State of the Stomp: It’s All About Wonder and Liberty

Columnist Philippe Herndon on gear, freedom, and finding joy in making music.

Friends, my time here as a contributing writer for Premier Guitar is coming to a close. My intention was that this could be where the discussion of objects could become a venue for the consideration of ideas. A sincere thank you goes out to PG editors Shawn Hammond, Ted Drozdowski, Tessa Jeffers, and Joe Gore for the opportunity, and their patience with what I’ve wanted to say and the manner in which I’ve said it.

As readers, sometimes your feedback changed the way I think; at others, it confirmed my suspicions. Like every other piece of technology in our modern age, there is a balancing act between utility, art, design, and commerce where each of us stakes out our preferences and our reasons why. I would hesitate to say there’s an objective right and wrong—but I certainly have my own opinions on things, and I thank you for taking the time to consider and reply to them. I leave you with this.

The electric guitar might just be another electronic instrument, but I think it’s still the best electronic instrument. Keytars are good for conspicuous displays of ironic consumption, but they don’t actually look cool. Surrounding yourself with stacks of keyboards makes you Tony Banks of Genesis, at best. Modular synths turn users into 1920s telephone operators. And like someone who feels compelled to operate an imaginary steering wheel in a self-driving vehicle, anyone onstage vigorously moving around their groove production controller that they tap once a song section looks kind of ridiculous.

Much like muscle cars, monster trucks, lightsabers, bazookas, and being a princess with secret world-altering magical powers, guitars still appeal to our base, childlike, lizard brains with a special cocktail of power and cool. There’s a reason any thick fashion magazine full of viral affluenza ads always has at least one expensive-looking photo of a model awkwardly holding whatever guitar the crew could borrow. It hearkens to a legacy of loud defiance that goes back to Cash’s middle finger, Hendrix’s matches and lighter fluid, the cover of London Calling, and thousands of other images seared into our imaginations.

Sometimes, it’s just a chicken sandwich because the family is hungry and this is the exit.

But behind the artifice and style—and artifice and style do matter—the electronic content of the electric guitar is still really cool. I once dismissively described the “balls to ovary birth story of your favorite tones” as the furthest thing from “natural,” but it doesn’t make them any less awesome. A spool of wire wrapped around magnets is no more sophisticated than a fifth grader’s science project, but the voltage created by its field getting broken by the vibrations of a plucked string can be harmonically rich, dynamically responsive, and immediate in ways that are special and unlike anything else in music. The effects pedals we’ve described here can vary from the medieval to sophisticated, but there is wonder and liberty in choosing exactly which devices sound best, look the coolest, and feel inspiring and fun to use. And then the amps! Whether you direct your sonic path to your laptop or plug into an old tube amp, each device creates its own magic and constraints for how you want to use it. At their best, each of the tools in your signal chain can have character and personality that contributes towards your sound.

In the end, it really isn’t about the gear. It sounds either hopelessly naive or self-defeating for a gear maker to say this in an era where people signal their virtues by their choice in chicken sandwiches, but I’m going to say it out loud: You are not what you buy. You are not the tuner you bought right before a show, the fuzz you scored at the flea market, or the amp you ordered after reading pages of effusive testimonials. I’m for people making well-informed decisions about the equipment they own and the people who make it, voting with their dollars for things that bring them the most joy and the least dissonance with their values and needs. But sometimes, it’s just a chicken sandwich because the family is hungry and this is the exit. Sometimes it’s just the overdrive that’s available and you need to save gas money for the drive home after these shows. And sometimes, it’s the amp you dropped way too much money on that just isn’t for you. You don’t have to let these things define you, because they don’t.

I was genuinely moved by a post from an acclaimed electronic musician who had once been so committed to the traditional ideal of the guitar-playing singer-songwriter that she was making herself miserable. I think it’s a miracle that she found her voice and joy in other genres and technology, making “trash beats” and arranging loops until she became really good at it. I’d encourage a similar sense of discovery and self-awareness within or outside of whatever instrument you play. In the end, it’s just the stuff we use to make music and sound. Make the sounds you dream of making, get the tools to do it, and be true to the pursuits that make you happiest. Even if some guy in a guitar mag thinks you look a little ridiculous.

