. A year later, Stern released Trip and was back touring and killing it. In this rundown, he revealed that he was having trouble holding onto a pick, so he started applying wig glue to his right hand. Stern's recovery is a testimony to the indomitable human spirit.
Joe Bonamassa
It's an unworldly experience standing next to arguably one of the greatest guitarists ever as he plays a '59 Les Paul through two Dumbles and two tweed Twins cranked so loud you can hear it from outer space. When Bonamassa said, "John, play this thing," I was both elated and terrified.
Tom Bukovac
Buk and I moved to Nashville around the same time. Although the attrition rate is fairly high for musicians here, 27 years later we're still standing. Buk is a great guitar player, but more importantly, he's one of the most musical people you'll ever meet. Just listen to his improv in the opening. He never runs out of ideas.
Steve Wariner
Chet Atkins assigned the honor of C.G.P., aka Certified Guitar Player, to his favorite pickers. There are three left in the world: PG has filmed Rundowns on two of them. Steve Wariner is a C.G.P., four-time Grammy winner. and mind-blowing talent. From his family band to his teenage years playing bass for Dottie West to playing in Atkins' band to becoming a huge country star, Steve's career odyssey feels like a movie. If the stories aren't enough, listen to Wariner rip on his signature Gretsch.
Tommy Emmanuel
Speaking of C.G.P., this Rundown is the most fun and informative 43 minutes you can spend online. Sitting next to Tommy as he plays is like watching Picasso paint. You see that it's just six strings and 10 fingers, but you hear an incredibly tight band. Not only is the playing amazing, Tommy is just plain fun and funny.
Peter Frampton
As we entered Frampton's massive studio, his iconic black Les Paul Custom was leaning on a stand, with a cable leading to a Klon, then an old Bassman with a talk-box running to a mic. Frampton, standing next to it, said, "Hi, I'm Peter. Here's my rig." He waited a few beats, then opened up a door to another room to reveal his real rig, featuring several boats of vintage guitars, two refrigerator-sized racks, two Bradshaw boards, stacks of amps, a trio of Marshall 4x12s, and more. Frampton's electric and acoustic performances during this rundown highlight his incredibly melodic playing. Somehow he makes his jazz leanings fit perfectly with classic rock 'n' roll.
Waddy Wachtel
When I was a kid, pre-MTV, you rarely saw live music on TV, but when you did, it seemed like Waddy Wachtel was always there. Any concert, be it Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor, Keith Richards, Stevie Nicks, etc.—at stage right was this guy rocking out with long, crazy hair, granny glasses, and bell-bottoms. He was the guy that made me think, "That's what I want to do: play with everybody." Waddy has great stories, like the time Stephen Stills sold him his 1960 Les Paul for $350, or giving his neighbor Leslie West his first Les Paul Jr.
Daniel Lanois
Lanois produced two of my top five albums: Chris Whitley's Living with the Law and Emmylou Harris' Wrecking Ball. Lanois was touring with his vintage Korg SDD-3000 that he's used since the '80s, on albums like U2's The Unforgettable Fire and The Joshua Tree.There were strips of whitetape across the top of the SDD-3000 covered with Sharpie'd tempo reminders from his tour with Emmylou when they performed the entire Wrecking Ball album live. As a pedal-steel player, it was amazing to hear him play his old Sho-Bud in some weird tuning I would've never imagined. His battered '53 Les Paul with a mini-humbucker from an old Gibson Firebird was the icing on the cake.
Larry Carlton
When Mr. 335 invited us to his Nashville home studio, I felt like I was meeting the Dalai Lama. Listen to Carlton's improv on the head and you'll understand why he's a legend.
[Updated 7/26/2021]
Day 6 of Stompboxtober is here! Today’s prize? A pedal from Revv Amplification! Enter now and check back tomorrow for the next one!
Revv G3 Purple Channel Preamp/Overdrive/Distortion Pedal - Anniversary Edition
The Revv G3 revolutionized high gain pedals in 2018 with its tube-like response & tight, clear high gain tones. Suddenly the same boutique tones used by metal artists & producers worldwide were available to anyone in a compact pedal. Now the G3 returns with a new V2 circuit revision that raises the bar again.
