Phaser and envelope filter combine to make unconventional sounds that transcend both effects.
This pedal was designed to crank out an array of off-kilter sounds, twisting your riffs into crazy new forms. Bee stings, perfect for funky moods. Gloopy syrup to drench your low-string twanging. Fifty shades of rude behavior that’ll turn a pleasant cocktail party into a drunken brawl.
The Attack Vector Phaser & Envelope’s attitude is intended to work with electric bass as well as guitar. So if you’re looking for pedal that smiles politely and behaves appropriately, keep right on walking – you won’t find it here. But if you seek a kindred spirit and fellow troublemaker, the Way Huge Smalls Attack Vector Phaser & Envelope might just become your new best friend.
While Lindley had absolute command over a wide variety of instruments, steel is where he made his best-known contributions to many hit recordings.
The great multi-instrumentalist, world music pioneer, and larger-than-life personality is warmly remembered by his friend, veteran music journalist and musician Dan Forte.
People often ask me, “Who was the best musician you ever met?” or, “Who was your favorite interviewee?” I always say David Lindley and David Lindley. Across 47 years and some 1,000-plus interviews, with such fascinating subjects as Frank Zappa and George Harrison and master musicians the caliber of Stéphane Grappelli and James Jamerson, Lindley takes the cake.
Have you ever been too depressed to cry? That’s been my condition since hearing that Lindley died on the morning of March 3 due to complications with long Covid. I did nine articles on David and interviewed him several times more. In the grand scheme of things, it’s very rare for a writer and artist to become friends and have a relationship beyond the interview. But there was a connection from our first meeting, and I was lucky enough to spend quality, “off the clock” time with David.
I’ve been asked to share a few stories about Lindley … not to make it all about Me, but to illustrate what kind of person, as well as musician, he was.
In 1967, I saw the man in Kaleidoscope, arguably the first “world music” rock band, decades before the term was coined. They played an “Electric Band Session” as part of the Berkeley Folk Music Festival. I was not quite 14. Practically every member of the group was a multi-instrumentalist, and David even brought his huge Gibson harp guitar (an early-20th Century Style U) on the road. At one point they’d gotten themselves situated with their chosen instruments when, just before the downbeat, some fan hollered, “Louisiana Man!” They paused, looked at each, and then started exchanging instruments while the crowd laughed. They proceeded to peel off a terrific rendition of Doug Kershaw’s Cajun classic.
Decades later, I interviewed Ben Harper, who was a neighbor of the Lindleys growing up in Claremont, California. He’s about 15 years younger than I am, and when I told him I’d seen the band, we got into a “No way!” “Way!” exchange à la Wayne’s World.
I first interviewed Lindley in 1977, after a United Farm Workers benefit with Jackson Browne and Warren Zevon. Riding to the hotel with Lindley and Zevon, their back-and-forth had me laughing all the way, including a battle of the Long John Silvers: Robert Newton versus Wallace Beery.
Completing the interview a month later at his home, David allowed me into the “inner sanctum,” where instruments took nearly all floor and wall space—guitars, steels, banjos, mandolins, fiddles, viola de gamba, saz, tar, cümbüş, the Gibson harp guitar, and more. Regarding his approach to disparate instruments, he said, “You know how an ant can taste and hear and smell with one organ—this all-encompassing feeler? That’s more what it’s like … being an ant.”
Blurring lines between traditional and iconoclastic, he studied, investigated, incorporated, and became a prominent voice in styles spanning the globe, on more instruments than even he knew. He said, “I played all kinds of things which were ‘not played’ on guitar.” This included bowing an electric guitar. He laughed, “And it wasn’t Jimmy Page.”
David Lindley lays into a vintage Silvertone. Dan Forte recalls, “He was the first guy I saw in a major act playing Silvertone amp-in-case models or a Dan Armstrong London with two sliding pickups—extracting killer tones—leading me down a rabbit-hole hunt for Goyas and Zim-Gars.”
Photo by Ebet Roberts
In the process, he expanded the parameters of popular music, stylistically and instrumentally, to a degree that precious few can claim.
His inspiration for taking up lap steel was the late bluesman Freddie Roulette. But of influences on the instrument, he said, “I’m basically a sax player”— naming King Curtis, Junior Walker, and David Sanborn.
Obituaries lump him in with soft rock, which was true of much of his ’70s work. But the highlights of countless Jackson Browne concerts were Lindley’s incandescent lap-steel solos on “Doctor My Eyes” and “Running on Empty.” And his performances were also an indelible part of hits by Linda Ronstadt, Rod Stewart, Zevon, Dolly Parton, and many more.
