Our guest columnist’s current pedalboard spices his EXH diet with stomps from Line 6, TC Electronic, Strymon, Fulltone, Ibanez, and Boss.
Ex-B-52s member, composer, and NYC music scene veteran Pat Irwin loves pairing EHX pedals with keyboards—and recollecting good times with his late guitar virtuoso friend.
I’ve got a thing for Electro-Harmonix effects boxes. I’ve got a Crying Tone Wah that’s the coolest, a 16 Second Digital Delay, and a Deluxe Memory Man. All have made their way onto my ambient country band SUSS’s new record, Birds & Beasts. And currently a Big Muff, two Freeze Sound Retainers, and a Mel9 Tape Replay Machine are on my pedalboard. Here’s the thing: I like using them on keyboards.
I remember spending one cold winter night recording keyboards for a track called “Home” that made it onto Promise, the third SUSS album. I was playing a Roland Juno-106 through the Deluxe Memory Man while my bandmate Bob Holmes manipulated the delay and feedback on the pedal in real time. The effect was otherworldly. You can also hear the Crying Tone on SUSS’s “No Man’s Land” and “Train,” on Bandcamp. Sure, the guitars sound great, but those keyboards wouldn’t sound the same without the extra touch of the Crying Tone. I also used it on the B-52s’ “Hallucinating Pluto,” and it went out on the road with us for a while.
One of the first musicians I met when I moved to New York City in the late ’70s was the late, great Robert Quine. Quine and I would talk for hours about guitars, guitarists, and effects. I bought my first Stratocaster from Quine, because he didn’t like the way it looked. I played it on every recording I’ve made since the first Lydia Lunch record, 1980’s Queen Of Siam, and on every show with 8 Eyed Spy, the Raybeats, the B-52s, and my current bands PI Power Trio and SUSS. It was Quine who taught me the power of a good effects pedal and I’ll never forget the sessions for Queen of Siamwith the big band. Quine played everything through his Deluxe Memory Man straight into the recording console, all in one take except for a few touch ups here and there.
Quine and I used to go to Electro-Harmonix on 23rd Street and play through the boxes on display, and they let us pick out what we wanted. It’s where we first saw the 16 Second Digital Delay. That was a life-changer. You could make loops on the fly and reverse them with the flick of a switch. This thing was magical, back then.
“Quine played everything through his Deluxe Memory Man straight into the recording console, all in one take except for a few touch ups."
When I recorded a piece I composed for the choreographer Stephen Petronio and performed it at the Dance Theatre Workshop in Manhattan, I put everything through that 16 Second Digital Delay, including my clarinet. Later, when I recorded the theme for the cartoon Rocko’s Modern Life, I played all of the keyboards through the Deluxe Memory Man. Just when things would get a little too clean, I’d add a little more of the Memory Man.
I’m pretty sure that the first time I saw Devo, Mark Mothersbaugh had some Electro-Harmonix effects boxes taped to his guitar. And I can’t even think of U2 without hearing the Edge and his Deluxe Memory Man. Or seeing Nels Cline for the first time, blowing a hole in the universe with a 16 Second Digital Delay. Bill Frisell had one, too. I remember going into the old Knitting Factory on Houston Street and passing Elliott Sharp. He had just played and I was going in to play. We were both carrying our 16 Second Delays.
Who knows, maybe someone from another generation will make the next “Satisfaction” or “Third Stone from the Sun,” inspired to change the sound of a guitar, keyboard, or even a voice beyond recognition with pedals. If you check out Birds & Beasts, you’ll hear my old—and new—boxes all over it. I know that I won’t ever make a SUSS record or play a SUSS show without them.
Things change, rents go up, records are being made on computers, and who knows how you get your music anymore? But for me, one thing stays the same: the joy of taking a sound and pushing it to a new place, and hearing it go somewhere you could never have imagined without effects pedals.
Donner andThird Man Hardware’s $99, three-in-one analog distortion, phaser, and delay honors Jack White’s budget gear roots.
Compact. Light. Fun. Dirt cheap. Many cool sounds that make this pedal a viable option for traveling pros.
Phaser level control not much use below 1 o’clock. Repeats are bright for an analog delay. Greater range of low-gain sounds would be nice.
$99
Donner X Third Man Triple Threat
thirdmanrecords.com
A huge part of the early White Stripes mystique, sound, ethos, and identity was tied to guitars and amps that, at the time, you could luck into for cheap at a garage sale. These days, it’s harder to score a Crestwood Astral II, or Silvertone Twin Twelve with a part-time job in the ice cream shop. Back in the late ’90s, though, they were a source of raw, nasty sounds for less than a new, more generic guitar or amp.
Jack White played a big part in making these vintage outcasts desirable. But these are still fine times to make cool sounds for less—especially if you aren’t brand or image conscious. And White, staying faithful to his roots, likes the idea of making sure there’s fewer financial obstacles to making a racket. That led to the collaboration with Donner reviewed here—the Donner X Third Man Triple Threat—a $99 distortion, phaser, and delay combo that you can practically fit in a pencil case.