A twist on the hard-to-find Ibanez MT10 that captures the low-gain responsiveness of the original and adds a dollop of more aggressive sounds too.
Excellent alternative to pricey, hard-to-find, vintage Mostortions. Flexible EQ. Great headroom. Silky low-gain sounds.
None.
$199
Wampler Mofetta
wamplerpedals.com
Wampler’s new Mofetta is a riff on Ibanez’s MT10 Mostortion, a long-ago discontinued pedal that’s now an in-demand cult classic. If you look at online listings for the MT10, you’ll see that asking prices have climbed up to $1k in extreme cases.
It would have been easy for Wampler to simply make a Mostortion clone and call it a day, but they added some unique twists to the Mofetta pedal. While the original Mostortion had a MOSFET-based op amp, it actually used clipping diodes to create its overdrive. The Mofetta is a fairly accurate replica and includes that circuitry, but also has a toggle switch for texture, which lets you choose between the original-style diode-based clipping in the down position and multi-cascaded MOSFET gain stages in the up position.
Luscious Low Gain and Meaty Mid-Gain
The Mofetta’s control panel is very straightforward and conventional with knobs for bass, mids, treble, level, and gain. The original Mostortion was revered for its low-gain tone and is now popular among Nashville session guitarists. Wampler’s tribute captures that edge-of-breakup vibe perfectly. I enjoyed using the pedal with the gain on the lower side, around 9 o’clock, where I heard and felt slight compression that gave single notes a smooth and silky feel. I particularly enjoyed the tone-thickening the Mofetta lent to my Ernie Ball Music Man Axis Sport’s split-coil sound as I played pop melodies and rootsy, triadic rhythm guitar figures. The Mofetta has expansive headroom, and as a result there’s a lot of space in which you can find really bold, cutting tones without muddying the waters too much. Even turning the gain all the way off yields a pleasing volume bump that would work well in a clean boost setting.
There’s a lot of space in which you can find really bold, cutting tones without muddying the waters too much.
Switching the texture switch up engages the MOSFET section, introducing cascading gain stages that elevate the heat and add flavor the original Mostortion didn’t really offer. Classic rock and early metal are readily available via the MOSFET setting. If you need to stretch out to modern metal sounds, the Mofetta probably isn’t the pedal for you. Again, the original Mostortion was, first and foremost, a low-to-mid-gain affair, so unless you’re using it as a boost with a high-gain amp, the Mofetta is not really a vehicle for extreme sounds.
One of the Mofetta’s real treats is its responsiveness. Even at higher gain settings the Mofetta is very touch sensitive. You can tap into a wide range of dynamic shading just by varying the strength of your pick attack. I enjoyed playing fast, ascending scalar passages, picking with a medium attack then really slamming it hard when I hit a high climactic note, to get the guitar to really scream.
The Verdict
Wampler is a reliably great builder who creates pedals with a purpose. I own two of his pedals, the Dual Fusion and the Pinnacle, and both are really exceptional units. The Mofetta captures the essence of the Mostortion and makes it available at an accessible price. But even if you’ve never heard or played an original Mostortion, you’ll appreciate the truly versatile EQ, touch sensitivity, and the bonus texture switch, which expands the Mofetta’s range into more aggressive spaces. The wealth of dirt boxes on the market today can make a player jaded. But Wampler pushed into a relatively unique, satisfying, and interesting place with the Mofetta.
Although inspired by the classic Fuzz Face, this stomp brings more to the hair-growth game with wide-ranging bias and low-cut controls.
One-ups the Fuzz Face in tonal versatility and pure, sustained filth, with the ability to preserve most of the natural sonic thumbprint of your guitar or take your tone to lower, delightfully nasty places.
Pushing the bias hard can create compromising note decay. Difficult to control at extreme settings.