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State of the Stomp: Thinking Three-Dimensionally

Build a genuine relationship with your amp and your pedals.

Everybody who drives a car should have to learn stick shift.

My first reaction to a blunt platitude like the one above is to immediately dismiss it. It reeks of knee-jerk, reactionary, nostalgic bullcrap. It’s outdated canon, confusing old methods for timeless qualities. It reminds me of my youth and how teachers made students learn how to use a typewriter before they were allowed to use a computer. It’s memorization of multiplication tables and “carrying the one” because we purportedly wouldn’t always have access to a calculator. It’s algorithmic, procedural, and—considering only one major automotive manufacturer still offers stick shift for all its models—borderline pointless.

And yet, I still think everybody who drives a car should have to learn stick shift—especially if you play guitar and use pedals and effects in your signal chain.

I remember a friend many years back once mocked my preference for manual transmissions. “Oh, is this rooted in some masculine need for control?” she laughed, rolling her eyes as she settled into the passenger seat. To some, the stick shift can be a proxy for micromanagement, authority, involvement, physicality, or other machismo tropes. Just watch how Sly Stallone keeps angrily yanking on the thing from that post-Apollo death montage in “Rocky IV” over the tough guy sensitive wails of “No Easy Way Out.” My history with stick was much more basic and “beta male” than my friend assumed. My car with an automatic had broken down, my girlfriend owned one with a stick, and for us to both continue to stay gainfully employed, I had to ask her to teach me how to use it.

“Control” was never the correct term for how I felt with a stick shift. What came to mind was the deepened relationship I had with the vehicle. Ease off the clutch too fast or fail to give it gas in first gear, and the car will stall out before you even get moving. Switching gears too early will make your ride anemic and lazy, turning you into a nagging parent of an apathetic teenager who slumps his shoulders and drags his feet as you keep bothering him with each new request for something he’s just not feeling ready to do. Hold out to shift later and the vehicle loudly roars, revs, and delivers a burst—but sometimes inappropriately and uncontrollably for the setting.

Shifting into a dimed higher-gain bridge pickup can deliver definition and punch, but if it’s fed into too much gain, the whole thing can turn into an undefined slurry.

Drive any car with a stick long enough and you can feel a car telling you how tightly its clutch operates, how it wants to drive for each setting, and when you should change things up. And the old daydreaming I used to partake of with an automatic transmission in a densely populated area was long gone. I had to be present when driving a stick. Stuff always seemed to happen and I had to be ready for it.

I find myself thinking of an analogous relationship with my electric guitar and the various devices we have the privilege to enjoy in our modern age. Fail to give your dry signal any juice from your amp or pedals and you might as well be Fred Flintstone propelling the car with your bare feet. Shifting into a dimed higher-gain bridge pickup can deliver definition and punch, but if it’s fed into too much gain, the whole thing can turn into an undefined slurry. Go too wet with your time-based or modulation effects and your notes catapult past the crowd. Sometimes with cleaner signals a neck pickup can deliver infinite sustain and warmth, but it can lack the form and clarity you might need. Going to notched pickup positions can reduce inductance and output voltage, opening your sound and bringing air and sparkle, but if your bandmates don’t yield that sonic space in the mix, you’ll just disappear. And sometimes what you need for your high-gain single notes to stand out is to roll your guitar volume back down. Much like driving stick, all of this requires an ability to adapt to your environment, to be truly present in the moment with your music, bandmates, audience, and venue, and to have a genuine relationship with your gear and setup.

So what’s a trick to help make this happen? Instead of just thinking of your devices one-dimensionally as stand-alone flavors, or even stackable levels of gain or sequential links in a chain, think two-dimensionally in terms of different EQ, and then three-dimensionally in terms of compression and response. There might be that one pedal that’s too brittle or bright for rhythm work, but really shines with a neck pickup and single-note lines. There might be that fuzz that you have to wrangle with a mid-boosting drive or feed with the bridge pickup. There’s that one overdrive that shines just for when you’re in a notch position. And sometimes you have to work the volume and tone controls to make something amazing actually jibe with the band and room. But stay present, stay alert, and be willing to trust your ears to tell you where to go, and your hands to get you there. Tone really is in the fingers ... after all, they’re what you use to change your settings.

