A pair of new, mighty Sunn 100S amps—the company’s original flagship amplifier—built by the new team led by James Lebihan, Mike Eldred, and Steve Skillings.
In 1963, the Portland, Oregon-based Kingsmen found themselves near the very top of the charts behind what would become a garage-rock standard, the immortal “Louie Louie.” The Kingsmen’s bass player, Norman “Norm” Sundholm, and his brother, Conrad Sundholm, simultaneously became seminal figures in developing an amplifier line that would eventually become the sonic foundation of the doom-metal music artists like Stephen O’Malley play. In between, the amps became a crucial sound in classic rock.
The Kingsmen’s version of “Louie Louie” [written by Richard Berry] sat in the Billboard Hot 100 chart for 18 weeks, peaking at number two. Suddenly, everyone wanted to see the band live, and they hit the road, playing on stages all over the country. PA systems geared toward high fidelity for rock ’n’ roll concerts were still several years away, and Norm Sundholm needed a bass amp that could stand up to the rigors of the road and be loud and clear enough for the concert halls and gymnasiums hosting the Kingsmen.
Norm’s brother, Conrad, was a high school physics teacher and an electronics wizard. The siblings rolled up their sleeves together to build a bass amp for the Kingsmen’s first big tour. According to an interview Norm gave to NAMM in 2019, they first modified a 26-watt Fender Bandmaster, replacing the speakers with JBLs and adding a preamp stage using an off-the-shelf amplifier manufactured by Dynaco. Using their surname as inspiration, they called the 60-watt amp a Sunn.
Hot on the heels of their hit single “Louie Louie,” the Kingsmen needed more amp power. Bassist Norm Sundholm turned to his brother Conrad, who started the Sunn brand with this early model.
Photo from the collection of Bill Eberline
Norm Sundholm declined to be interviewed for this piece, and Conrad Sundholm died in 2021, but his son, Steve Sundholm,fills in what came next: “Uncle Norm gave out my dad’s number to fans at Kingsmen shows who heard this amp and wanted to buy one. So my dad started getting random calls from people around the country asking how they could purchase a Sunn amp.” By about 1965, Conrad borrowed $1,300 from his credit union to begin building speaker cabinets and cobbling together new Sunn amps. Partly using Dynaco components and employing JBL speakers, early models included the 100S for guitar and the 200S for bass. Throughout 1963 and 1964, Conrad Sundholm built Sunn amps in his garage.
During downtime from Kingsmen tours, Norm went on the road in search of retailers to carry the Sunn line. While on tour, he met Bill Eberline, an 18-year-old disc jockey from Michigan, and hired him to be the company’s first sales rep. Eberline worked in 18 states east of the Mississippi, setting up retailers. Now 79 years old, Eberline tells me, “For me, Sunn was a passion, and the reason it was a passion was because the amps and the cabinets were so good. I loved the look on a musician's face when they plugged in for the first time and turned it up.” The secret, he says, was not only the amplifiers’ power and tone, but also the unique design of the speaker cabinets.
“The speaker cabinets for our bass amp, the 200S, were called rear-loaded, folded-horn, bass-reflex enclosures,” he explains. “So the speaker comes in from the back, there’s baffling inside, and the speaker is tuned to the cabinet. So you get the most out of it; you’re getting as much sound off the back as you’re getting off the front. I used to demonstrate it to people using a match. I’d put a lit match in front of the speaker, and it would blow the match out. Other speakers had open backs, so you were losing all that sound. And it gave it an incredible punch. It was the best bass speaker cabinet, at the time, that had ever been built.”
After sitting dormant for more than two decades, the Sunn brand has been resurrected by a new team that promises to stick to the company’s core construction techniques while addressing the needs of modern players. This cab is classic Sunn.
“We started going from music store to music store, unloaded them out of the van, and wheeled them into shops,” Norm Sundholm told NAMM. “It was a little tough with the franchise Fender dealers, but any competing store was wide open to take the line.”
It was Bill Eberline who brought one of Sunn’s biggest retailers to the party: Manny’s Music in New York City. Manny’s was the epicenter of Manhattan’s music retailers row on West 48th Street. About 10 different shops lined the block between 6th and 7th Avenues, making it simple to stumble from one to another. From Jimi Hendrix to Jimmy Page, all the premier guitarists of the day shopped there.
“I used to demonstrate it to people using a match. I’d put a lit match in front of the speaker, and it would blow the match out.” —Bill Eberline
“At first, Manny’s wasn’t interested,” Eberline recalls. “And Manny himself eventually kicked me out of the store; I was hanging out there all day with this big amplifier. But as I was leaving, one of his competitors across the street saw me and the amp, and he called me over. He said to me, ‘Listen, kid. [Eberline was 20 years old at the time.] Have your factory ship me a bunch of empty boxes with the Sunn logo.’ And I did! He put these out on the street in front of his shop like they were trash, as if he had ordered a bunch of our amps.” Soon after seeing the boxes, Manny’s placed an $80,000 order. That huge sale, in 1965, gave Sunn enough capital to move into a bigger manufacturing space, which Steve Sundholm tells me was his grandfather’s garage. “It was big, like the size of a boathouse,” he says.