$144
Catalinbread StarCrash
catalinbread.com
Filthy, saturated fuzz is a glorious thing, whether it’s the writ-large solos of Big Brother and the Holding Company’s live “Ball and Chain,” the soaring feedback and pure crush of Jimi Hendrix’s “Foxy Lady,” or the sandblasted rhythm textures of Queens of the Stone Age’s “Paper Machete.” It’s also a Wayback Machine. Step on a fuzz pedal and your tone is transported to the ’60s or early ’70s, which, when it comes to classic guitar sounds, is not a bad place to be.
Catalinbread’s StarCrash is from their new ’70s collection, so the company is laying its Six Million Dollar Man trading cards on the table—upping the ante on traditional fuzz with more controls and, according to the company’s website, a little more volume than the average fuzz pedal, while still staying in the traditional Fuzz Face lane.
The Howler’s Viscera
Arbiter Electronics made the first Fuzz Face in 1966. The StarCrash is inspired by that 2-transistor pedal, but benefits from evolution, as did almost all fuzz pedals in the ’70s, when the standard shifted from germanium to silicon circuitry to improve the consistency of the effect’s performance. The downside is that germanium is gnarlier to some ears, and silicon transistors don’t respond as well to adjustments made via a guitar’s volume control.
While Fuzz Faces have only two knobs, volume and fuzz, the silicon StarCrash has three: volume, bias, and low-cut. Catalinbread’s website explains: “We got rid of that goofy fuzz knob. We know that 95 percent of all players run it dimed, and the remaining 5 percent use their guitar’s volume knob to rein it in.”
I suspect there are plenty of players who, like me, do adjust the fuzz control on their pedals, but the most important thing is that the core fuzz sound here is excellent—bristly and snarling, with a far girthier tone than my reissue Fuzz Face. It’s also, with the bias and low-cut controls, far more flexible. The low-cut control allows you to range from a traditional, comparatively thinner Fuzz Face sound (past noon and further) to the StarCrash’s authentic, beefier voice (noon and lower). Essentially, it cuts bass frequencies from 40 Hz to 500 Hz, resulting in an aural menu that runs from lush and lowdown to buzzy and slicing. And the bias control is a direct route to the spitty, fragmented, so-called Velcro-sound that’s become a staple of the stoner-rock/Jack White school of tone. The company calls this dial a “dying battery simulator,” and it starves the second transistor to achieve that effect.
Sweet Song of the Tribbles
Playing with the StarCrash is a lot of fun. I ran it through a pair of Carr amps in stereo, adding some delay and reverb to mood, and used a variety of single-coil- and humbucker-outfitted guitars. While both pickup types interacted well with the pedal, the humbuckers were most pleasing to my ears with the bias cranked to about 2 o’clock or higher, since the ’buckers higher output allowed me to let notes sustain longer before sputtering out. Keeping the low-cut filter at 9 o’clock or lower also helped sustain and depth in the Velcro-fuzz zone, while letting more of the instruments’ natural voices come through, of course.
With the low-cut filter turned up full and the bias at 10 o’clock, I got the StarCrash to be the perfect doppelganger of my Hendrix reissue Fuzz Face. But that’s such a small part of the pedal’s overall tone profile. It was more fun to roll off just a bit of bass and set the bias knob to about 2 or 3 o’clock. Around these settings, the sound is huge and grinding, and yet barre chords hold their character while playing rhythm, and single-note runs, especially on the low strings, are a filthy delight, with just the right schmear of buttery sustain plus a hint of decay lurking behind every note. It’s such a ripe tone—the sonic equivalent of a delicious, stinky cheese—that I could hang with it all day.
Regarding Catalinbread’s claims about the volume control? Yes, it gets very loud without losing the essence of the notes or chords you’re playing, or the character of the fuzz, which is a distinct advantage when you’re in a band and need to stand out. And it’s a tad louder than my Fuzz Face but doesn’t really bark up to the level of most Tone Bender or Buzzaround clones I’ve heard. In my experience, these germanium-chipped critters of similar vintage can practically slam you through the wall when their volume levels are cranked.