When it finally came time for a solo album, 1981’s El Rayo-X defied and exceeded all expectations. It was mature, fully realized, and original; eclectic but cohesive. Rather than present a Whitman’s sampler of various styles, he said, “I wanted to have a coherent theme to the whole thing.
“You know how an ant can taste and hear and smell with one organ—this all-encompassing feeler? That’s more what it’s like … being an ant.”—David Lindley
His associates were eager to sing his praises, and I was able to interview several. Booker T. Jones said, “He’s the one who makes the band go,” while Ry Cooder declared, “He has the sensitivity that allows him to grasp what the hell is going on.”
Graham Nash described a session with Lindley on fiddle: “I said, ‘I’d like you to stand on the street corner and play like an old bum.’ And he said, ‘Boy, that’s real easy for me.’”
Ronstadt offered, “He just instinctively gravitates towards something that is extremely high-quality and has integrity in whatever art form he’s contemplating—which is a lovely thing to have.”
Although Lindley supports Jackson Browne on round-neck guitar here, the highlights of countless Browne concerts were Lindley’s incandescent lap-steel solos on “Doctor My Eyes” and “Running on Empty.”
Photo by Ebet Roberts
And Browne stated, “I can’t even call it ‘my music’ when I think about David, because he’s such an integral part of it."
The band David put together, also named El Rayo-X, was without question one of the top five live bands I ever saw. And I saw Jimi Hendrix twice! Mr. Dave had me open for them in 1981, when my surf combo Cowabunga had only done three gigs. But I got to actually play with David in ’98, as part of the Festival d'été de Québec City’s “guitar summit,” featuring Martin Simpson, Bob Brozman, percussionist Wally Ingram, and Lindley on acoustic Hawaiian Weissenborn slide. During a mini-rehearsal, I’m guessing he could sense that I was nervous. (Wouldn’t you be?) But he put me at ease, and wanted to give me a chunk of the spotlight. I asked him if he still did “Brother John,” the Wild Tchoupitoulas song. I had a second line take on “Limbo Rock,” so we stitched them together. Somewhere during my solo, I quoted War’s “Low Rider,” and Lindley was on it in a millisecond.
Things That Lindley Fans Might Not Know About Him
• Correlating his musical aptitude and high school track career, he said, “I could run hurdles the first time—I knew what I was doing. So, they put me in the 120 low hurdles.”
• Also, during high school, he played flamenco in a guitar duo.
• The bane of Lindley’s existence was that loud knock from housekeeping—despite threatening signs he affixed to hotel doors. As good as he was with voices, his impersonation of a mad dog just inside the door was so convincing, the next sound was that of the maid running for dear life.
• He was a great cartoonist, illustrating his solo CDs with comical self-portraits.
• David once mentioned that Peter Lewis of Moby Grape was his cousin. I said, “Isn’t he Loretta Young’s son?” “Yep.” “So, Loretta Young is your aunt?” It’s true: Lindley was part of the same gene pool as the epitome of Hollywood glamor.
• At a time when female producers were extremely rare, he asked Ronstadt to helm his fourth solo album, Very Greasy.
• He was an expert marksman and archer.
• He and guitarist/producer Henry Kaiser traveled to Madagascar to record the acclaimed A World Out of Time albums with indigenous musicians, resulting in considerable income for the Malagasy players and citizens.
The Zone
I’ve always been fascinated with the so-called “zone” musicians sometimes achieve, like a basketball player with a hot hand, when you play something you didn’t know you could. It doesn’t require virtuosity, but the chances for someone with Lindley’s talent surely improves the odds. He described the sort of out-of-body experience. “I fail a lot. When that happens, that’s when you have to fall back on all the mechanical stuff and technique,” he told me in 2006. But being in the zone, he said, was like watching himself from three feet away.
“The bane of Lindley’s existence was that loud knock from housekeeping. His impersonation of a mad dog just inside the door was so convincing, the next sound was that of the maid running for dear life.”
I’ve thought about what influence, if any, David had on me. Not as a guitarist, really, because I can’t play like him; no one can. But he was the first guy I saw in a major act playing Silvertone amp-in-case models or a Dan Armstrong London with two sliding pickups— extracting killer tones—leading me down a rabbit-hole hunt for Goyas and Zim-Gars. He even gave me my pen- and stage-name, Teisco Del Rey. Then there was his clothes. Need I say more?