Inside the garage, Sunn built tube guitar and bass amps such as the 60-watt 100S and 200S, and the 120-watt 1000S and 2000S, as well as the solid-state 100-watt Beta series and the 300-watt (at 2 ohms) Coliseum. The amps quickly became known for their volume, punch, and ability to deliver an articulate bottom end, and they became increasingly more visible on high-profile stages. Noel Redding, playing bass in the Jimi Hendrix Experience, used six Sunn speaker cabinets and three amp heads in June 1967 at the Monterey Pop Festival. Sunn amps were also seen and heard in the backlines of Led Zeppelin, the Who, and Cream. Hendrix most likely purchased his Sunn gear at Manny’s Music. Eberline remembers, “Jimi played through two of our most powerful amps daisy-chained together—the 1000S, double the power of the regular [100S] amp, and it used four KT88 tubes. He put that through four Sunn cabinets with two 15-inch speakers in each cab.”
The Model T, one of the most coveted amps to bear the Sunn name, was created during Tom Hartzell’s ownership of the company. This is one of the many employed by Sunn O))) guitarists Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson.
Photo by Chris Kies
In August 1969, Eberline trucked Sunn amps to Woodstock, where they appeared behind Felix Pappalardi and Leslie West of Mountain on their Saturday evening set. That got Eberline into trouble. The roadies at Woodstock kept all the loaned amps, Sunn lost the inventory, and Eberline was fired.
James Lebihan is the CEO of the newly relaunched Sunn brand. He takes the history further, telling me over Zoom, “Everybody used Sunn gear—the Beach Boys, the Allman Brothers, and the Jeff Beck Group. Even later, bands like Queen used Sunn amps.” The Rolling Stones considered endorsing Sunn amps. However, according to the book Rolling Stones Gear by Andy Babiuk and Greg Prevost, the Stones’ shipment of amps was damaged in transit, and the endorsement never materialized.
The common denominator for the bands embracing Sunn was the desire for an overdriven tone with a lot of bottom end. In other words, the sound was heavy. Their tone was perfect for early metal and hard-rock artists like Black Sabbath and Mountain. West used a Sunn speaker cabinet to record their iconic “Mississippi Queen” at the Record Plant in New York City.
In 1972, a few years after leaving their dad’s boathouse-size garage and opening a factory in Tualatin, Oregon, the Sundholm brothers sold their company to a manufacturer named Tom Hartzell. Although a few of Sunn’s best models emerged during that period—including the iconic, tube-driven, 150-watt Model T—the Hartzell years are considered by many to be somewhat lost. Eberline says, “I left before they sold the company, but those new guys did not know what they were doing, in my opinion.” Hartzell was not a music-business guy and didn’t quite grasp the industry’s economics. Then, in 1977, he perished in a plane crash.
The magic of the Sunn Beta Lead and Bass amps was in their preamps. Here’s a current rackmount-ready version of that famed preamp unit, from the new Sunn factory.
Not much happened after Hartzell’s passing, and the brand lay dormant until Fender purchased Sunn in 1985, just as punk rock and metal split into genres, including hardcore, doom metal, and grunge. Sunn amps were embraced by guitarists like the Melvins’ Buzz Osborne and Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain. That’s when Stephen O’Malley first became aware of them. “I was into hardcore and death metal,” he remembers. “I was15 years old, and I saw the Melvins. They burst my brain open. Joe Preston is on bass, and Buzz Osborne is playing two full Sunn stacks with two Sunn Beta Leads. That was the first time I heard loud guitar where it was ripping the air apart, and you feel it in your body.” O’Malley also recalls seeing Northwest heavy rockers Karp using a Model T, and he praises that amp’s ability to be adapted to a genre like doom metal.
“We modify them,” he explains. “We put in special tubes, and we’re able to change the bias of the amps. We take out what we don’t need, like the line out, and we take out the circuit breaker and replace it with a fuse. The Model T allows me to have less breakup in the preamp section and more headroom. It becomes more about speaker distortion and power-tube overdrive than high-input gain.”
The essential, blue-ribbon quality of the Model T—even unmoded—is how it works with overdrive and fuzz effects. The extraordinary transparency and headroom of these amps allows the sonic character of these pedals to take on enormous, growling dimensions—so they become almost supernatural versions of themselves.