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State of the Stomp: Advice, Tricks, and Treats

Our expert discloses a few secrets of life … and gear!

I’ve shared some of these nuggets lately with customers who’ve messaged me or come to our workplace. So, let’s share them with you, our readers!

My kid is really into music, but I’m concerned about this as a career. Meanwhile, you’ve put your interest in music towards a viable business. Could you say something to guide them towards a safer path that might make them happy and pay the bills?
Here is my advice: Go for it. Listen to, learn, and study music like you really mean it. Think about what you can do to get better, and then do it. Work as hard at your music as you’d imagine some heartless person works at their office job, and as relentlessly as the athletes at the Olympic trials. Fight hard for what you want the world to hear from your music. If I have any regrets, it’s that I never really worked on the things that held me back. You can do better.

Understand that this is an entertainment business, and make your performances as compelling as possible. Learn how to write, sing, record, publish, and distribute your own work. Figure out how you want to act, dress, and move onstage. Go out and see good local and regional performers and find teachers who will compel you to constantly step up your game. If your town doesn’t have enough of those, move to a city that does.

Now, if you don’t want it that badly, there’s no shame in staying in your hometown, trying to get a “real” job, and playing your songs or songs people already know for people who might enjoy it. They deserve to be entertained, too, and playing music with and for people is both really fun and vital for your community. Decide how badly you want it, and what you’re willing to give up for it. The odds are against you even if you give it your best; give it anything less, and you’ll have to figure out a Plan B to pay the bills soon enough. But if you could certainly still fail at what you didn’t want to do, why not try at what you really want to do?

I used to keep this secret from other players who would ask me. Why was I threatened by their curiosity?

You’ve talked about dialing back on guitar volume to clean up or add definition with high-gain pedals, but when I do that, things get muddy. Is there something I need to do with my pedals?What I’ve found, whether I’m hitting a fuzz, op-amp distortion, or a high-gain amplifier is a treble bypass network across the wiper and pot of the guitar’s volume control really helps with the cleanup. Almost everything I own has a 1000 pF cap in parallel with a resistor set to around 90 percent of the pot value across that control. So with a 250k pot, I’ll go with a 220k, and with a 500k pot, I’ll go 430 to 470k. This combination seems to work well at letting those highs stay around at lower guitar volumes, so your perceived gain gets reduced, but your clarity doesn’t get lost.

Should I bother with the effects loop on my amp?
In my experience, effects loops can work for effects that are best post-gain, or if you intend to really put the gain sections of your amplifier to use. I like delays, reverbs, and time-based modulation in the loop, and pitch shifters, filters, and drives in front. That being said, I’ve been quite happy putting everything in front of a clean amp lately!

Any other secret tricks you’d like to share?
For slide guitar, set up a delay to a moderate time: around 300 ms with three to four repeats. Set your mix lower, to around 20 to 25 percent, so the delay is just helping you, not making things a washy mess. Then find a way to use the tuner out from a volume pedal or A/B box so your tuner pedal is always tracking you. You can cheat at slide guitar by peeking at the tuner to see exactly how on or off pitch you are, when to compensate, and how you can shift into notes to build that tension and create a doubling with your trailing echoes.

For years, I’d play fake Rhodes or Mellotron parts by taking a wah pedal, cocking it all the way back, feeding it to a phaser, rotary sim, or vibe set slow with mild depth, and playing two-note chords of thirds and fifths.

And for some reason, I used to keep this secret from other players who would ask me. Why was I threatened by their curiosity? The last trick is to share what you know, and then ask about something you don’t. Maybe that will make us all get better.

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State of the Stomp: What You Really Missed at NAMM!

An insider’s view from pedal world at this winter’s show.

NAMM. Those of you who don’t attend only get to see it from afar. A mix of Mecca, the Detroit auto show, the Consumer Electronics Show, and a thousand Wonka factory tours for gear dorks. It always looks so cool! And think of all the people you get to see or meet: A-listers like Sinbad and John Stamos wandering the halls, content gurus stumbling around with all their camera gear, and those long winding lines of people waiting to meet Corey Feldman or someone who played with Ozzy or Kiss for six months two decades ago! What could be better?

