I originally prepared this article ahead of the arrival of my own supposed unit of Buffalo FX Reticon Flanger back in July of this year. Everyone now knows the story of how all but 20 or so failed to materialise of that 100 unit limited series run. The long and the short of it being that Mr Buffalo - one Steven Painter suddenly took sick right in the midst of the production run - and supposedly from the resulting impact was unable to do any physical activity once he contracted said condition. ...
I obviously featured 3 of these in my recent Eddie Van Halen Pedals roundup, and have only just completed the overview of compact enclosure EVH-style pedals in that same territory. As a final bookmark to Eddie’s legacy, at least for now, I’ve decided to expand the scope of the medium enclosure alternatives for those looking to recreate that classic EVH Brown Sound and have more real-estate/ floor-space at their disposal.
As with the compact enclosure exercise there is a mix...
Key to Eddie’s signature sound has always been his use of Chorus, Flanger and Phaser effects in particular, along with some Wah-based flourishes. As a result MXR has built up a small range of EVH branded pedals - which Eddie mostly used on his latter-day pedalboards - with some occasional exceptions.
For this particular exercise I’m referencing one of Eddie’s 2012 pedalboards - as per the visual below - which also features a Boss OC-3 Super Octave, and an MXR Analog Chorus in place of Eddie...
It’s with heavy heart that I compose these words to describe how significantly I feel about the passing of one of my all-time favourite and most inspirational guitar heroes - one Eddie Van Halen. I really would not have thought it would have made me feel quite so emotional - possibly it’s been accentuated by this weird period we’re all currently living through - but I’m really feeling the loss - just as painfully as when Bowie and Prince passed in 2016.
I will ...
I’ve already mentioned that the treble-boosted Vox-style distortion a la Brian May is one of my favourite higher gain tones. The other being Eddie Van Halen’s Signature Variac-attenuated Marshall distortion with added flanger and phaser. I like this sound so much I have a number of dedicated pedals for this purpose - compact and mini. The first foray into this was the Mad Professor #1, then Suhr Riot, Bogner Burnley, and for the longest time now - my favourite - the V2 MI Effects ...
Not unusually for me, but pretty much all of these that I don’t have yet are on my wishlist, and I’m still deciding on what order to acquire those in and which ’I need’ the most! My current big metal pedal trio consists of the excellent Diezel VH4-2, Empress Heavy and MI Effects Megalith Delta - I set the Diezel at the most extreme gain, then the Megalith Delta, and then the two voicings of the Empress Heavy. Each of these is a dual drive so there are myriad options here...
Distortion is probably the area of guitar tone I have most fun with - all manner of different high saturation sounds - mostly of the Marshall-esque variety, but right the way through the gears up to Heavy Metal, Djent and Extreme too - of course in the most musical way possible. Sometimes grindingly crunchy sound is just the mood-enhancer you need. And there are few things that are as satisfying as heavy riffing with saturated distortion.
To those ends, this is an area I like to commit...