Was it only the tone driving these later Northwest-based bands toward Sunn Amps? Perhaps not. Sunn had long been an Oregon company, so there were a lot of cheap, used Sunn amps sitting around in guitar shops from Portland to Seattle. Lebihan explains it this way, “When these guys were getting started, and they were teenagers, and they were in school, and they didn’t have any money, they could find these Beta Leads and Model Ts in pawn shops.” Stephen O’Malley tells me that his partner in Sunn O))), Greg Anderson, found his first Model T at a swap meet in Seattle—a vinyl dealer left it sitting under a table of records.
No band has taken the term “amp worship” more literally than Sunn O))), seen here leading service in front of a wall that consists mostly of Sunn amps.
Photo by Mike White
The steep headroom, high-gain, tube-driven 100S, 200S, Model T, and solid-state Beta line of bass and guitar heads are now considered the pinnacle of the original line. O’Malley claims some amount of credit for this: “They’re a mythical amplifier now, but I don’t know if they would be if it weren’t for our band and the scene around our band—like Wino Weinrich from the Obsessed, he played them, too.”
“I was 15 years old, and I saw the Melvins. They burst my brain open…. Buzz Osbourne is playing two full Sunn stacks with two Sunn Beta leads. That was the first time I heard loud guitar where it was ripping the air apart, and you feel it in your body.” —Stephen O’Malley
Until recently, Fender’s ownership would not be considered a new golden age for Sunn; not much happened. Fender did drop a Model T reissue, but that amp shared virtually none of the same circuitry as its Hartzell-era predecessor. Strangely, Fender actually built some electric guitars—using the Mustang and Strat names—overseas under the Sunn brand. But overall, the brand languished, making the vintage gear rare and sought-after in the used market.
Lebihan tells me that many have tried to get Fender to relaunch Sunn since the brand was discontinued in 2002. Still, it was only when he came to the table in 2023 and brought Mike Eldred and Steve Skillings with him that Fender executives finally sat up in their chairs and made a deal to relaunch Sunn. This triumvirate brings decades of musical marketing skills to the party: Lebihan had a background in tech before becoming a serial entrepreneur in the music world; Eldred was on the team that put the Fender Custom Shop on the map in the mid ’90s; and Skillings came from a background at Bose, where, among other things, he was on the Bose L1 team—the group that created the ubiquitous skinny-speaker PA systems popular with buskers, garage jammers, and wedding bands.
Together, this team has big plans for Sunn, and early on they ran a Wefunder campaign in which 288 enthusiasts were able to support the new Sunn company in exchange for discounts on amps and branded swag like t-shirts and pint glasses. The cash, says Skillings, is fueling costs for tooling and other early manufacturing requirements. “There’s a lot of costs associated with ramping up this kind of product,” he notes. “Just to do a mold for a knob, for example, costs $5,000.”
“There are cheaper ways to manufacture these things that would make it ‘not Sunn.’ And I see them going out of their way to recreate it as faithfully as possible without making it the cost of a mortgage payment to the customer.” —Steve Sundholm
And they’re preparing to drop new generations of amps in the near future. Not only will Sunn’s popular tube amps be back, but they’re also creating solid-state bass heads and new cabinets. And they plan to push well beyond what Sunn has been known for for 60 years. Mike Eldred is visibly excited when he says, “We’ve got a Beta combo amp coming up for preorder very soon. And we’re going to continue pushing into the combo market and beyond. You have a lot of folks now who don’t want to lug around a heavy 150-watt amp and products are coming out now that reflect that, where your amp is on your pedalboard. We’re going to go after that market aggressively.”
The essence of the modern Sunn 100S.
One thing everyone is curious about is the future of the Model T, the amp most heavily embraced by O’Malley, Anderson, and other doom-metal axe grinders. That’s something the new Sunn team is rethinking very carefully. The Model T offers a singular tone, but in today’s live music environment, where portability and low-wattage amps rule, it’s a bit of a dinosaur. Eldred says, “There’s no reason why you can’t take the tone stack of a Model T and pare it down into something like a 20-watt version of the amp.”
Steve Sundholm became a board member of the new Sunn brand after his dad passed away. He tells me that at the end of his dad’s life, Conrad knew Sunn was coming back. “He told me, ‘Man, I hope they do it right.’ Not ‘They better do it right,’ just ‘I hope they do.’” Steve is convinced that his dad would be proud of this relaunch. “I’ve seen their plans,” he says, “and I really feel like they are going above and beyond to do it right. For example, they’re building the same closed-back cabinet style as the vintage speakers. There are cheaper ways to manufacture these things that would make it ‘not Sunn.’ And I see them going out of their way to recreate it as faithfully as possible without making it the cost of a mortgage payment to the customer.”
O’Malley, who considers the amps in his backline “members” of his group, also looks forward to checking out the upcoming line and what the new Sunn team is doing. He says, “I understand that they are building the new amps to original specs; I’m really curious about them.” Even still, a “Louie Louie” cover from Sunn O))) to connect the dots probably won’t materialize.