He was a serious musician not taking himself too seriously. He didn’t hide his wacky sense of humor in order to make music of the highest order. That’s the dichotomy. He wrote songs like “Sport Utility Suck,” “Cat Food Sandwiches,” and “When a Guy Gets Boobs,” and told hilarious stories onstage. He led audiences in singalongs to Frizz Fuller’s “Tiki Torches at Twilight.” So, you’d see this leprechaun in garish polyester, talking about Krispy Kreme donuts, and then he’d play something beautiful like his “Quarter of a Man” or something biting like "Revenge Will Come” [for every child kept down].
He gave me permission to display all sides of my personality, and you have that permission too. We have him to thank for that and so much more.
The new MARK VII is designed to offer the simplest, most versatile, and smallest 90-watt Mark series amplifier ever.
The MARK VII is the Magnum Opus, the flagship of Randall Smith’s 50+ year career in one visionary amp design. The new MARK VII takes the knowledge, history, innovation, and performance and distills it into the simplest, most versatile, and smallest 90-watt Mark series amplifier ever. The 3 Channel, 9 Model Preamp, coupled with our legendary Simul-Class Power section that offers three distinct characters across its three wattage ranges, creates a new MARK icon in terms of adaptability, soulful tube tone, and magic. Joined by iconic features that put Boogies at the top of every player’s dream list, such as on-board Graphic EQ, lush reverb, a seamless effects loop, and innovative power switching, the MARK VII features a CabClone IR™ DI Direct Interface. With identical features and great sounding IRs from our standalone Cab Clone IR, this built-in version allows individual assignment of 8 Rectifier Boogie Cabinets per channel for unmatched tunability of direct sounds.
The long-awaited “Simul-Seven,” aka the new MARK VII, leapfrogs its predecessor, the Mark Five, and the secret Mark Six prototype to arrive at the most power-packed Boogie Mark model ever created in terms of tone, flexibility, compact design, and interfacing. The MARK VII is a do it all tone machine that delivers legendary Mark performance and adds two new sounds. Within the MARK VII’s 3-channel, 9-mode preamp is the iconic circuits of the Mark IIB, Mark IIC+, and Mark IV, the legendary Mark Series Clean, Fat, and Crunch modes, and a new modern high-gain Mode full of character and attitude (more shredding than previous Mark amps and more vocal than a Recto), aptly named MARK VII.
The Mark VII has been a goal of ours and discussed for years, well before joining Gibson, and part of our concentrated R&D efforts since 2016 although under the Mark VI moniker,” says Randall Smith, founder of Mesa/Boogie. “I finished the preliminary great-sounding circuit board in 2018. Refinement continued from that moment on until late ’22 when release preparation began. It became obvious about halfway through the R&D we had a Mark amplifier worth skipping a generational number for. We had leapfrogged our beloved prototype Mark VI mule by such a large margin, it was truly fitting to rename it the Mark VII.
The VII is by far the best amplifier I’ve ever done in terms of good design and editing, our Design Team at MESA is great at that, and it’s created an amplifier that not only contains the best of our entire Boogie history but also manages to do so with a purer signal path and 2 fewer preamp tubes than its predecessor the Mark Five! The first comment players we’ve shared the VII with have made throughout development, is how incredible the Tone is and how they ‘can’t believe an amp with this much going on can sound so pure and legit in all Modes’. The key to that is signal path optimization, the knowledge, and tricks I’ve accumulated over the last 55 years, and near impossible-to-please cohorts here like Doug West, Steve Mueller, and Jim Aschow, who’ve been doing this with me for four decades. I also have to say that Cesar Gueikian at Gibson’s steadfast belief in us and the Mark VII assured at every step it got the highest level of support and priority. At almost 77 now, I still love what I do, pursue it daily, and foresee doing it as long as I can, but I have to say ...after the VII, I’ve been enjoying working on some easier projects, Ha!”
MESA/Boogie Mark VII Demo
The MARK VII offers discerning players analog, all-tube sound, soul, and feel in a smaller more compact, yet more comprehensive package. With a focus on perfecting icons, bringing back beloved classics, and introducing new realms of modern high gain, all while improving the interface and the performance across all mediums, the MARK VII offers inspiration and freedom across all musical styles. The MESA/Boogie MARK VII is now available in Head, 1x12 Combo, and Rackmount Head formats.
For more information, please visit mesaboogie.com.