The Verdict
Catalinbread’s StarCrash—with its sturdy enclosure, smooth on/off switch and easy-to-manipulate dials—can compete with any Fuzz Face variant in both price and performance, scoring high points on the latter count. The bias and low-cut dials provide access to a wider-than-usual variety of fuzz tones, and are especially delightful for long, playful solos dappled with gristle, flutter, and sustain. Kudos to Catalinbread for making this pedal not just a reflection of the past, but an improvement on it.
Catalinbread Starcrash 70 Fuzz Pedal - Starcrash 70 Collection
StarCrash 70 Fuzz PedalIntrepid knob-tweakers can blend between ring mod and frequency shifting and shoot for the stars.
Unique, bold, and daring sounds great for guitarists and producers. For how complex it is, it’s easy to find your way around.
Players who don’t have the time to invest might find the scope of this pedal intimidating.
$349
Red Panda Radius
redpandalab.com
The release of a newRed Panda pedal is something to be celebrated. Each of the company’s devices lets us crack into our signal chains and tweak its inner properties in unique, forward-thinking ways, encouraging us to be daring, create something new, and think about sound differently. In essence, they take us to the sonic frontier, where the most intrepid among us seek thrills.
Last January, I got my first glimpse of the Radius at NAMM and knew that Red Panda mastermind Curt Malouin had, once again, concocted something fresh. The pedal offers ring modulation and frequency shifting with pitch tracking and an LFO, and I heard classic ring-mod tones as the jumping off point for oodles of bold sounds generated by envelope and waveform-controlled modulation and interaction. I had to get my hands on one.
Enjoy the Process
I’ve heard some musicians talk about how the functionality of Red Panda’s pedals are deep to a point that they can be hard to follow. If that’s the case, it’s by design, simply because each Red Panda device opens access to an untrodden path. As such, it can feel heady to get into the details of the Radius, which blends between ring modulation and frequency shifting, offering control of the balance and shift ratios of the upper and lower sidebands to create effects including phasing, tremolo, and far less-natural sounds.
As complex as that all might seem, Red Panda’s pedals always make it easy to strip the controls down to their most essential form. The firmest ground for a guitarist to stand with the Radius is a simple ring-mod sound. To get that, I selected the ring mod function, turned off the modulation section by zeroing the rate and amount knobs, kept the shift switch off and the range switch on its lowest setting. With the mix at noon and the frequency knob cranked, I found my sound.
From there, by lowering the frequency range, the Radius will yield percussive tremolo tones, and the track knob helped me dial that in before opening up a host of phaser sounds below noon. By going the other direction and kicking the rate switch into its higher setting, a world of ring-mod tweaking opens up. There are some uniquely warped effects in these higher settings that include dial-up modem sounds and lo-fi dial tones. Exploring the ring mod/frequency shift knob widens the possibilities further to high-pitched, filtered white noise and glitchy digital artifacts at its extremes.
There are wild, active sounds within each knob movement on the Radius, and the modulation section naturally brings those to life in more ways than a simple knob tweak ever could, delivering four LFO waveforms, a step modulator, two x-mod waveforms, and an envelope follower. It’s within these settings that I found rayguns, sirens, Shepard tones, and futuristic sounds that were even harder to describe.
It’s easy to imagine the Radius at the forefront of sonic experiments, where it would be right at home. But this pedal could easily be a studio device when applied in low doses to give a track something special that pops. The possible applications go way beyond guitars.
The Verdict
The Radius isn’t easy to plug and play, but it’s also not hard to use if you keep an open mind. That’s necessary, too: The Radius is not for guitar players who prefer to stay grounded; this pedal is for sonic-stargazers and producers.
I enjoyed pairing the Radius with various guitar instruments—12-string, baritone, bass—and it kept getting me more and more excited about sonic experimentation. That feeling is a big part of what’s special about this pedal. It’s so open-ended and controllable, continuing to reveal more of its capabilities with use. Once you feel like you’ve gotten something down, there are often more sounds to explore, whether that’s putting a new instrument or pedal next to it or exploring the Radius’ stereo, MIDI, or expression-pedal functionality. Like many great instruments, it only takes a few minutes to get started, but it could keep you exploring for years.