There’s no doom-metal band out there I can find who’s covered the Kingsmen’s signature tune, although both Motörhead and Black Flag have taken great, heavy shots at it. Perhaps they may have even used Sunn amps in the process. As Sunn rises again, illuminating the musical landscape once more, the chance for new riffs and powerful sounds to come from this brand is brighter than ever.
Billy Strings
Billy Strings’ Pedalboard
Bluegrass’ biggest ambassador has continued expanding his sound with more pedals and more modeling. When Billy wants to turn his acoustic into space dust, he’s got a hearty squadron of willing vaporizers. This is where Strings tap dances each night—an incredible feat given how much he’s already doing with his hands. A RJM Mastermind GT MIDI switcher is the brains of the operation as it engages all his pedals and the Kemper’s SLO-100 profile. The Grace Design BiX gives FOH a clean, pure acoustic sound. A pair of Mission Engineering SP-1 expression pedals handle manipulating time-based and modulation effects. His two Ernie Ball 40th Anniversary Volume Pedals bring in Leslie effects and the Kemper. A TC Electronic Ditto Looper remains on the board since our last encounter. A Peterson StroboStomp HD covers any on-the-fly tuning needs during his sets. Nashville’s XAct Tone Solutions built out this tonal headquarters, which features several of their custom devices and routing boxes. A couple Strymon Zuma units power everything on the floor, while a duo of Radial boxes helps organize. (The SGI-44 talks to the rack-mounted JX44, and the JDI is a passive direct box designed to handle gobs of levels without any unwanted crunch.)
Here’s a peek behind the scenes, into the inside of Strings’ rack. Starting at the top left, he has a Voodoo Lab Sparkle Drive, Electro-Harmonix Micro POG, MXR Bass Envelope Filter, Source Audio EQ2, Boss DD-8 Digital Delay, Source Audio C4 Synth, and a Strymon Lex. A Strymon Ojai powers the pedals in this drawer. Moving to the right, he has a Jam Pedals Waterfall, Boss SY-1 Synthesizer, EHX Pitch Fork, Red Panda Raster, and an Eventide H9. All of these gizmos are powered by a Strymon Zuma. Going down to the bottom left, Strings assembles this drawer with a NativeAudio Pretty Bird Woman, a Chase Bliss Wombtone, Source Audio Nemesis, DigiTech Polara, Boss DC-2W Dimension C, and an EHX Freeze. Another Strymon Zuma powers all these creatures. The final drawer houses a Chase Bliss Audio Mood, EHX Intelligent Harmony Machine, and a Chase Bliss Automatone MKII Preamp. Everything comes to life with a final Strymon Zuma.
Blu DeTiger
Blu DeTiger’s Pedalboard
“I haven’t gone through that phase of using crazy pedals yet. Live, I just really love the sound of a clean bass tone,” admits bassist DeTiger. Whether slapping on TikTok, headlining solo tours, performing with Jack Antonoff and Olivia Rodrigo, or improvising over her DJ set, this board represents her go-to gear. Each piece in this cast of characters gets used for specific moments. She uses the octave up on the Electro-Harmonix Micro POG for “shredding” and the sub octave setting to “change the vibe for a second.” The Electro-Harmonix Bass Big Muff enhances some of the POG’s shadings with added stank. The EarthQuaker Devices Spatial Delivery is used for the funky intro to “enough 4 u,” her collaboration with Chromeo. She prefers the Spatial Delivery to the Mu-FX Micro-Tron III (which doesn’t get used at all now) and the MXR Analog Chorus is engaged for one instance. The Boss RE-2 Space Echo sees action with the Strat for “Sonic Youth freakouts” during “Kinda Miss You.” A Boss TU-3 Chromatic Tuner keeps all four strings in line and a Voodoo Lab Pedal Power 2 Plus provides the volts.
Christone “Kingfish” Ingram
Kingfish’s Pedalboard
Christone “Kingfish” Ingram is well on his way to becoming the blues’ newest 6-string ruler and he doesn’t use much gear to get the job done. Kingfish’s signal starts with a Shure BLX4 Wireless Receiver, which hits a Boss TU-3W Tuner. From there, the route is a Dunlop Cry Baby Mini Wah, a Marshall Shredmaster, and a Boss DD-3 Delay, all powered by Strymon. The pedals live on a Pedaltrain Nano board and were assembled by Barry O’Neal at XAct Tone Solutions.
Emily Wolfe
Emily Wolfe’s Pedalboard
“If I get a new piece of gear, I have to figure out every single part of it before I can really use it,” the shreddin’ Texan confessed to PG while talking about her 2021 album, Outlier. That sensible curiosity has led her to dialing in precise parameters on the pedals and creating colossal combos with singular gain staging. Her silver bullet is the EarthQuaker Devices Tentacle Analog Octave Up, running into a Fulltone OCD, and an MXR Six Band EQ. Wolfe claimed to PG, “That’s the sound that belongs to me.” The sequence creates a “crazy fuzztone” from the overdrive. Then she uses the EQ to reduce some of the lows and boost the mids for a sound she says will get her guitar to cut through any mix.