Everybody flaunts their bravest face, their most flattering press, and whatever noteworthy artists happen to stumble into or be paid to play at their booth. Want to know what you really missed in pedal world if you weren’t at NAMM this January?

Bronchitis and tinnitus. Jokes about NAMMthrax are the kind of insider baseball that makes people roll their eyes, but the truth is that when you cram tens of thousands of people with iffy histories of personal care (musicians, writers, engineers) to shake hands, hug, network, and stand in close proximity to each other, people get sick. I gave up on any pretense of politeness and regularly slathered my hands in sanitizer immediately after speaking with people. It’s over a week since the show ended and I still don’t have my voice back. Good times!

Meanwhile, the yawning cacophonous maw of sound in our section evoked a fighter plane or UFO that would buzz the tower in our immediate proximity, loudly hover above us while emptying its sonic portajohns onto our heads, and continue its patrol until our next scheduled visit 10 minutes later. My inner True Detective agitated, I traced one particularly egregious offender to a small display staffed by one man embodying a #rigsofdad post. Protected by earplugs, I withstood him for 72 straight seconds as he aimlessly sprayed a gruel of nonstop loud, sloppy, clumsy pseudo-shred audio-vomit in E-minor into the aisle like an oscillating lawn sprinkler—a siren’s song seeking the attention of anyone who might confuse musical bullying for affection.

I made a mental note to express my eternal gratitude to and endlessly recommend the work of our neighbors, Fuzzrocious Pedals, a company whose products are very well suited toward the creation of loud sonic chaos and genuine rock ’n’ roll discomfort, but whose demo setups and amplifier placement exhibited sincere consideration for their nearby peers.

I gave up on any pretense of politeness and regularly slathered my hands in sanitizer immediately after speaking with people.

Two sides of the coin. Like everything from our restaurant options to our political choices, data-mining and market forces have created both increased polarization and clustering along those endpoints, as consumers and creators play to their strengths and stay within their comfort zones. On one side is a “more vintage than vintage” mindset, where classic sounds and equipment have been mined, duplicated, elaborated, and supposedly improved upon by contemporary builders with nostalgia and hindsight. I don’t mean that dismissively. If your goal is to sound like classic recordings from whatever era you consider classic, you have many more quality choices than your heroes ever did. Some of these are thorough, thoughtful, and inventive, while others merely traffic in the aesthetics and buzzwords of that bygone time. I understand and get it, as someone who still appreciates and loves the sounds of Tube Screamers into crunchy British stacks, squishy compressors into clean silverface-era combos, and choppy tremolo and wobbling vibrato. We now have plenty of companies willing to scratch those itches in whatever way best suits our wants and needs.

Meanwhile, the shifting Overton window of gear that players are willing to use for mangling their tone beyond anything we’d capture at an output jack has been getting wider and weirder, and I appreciate that. From Fuzzrocious and Rainger’s analog fuzzy smashing to digital exploration by the likes of Dwarfcraft, Alexander, Red Panda, and Meris, I found all kinds of satisfying and curious bleep-bloop-wrawrmp and strange happenings in my pauses and spaces between the notes. It warms my heart to see—as the author of “The Myth of Real Guitar Tone” in the July 2015 edition of this column—that along this continuum, my own company’s work could now be considered relatively conservative by comparison. If your sonic explorations go beyond inoffensively gauzy reverb pads or faux-organ shimmers, there’s a lot to find out there.

The genuine connection with peers. For years, I’d admired the work that Tom Cram did in reviving the DOD and DigiTech brands. So to see him going solo with beautiful and rad-sounding work in his new endeavor, Spiral Electric, and to hear that he enjoys and respects our own fuzz as well, means a ton. Another highlight I’ll never forget was Paul Reed Smith looking me right in the eyes and telling me that we make one of his favorite modern distortions, and that “you did a really good job on that.” But beyond the big names, to meet people firsthand who respect our work, and to hear what it has meant to them, is a big reason why we stay in this business. I mean, it can’t be the money. That barely pays for the Z pack we get prescribed for the bronchitis.

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