The history of rock, as a technical story, is a mix of skilled craftsmen and total doofuses sticking their fingers in wall sockets over and over. Nowhere is technical innovation and retarded abandon more on display than in the world of guitar effects pedals, where the goal is to distort and/or otherwise screw up a guitar’s natural signal. Here are nine of the more infamous interfaces of man and pedal.
TYCOBRAHE WAH PARAPEDAL | Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath on “Paranoid” | Iommi’s wah took on a bizarre edge with this beyond-obscure artifact, and that gave his “Paranoid” solo a baby-thrown-down-a-well feel that has made it the stuff of legend.
FOXX TONE MACHINE | John Wetton of King Crimson on “Larks’ Tongues in Aspic Pt. 1” | The perfect foil to the pinned-down anal-retentiveness of Robert Fripp, future Asia frontman John Wetton’s contribution to this early-’70s prog powerhouse owes a lot to this rare hunk of fuzzy metal and the Jurassic sludge it produces when engaged.
DALLAS ARBITER FUZZ FACE & ROGER MEYER OCTAVIA | Jimi Hendrix on “Purple Haze” | The guitar tone on both the verse and the solo break of “PH” were groundbreaking: the Fuzz Face created a sound previously unheard on the radio of the day, and the Octavia helped transform the tune’s lead break into sheer bloody lunacy.
INTERFAX HARMONIC PERCOLATOR | Steve Albini of Shellac on “Mama Gina” | Albini’s shrill, trebly bird squawk of a guitar tone is memorable without effects, but when run through the sine-wave insanity of this rare piece of transistor history, it becomes a synapse-frying jolt.
ELECTRO-HARMONIX ELECTRIC MISTRESS | Keith Levene of Public Image Limited on “Careering” | The Mistress was the sound of late-’70s/early-’80s postpunk. Its off-kilter filtered chorus is key to Levene’s eerie shimmer, which inverted the norm of the guitar as the beefy riff-generator.
THE ECHOPLEX | Brian May of Queen on “Brighton Rock” | So many of rock’s greats in the ’70s mastered the Echoplex, but how many could run two or three in series like Mr. May to reach the dizzying heights of the guitar-army breakdown of “Brighton Rock”? For a brief time, Echoplexes threatened to make the rest of the band obsolete.
HEIL SOUND TALK BOX | Peter Frampton on “Show Me the Way” | It must have seemed like the future of rock, as singer and guitarist were merged into one bizarre instrument. The thing was also prominent on Aerosmith’s “Sweet Emotion,” the James Gang’s “Rocky Mountain Way,” and, uh, Bon Jovi’s “Living on a Prayer,” but it was Frampton’s Talk Box solo on Frampton Comes Alive that really got the Bics flicked.
ELECTRO HARMONIX BIG MUFF π | David Gilmour of Pink Floyd on “Brain Damage” | Decades later, the nascent early-’90s “grunge” scene would popularize and normalize this particular brand of sustain-rich distortion, but prior to its resuscitation, E-H’s Big Muff was the go-to pedal for stadium rockers when they were looking for just the right tone for that dramatically creamy lead, like the emotional climax of “Dark Side.”
DAN ARMSTRONG ORANGE SQUEEZER | Jeff “Skunk” Baxter on Steely Dan’s “My Old School” | Even polished sesh dudes know when to use a well-placed effect, and that certainly includes the Dan. As any major dude will tell you, nothing makes a solo pop while still flowing off the press frictionlessly clean like a good compressor — and Skunk’s effortless frippery here is made a gazillion times greasier by this little orange box.