Other spices in the rack include an Analog Man King of Tone, an EarthQuaker Devices Dirt Transmitter fuzz, an Ibanez Analog Delay Mini, an Origin Effects Cali76 Compact Deluxe, a Walrus Audio Julia, and a Strymon Flint. The Empress Buffer puts the Delay Mini and Flint outside the RJM Mastermind PBC’s control.
Underneath the hood, Wolfe has tucked in a pair of MXR M109S Six Band EQ pedals (one hitting the King of Tone and the other hitting the OCD), an Electro-Harmonix Pitch Fork, the EarthQuaker Devices Tentacle, and a couple of Strymon power supplies (Ojai and Zuma).
Hermanos Gutiérrez
Estevan Gutiérrez’s Pedalboard
The Gutiérrez brothers pack light. You can see that Estevan Gutiérrez utilizes nearly every square inch of his pedalboard. Overlaps between the brothers’ boards include the MXR Dyna Comp Mini, the Strymon Flint, and the Strymon El Capistan. You might think their setup is basic now, but they used to play sans pedals. Eventually, Estevan discovered the Strymon El Capistan, and their sound was never the same. “I remember that day,” he recounted to PG about first playing the pedal. “I fell in love. I knew it was gonna change something in our sound.” As soon as he purchased the El Capistan, he called his brother and said, “You have to buy this. This is gonna be next level for us.”
The remaining effects for Estevan include a Malekko Omicron Vibrato, a Boss RC-500 Loop Station, and a Boss TU-3 Chromatic Tuner (off the board) keeps his Gretsch in check. Lastly, you’ll notice a G7th Performance 3 ART Capo on the pedalboard, too.
Alejandro Gutiérrez’s Pedalboard
Alejandro, who plays guitar and lap steel, relies on this compact board that holds a MXR Dyna Comp Mini, a Boss GE-7 Equalizer, a Strymon Flint, and the influential Strymon El Capistan. While Estevan discovered the El Cap and unlocked its magic for Hermanos Gutiérrez, Alejandro has molded it to his sound in different ways. “I use it as a layer,” he explains. “Really subtle. My brother uses it more as a delay. He has this horse sound, like this galloping sound he can create with his slapping, which only he can do.” A Boss TU-3 keeps his guitars in line.
Nile Rodgers
Nile Rodgers’ Pedalboard
The Hitmaker doesn’t drown in effects. Instead, Rodgers maintains a simple, sophisticated signal chain into his Fender Hot Rod Deville. Rodgers uses a Pedaltrain Classic 2, loaded up with an Eventide PowerMax Power Supply. The Eventide feeds a Korg Pitchblack Chromatic Tuner, a Boss DD-3 Digital Delay, an Ibanez CS9 Stereo Chorus, a Mad Professor Snow White AutoWah, an Ibanez TS808 40th Anniversary Tube Screamer, and a Jam Pedals Wahcko Wah Pedal. The stompboxes are all wired together with Reference Laboratory RIC-01 cabling.
Rodrigo y Gabriela
Rodrigo Sánchez’s Pedalboard
The eclectic, trailblazing guitar maestros blend acoustic and electric sounds in their respective rigs. The pickup return from Sánchez’s wireless rack goes to the volume pedal via a Lehle 3at1 switcher, then out to a Lehle P-Split signal splitter. The direct out from the P-Split goes to another Lehle splitter, while the ISO line out runs to the rest of the pedals before ending up at a Fractal. (The ISO out of the first splitter goes to the JHS Mini A/B pedal into the Boss OC-3, then to a separate channel on the desk.) His tone-shapers include an MXR Micro Amp, TWA WR-3 Wah Rocker, MXR Analog Chorus, and a Boss DD-3 Digital Delay. He stays in tune thanks to a Boss TU-3S Chromatic Tuner. It’s all powered by a pair of Truetone 1 Spot Pro CS7 power supplies.
Gabriela Quintero’s Pedalboard
It doesn’t get much simpler than this. Quintero’s pedalboard funnels the acoustic’s first two channels—the undersaddle and the body’s piezos—into a stereo volume pedal. From there, they run through a Dunlop Cry Baby and a Boss DD-3 Digital Delay. The signal is then split, with the first side going back to the DI, and the second running through a Dunlop volume pedal into a Boss OC-3 for an extra bottom octave.
Sunn O)))
Stephen O’Malley’s Pedalboard
Drone metal overlords Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson use volume as an aesthetic. “My concept in playing this music for tone involves many, many, many different gain stages that are all intonated differently depending on the pitch of the sound,” O’Malley told us last year. “There are slight shades of color saturation or grain as if it’s a paint—the shorter bandwidth color gradation or the density of the paint.” All these subtle sweeps of saturation, sustain, and feedback are enlivened and exaggerated with Stephen’s pedal palette. His current collection of slaughtering stomps includes the band’s most recent collaboration with EarthQuaker Devices (Life Pedal V3), an Ace Tone FM-3 Fuzz Master, a Pete Cornish G-2, and an EarthQuaker Devices Black Ash. For subtler shadings, he has a J. Rockett Audio Designs Archer.