Light and Little Analog Amalgamator
China-based Donner is probably best known to PG readers for its very inexpensive mini effects, which can usually be had for less than 50 bucks. Keen-eyed effects heads will notice that the Triple Threat looks a lot like Donner’s Alpha Crunch and Alpha Force—three-in-one distortion/chorus/delay units in identically sized enclosures that sell for 69 bucks. The Triple Threat effectively subs a version of Donner’s Pearl Tremor mini phaser for the chorus. While many players will find more utility in the chorus-equipped Donner three-in-one, White’s choice of a phaser substitute is a cool one.
Those consumed with the matter of portability will be tickled by the Triple Threat. It measures about 7 ½" wide and less than 2 ½" deep. It will actually fit in a back pocket. And if you’re committed to making your load-in as light as possible or maximizing square inches in a tiny apartment, the Triple Threat is less problematic than the king-sized Mr. Goodbar on your desk that you shouldn’t eat anyway. While it’s not heavy by any means, the Triple Threat feels super sturdy. The tiny knobs might be the only part of the design that I would worry about in terms of fragility—particularly given the very necessary proximity of the knobs to the footswitches. But the removable rubber rings that surround the knobs, which also make them easier to adjust, also work as bumpers of a kind against glancing blows.
Blast, Warp, Repeat….
I don’t think the intent of the Triple Threat is to emulate any particular tone synonymous with Jack White. I’m not as familiar with White’s solo output as I am with that from the White Stripes. But I associate the former with a lot of glitchy fuzz and octave scramble and the latter with the sound of a Silvertone Twin Twelve bludgeoned by a Big Muff or Micro Amp. If he used a phaser anywhere in his catalog, I don’t remember.
White and Donner probably envisioned the distortion circuit in the Triple Threat as the best compromise between simply rowdy and evil. It serviceably covers Jack White sounds ranging from organic amp filth to fuzzier stuff, and can change in feel drastically depending on your guitar. Sixty-year-old lipstick pickups in a Silvertone, for instance, sound super-White Stripes-like—gritting up a clean black-panel Fender at the mellow end of the gain spectrum and sounding fuzzy and mammoth at the more aggressive end. Alnico V PAFs coaxed trashier, more modern, more metallic tones at high-gain extremes. And a Stratocaster spanned SRV-ish and L.A. glam-metal tonalities. A Boss DS-1 is a pretty reasonable touchstone in a very general way. But the wide ranging gain and tone controls give the Triple Threat’s distortion a pretty varied personality.
As mentioned, the Triple Threat’s phaser is based on Donner’s Pearl Tremor. It sounds a little like a script-era MXR Phase 90. However, it’s less thick than that circuit, and even at maximum depth it’s not as bubble-gum chewy as a more modern block-script Phase 90 or a Small Stone. Some of that might be down to what sounds like a slight reduction in low end when the phaser is engaged. But the Triple Threat phaser also requires a level boost. To reach unity gain, you need to set the level at 3 o’clock, which leaves much of the parameter’s lower reaches pretty ineffective.
The delay is uniquely quirky, too. At its highest mix levels, repeats are much louder than at equivalent settings on analog echoes, including the MXR Carbon Copy and Ibanez Analog Delay. That can open up cool textural options based on pronounced echoes. Lower mix levels evoke some of the hazy qualities of the Carbon Copy, Memory Man, DM-2 and others. But the Triple Threat’s repeats are brighter than any of those delays, sounding closer to an MXR’s Carbon Copy Bright. Some analog delay users will miss the dark taper of vintage BBD units. The greater treble response also means the effect swells a little less smoothly to the self-oscillation point. But despite its brighter profile, the Triple Threat’s delay is still thicker sounding than the Boss DD-3 I used as a digital comparison.
The Verdict
At 99 bucks, it’s hard to fault differences between the Triple Threat’s individual effects and analog equivalents that, for the most part, cost $100 to $160 by themselves. In spite of its quirks, the Triple Threat’s combination of tiny size, convenience, ease of use, and range of tones make it a steal. And any pro with a simple rig that more-or-less mirrors this one could do a fly-in or backline gig with confidence that cool sounds—and a very light load-in—await.
Russian Big Muff Pi Bubble Font circa 1995
A selection of vintage EHX pedals that still inspire today.
Travel back in time to see the crazy colors that Mike Matthews and his N.Y.C.-based crew have concocted the last 40-plus years.
1969/1970 Original Big Muff Pi
Photo by Kit Rae
Late-'70s Echo Flanger
Photo by Tom Hughes
1973 Big Muff Pi Version 2, Ram's Head
Photo by Kit Rae
Photos by Tom Hughes
An early-90s Mike Matthews-branded Soul Kiss wah-type effect. It features a plastic case with a strap clip and is controlled with the mouthpiece coiled next to it.
Late '70s Muff Fuzz
Photo by Tom Hughes
NYC Big Muff Pi
Photo by Tom Hughes
Late '70s Polyphase
Photo by Tom Hughes
Late '70s Deluxe Electric Mistress
Photo by Tom Hughes
Small Stone Family
Photo courtesy pedalarea.com
The top row of this Small Stone collection shows left to right) a mid-'70s model with minimalist graphics, a late-'70s version with large orange lettering, early-'80s and mid-'90s models with blocky black-and-orange graphics, and a recent Small Stone Nano, while the bottom row features three Electro-Harmonix/Sovtek co-branded units built in Russia and a US-made late-'70s Bad Stone.