The EQD Swiss Things creates effects loops to engage the FM-3, G-2, or the Black Ash. In addition, he runs a Roland RE-201 Space Echo through the Swiss Things. O’Malley uses the Aguilar Octamizer as a “fun punctuation that comes on once in a while” that “abstracts the guitar into minimalist electronics.” The custom Bright Onion Pedals switcher keeps the amps in sync with phase controls and ground lifts. A Peterson StroboStomp HD keeps his Travis Bean in check. Off to the side of the board is a Keeley-modded RAT that initiated the band’s core sound, plus a Lehle Mono Volume. This circuit includes the heralded LM308 chip and was the basis for their partnership with EQD and the Life Pedal series.
Elevated off the stage floor and secured by a stand are O’Malley’s Roland RE-201 Space Echo and Oto Machines BAM Space Generator Reverb.
Greg Anderson’s Pedalboard
“To be honest with you, I try to keep it pretty simple now because I love pedals and have fallen down a lot of rabbit holes with them, but I found myself troubleshooting and having more issues than my sound warranted. When I started with this band, it was just a RAT and tuner pedal, so I try to just bring what I need,” says Anderson. He found a potent pairing with the EQD Life Pedal V2 acting as a boost and running into a vintage Electro-Harmonix Civil War Big Muff that creates a “powerful, chewy, ooze” tone. Like O’Malley, he also has a custom Bright Onion Pedals box and an Aguilar Octamizer set to unleash a “ridiculous, beating, fighting, chaotic, sub-bass sound.” An Ernie Ball VP JR handles dynamics, a Boss TU-2 Chromatic Tuner keeps his Les Paul in shape, and an MXR Mini Iso-Brick powers his pedals.
The Flaming Lips
Steven Drozd’s Pedalboard
Given the nature of the Flaming Lips’ expansive and deranged sounds, you wouldn’t be blamed if you thought Drozd would have a rack of pedals or three tethered boards. But you’d be wrong—as he’s currently touring with nine stomps and an Ernie Ball volume pedal. Doing a lot of the heavy lifting is the Boss GT-1000CORE. The other sonic scalpels and sizzlers are a Subdecay Liquid Sunshine, a duo of Universal Audio units—a Starlight Echo Station delay and Golden Reverberator—a TC Electronic Spark Booster, a ZVEX Fuzz Factory, a Source Audio Nemesis Delay, a Keeley Electronics 30ms Automatic Double Tracker, and a Boss EQ-200 Graphic Equalizer.
Unknown Mortal Orchestra
Ruban Nielson’s Pedalboard
The New Zealand guitarist is a tone tactician. He’s never been satisfied with stock sounds and a pedal’s inherent limitations. “If I find a pedal I like, I use it for a long time and then I try to build a clone to see if I can improve on it,” he explains. “I sit around in my basement tweaking it plugged in—on the breadboard—and changing out different components and adjusting the trim until I get everything just exactly how I want it.” So, looking down at his stomp selection you’ll notice a few nondescript devices on the beautiful Twin Peaks Woodworks pedalboard custom-built by both Nielson’s tech Ben Gram and Caspian guitarist Jonny Ashburn.
His signal hits an Effectrode PC-2A Tube Compressor (you’ll notice two on the board—one is a backup). He enjoys how the PC-2A up front fattens his entire sound, and how it smooths and shaves off the transient tinges. The Strymon Deco has a stereo out that hits a pair of JAM Pedals RetroVibes. Both are set to have slightly different speeds and depths so that they really take that stereo signal for a journey in real time, and they’re panned in the PA to amplify this effect.
One of Nielson’s creations shows up inside the gray box titled “Octave Magic,” which is based on the Foxx Tone Machine. The suede purple devil next to it is the JAM Fuzz Phrase LTD, about which Nielson says, “It’s the wooliest, most musical Fuzz Face I’ve ever played.” Sometimes the answer to Nielson’s problems is the Benson Germanium Boost. “If something’s wrong,” he explains, “I’ll kick on that pedal and it makes everything louder and resets the gain structure.” The Gamechanger Audio Plus pedal sees a lot of action throughout the set: It helps Nielson seam the tail end of a solo and discreetly rejoin the band in rhythm mode.
The remaining pedals include a Boss DD-3 Digital Delay (a gift from Mike Baranik), a Danelectro Back Talk reverse delay, an Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail reverb, and in the top-left corner, an unnamed pedal that Nielson built that is currently not in the signal. (He can’t remember if it’s a RAT or Tube Screamer clone.) Utility boxes include a Boss TU-3 Chromatic Tuner, an Electro-Harmonix Switchblade Plus channel selector, and a Lehle Little Dual II switcher.
Irish rock band Fontaines D.C. is a dual-guitar ensemble featuring Carlos O’Connell and Conor Curley. At first, the duo used similar guitars, amps, and settings in an effort to work as a symbiotic saw buzzing their way through songs. The indistinguishable incisions lacerated their earliest work with angsty piss and vinegar. But as the quintet’s musicianship has evolved, they’ve embraced wider influences, adding different knives to their collection of cutlery. And more specifically, they’ve learned when to slice, when to dice, and how to work off each other.
“I think we’re trying to be more patient and more conscious of the texture,” Curley told PG in 2022, describing how he and O’Connell have worked together to refine their sound. “The first album was very much in a fighting mode,” he continues, “with the two guitars EQ’d the same and just smashing off each other. On the second one, we learned to play together a little better. We’re still working on it, and sometimes we still try to become as one almost, when the song needs it, but I think now we’ve learned to fit in with how we’re EQing everything. It feels really good.”
Ahead of their opening slot priming crowds for the Arctic Monkeys, O’Connell and Curley invited PG’s Chris Kies onstage at the Ascend Amphitheater in downtown Nashville. Carlos covered his favored Fender solidbodies, while Conor showed off his eclectic hollowbodies, and they both walked through their respective pedalboards.Brought to you by D'Addario Trigger Capo.
A Punchy Pinger
While recording with producer Dan Carey for 2022’s Skinty Fia, Carlos O’Connell fell for Carey’s mid-’60s red Fender Mustang. To replicate the album’s tones onstage, he found a similar ’Stang online. The listing originated in N.Y.C., so he had a friend at the band’s label, Partisan Records, scoop up the instrument. O’Connell was finally introduced to it before a U.S. tour, but there was something immediately wrong. The student model instrument normally came in a compact 24" scale, but a handful of ’65 & ’66 Mustangs, including this one, left Fullerton with an even shorter scale length of 22.5". O’Connell admits any guitar work handled beyond the 12th fret gets cramped, but he loves the small steed’s “snappy, pingy, high-end punch.” For a song like “Televised Mind,” he’ll engage the out-of-phase switch in conjunction with a Moose Electronics Cosmic Tremorlo. The combination intensifies the shrillness of the guitar for an undeniable sting. All of O’Connell’s electrics take Ernie Ball Burly Slinkys (.011–.052).
Irish Icon
O’Connell scooped this Fender Custom Shop Rory Gallagher Signature Stratocaster with a heavy relic from Chicago Music Exchange. He wanted something to contrast the ping of the Mustang with a guitar that had a heftier, chunkier sound, which would add more low end for the band’s D-standard songs. The Strat was the perfect foil, and the replica based on Rory’s 1961 is a fitting way to honor his fellow Irishman.
Secondary Strat
Backing up the Rory Strat is Carlos’ Fender American Vintage II 1961 Stratocaster.
Hi-Hat Chime
“I can’t stop thinking about the guitar as an extension of the drum kit,” explains O’Connell. “I don’t think it should exist on its own in a song. It needs to back something up—you’re either following the vocals or you’re following the drums. You can do without guitar in songs, but you can’t do without vocals or drums.” For “Roman Holiday,” he runs this Martin J12-15 Jumbo 12-String into a Fender ’68 Custom Deluxe Reverb, with a bit of extra spring splash from a reverb by Moose Electronics—which he unconventionally places first in the effects chain, ahead of his overdrives—and gain from the MXR Micro Amp that mimics the sparkly crash of hi-hats for rhythm accompaniment.
Double Trouble
O’Connell’s core tone comes through the Fender ’68 Custom Twin Reverb. It’s always on, and he’s always plugged into the vintage channel with the bright switch engaged for primo piercing. He kicks on the ’68 Custom Deluxe Reverb for added oomph during louder bits.
Carlos O'Connell's Pedalboard
Carlos’ first pedal was the Moose Electronics reverb (The Heart Doctor). When he eventually got a distortion, he put it after the reverb. He didn’t think about it. Any other drives he got thereafter went behind the reverb. “I had no idea it was ‘wrong’ until I took my pedalboard into the studio, and they told me I had to rearrange them because the reverb was too dirty, but I like how it sounds like a snare in a huge room,” admits O’Connell. And the rest of his pedal pals follow the same mantra—anything wrong is right, and anything grotesque is gorgeous.
Dirty devils include a Ceriatone Centura, a Fairfield Circuitry The Barbershop Millennium Overdrive, and an MXR Micro Amp. Tone-twisting modulators include a Moog Minifooger MF Flange, a Boss TR-2 Tremolo, a Strymon Lex, a Moose Electronics Cosmo Tremorlo, and an Electro-Harmonix POG. A Boss GE-7 Equalizer helps shape his sound. Utility boxes in his setup are the Radial BigShot ABY True Bypass Switcher (toggling in and out the ’68 Custom Deluxe Reverb), a TC Electronic PolyTune 2 Mini, a Dunlop Volume (X) DVP4, and an Electro-Harmonix Hum Debugger. A TheGigRig QuarterMaster QMX handles all the switching.
Holiday Hollowbody
While taking a break from Fontaines D.C., guitarist Conor Curley enjoyed some downtime in Berlin. Luckily, he encountered this 1960s Framus 03000 Studio that he took home for roughly $250. The archtop already had the Schaller pickup installed at the end of the fretboard, and he was amazed how well it meshed with distortion: “It just sounded so chubby and big.” He strings the Studio—which gets used on “How Cold Love Is”—with flatwounds.
Key Weapon
Curley’s two favorite guitarists are Johnny Marr and the Birthday Party’s Rowland S. Howard. Both played Jaguars, so Curley’s gravitation to the offset was obvious. Since becoming friendly with this Fender Johnny Marr Jag, he’s appreciated the versatility of its series and parallel switching. To honor Howard, he swapped out the standard white pickguard for a tortoiseshell one that matches Rowland’s beloved 1966 Jag. Besides the Framus, all of Curley’s electrics take Ernie Ball Burly Slinkys (.011–.052).
Some Neck, Somewhere
Ahead of recording their sophomore album, A Hero’s Death, Curley decided to splurge his cut of the record’s advance on a vintage guitar. At Dublin’s Some Neck Guitars, he purchased his first Fender Coronado—his attempt to channel the haunting hollowbody tones of the Brian Jonestown Massacre and the Black Angels. Since then, he’s acquired a few more Coronados, and his main touring one is this late-’60s Fender Coronado II Wildwood model he found in Stoke-on-Trent. His goal, one day, is to have a room full of Coronados. Godspeed, Curley!
Clint Eastman
At one point, Curley was diving deep into Elliott Smith’s electric playing. Smith typically played a Gibson ES-330, but Curley didn’t want to dip into his Coronado money to get an ES, so he opted for this similar Eastman T64/v that shares a lot of the 330’s ingredients, including a 16" thinline hollowbody construction with laminated maple, 24.75" scale length, and dog-ear P-90s (Lollar).
Twin for the Win
Curley plugs all his instruments into this Fender ’68 Custom Twin Reverb because “they don’t flavor anything. They let your guitars sound like your guitars, and they let the pedals do what they need to do.”
Experimentation Station
Curley has a robust appetite for pedals. This small platter is his rotating appetizer board that is currently testing out a Boss BF-3 Flanger, an EarthQuaker Devices Sunn O))) Life Pedal, and a Fairfield Circuitry Hors d’Oeuvre? active feedback loop.
Conor Curley's Pedalboard
“There were definitely a lot more shoegazey elements that we were trying to get to, and, obviously, if you start talking about Kevin Shields or even Robin Guthrie from Cocteau Twins, the stuff they did, to me, is almost unreachable, but if you try, you might end up with something new anyway,” Curley confessed to PG last year. And to achieve the range of the more ethereal and atmospheric sounds heard on Skinty Fia as well as the more brutish garage bangers in their earlier work requires a buffet of boxes. Curley employs three delays: Death By Audio Echo Dream 2, Ibanez AD9 Analog Delay, and the Industrialectric Echo Degrader. The latter “is so unpredictable, it’s almost like it doesn’t sound the same every time you use it.” He has a pair of reverbs (DigiTech HardWire RV-7 Stereo Reverb and a Boss RV-6 Reverb) and a couple Strymons (Sunset Dual Overdrive and Deco Tape Saturation & Doubletracker). The remaining three devices are a ThorpyFX Chain Home Tremolo, an Electro-Harmonix Micro POG, and a MXR Six Band EQ. A Dunlop Volume (X) DVP4 handles dynamics, and a TC Electronic PolyTune 3 Noir Mini keeps his guitars in check.
Shop Fontaines D.C.'s Rig
Shop Scott's RigFender Mustang
Fender Rory Gallagher Stratocaster
Fender American Professional Stratocaster
Fender American Vintage II 1961 Stratocaster
Fender Johnny Marr Jaguar
Ernie Ball Burly Slinkys
Fender '68 Custom Twin Reverb
Fender '68 Custom Deluxe Reverb
EarthQuaker Devices Sunn O))) Life Pedal
Boss BF-3 Flanger
Boss RV-6 Reverb
EHX Micro POG
TC Electronic PolyTune3
MXR Six Band EQ
Strymon Deco
Strymon Sunset
Dunlop Volume (X) DVP4
EHX POG
Strymon Lex
Radial Bigshot ABY
Boss TR-2 Tremolo
Boss GE-7 Equalizer
MXR Micro Amp
EHX Hum Debugger
