Category Archives: Effects

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Dicontinued Greats, Effects, Video Demos

Discontinued Greats: The Marshall Shredmaster

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Back in the 90s (circa 1993), I had been playing for a few years and had spent all my summer job money on a vintage Vox AC-30. It is truly an amazing amp and still is today but being a one channel non master volume amp, the only way to get some overdrive out of it was to crank it. And believe me, a cranked AC-30 is pretty loud – as in bandmates covering their ears the fist time I did it.

Anyway, I decided to buy a distortion pedal and back in those days there was not the choice we have today, especially in a pre-internet smallish student town in Eastern France. So I went to the local store and the guy said: “we have these new Marshall pedals, pretty cool to get a Marshall tone out of a clean amp”. So I bought a Marshall Shredmaster and it was my main distortion pedal for a good 10 years.

Marshall Shredmaster
My 17 year old battered Shredmaster

The Shredmaster was not the first pedal Marshall had released. In the 80s, they had one pedal on offering, the “guv’nor” which is still coveted by some players today. In the early 90s, they released three pedals aimed at different publics: the Bluesbreaker, the Drivemaster and the Shredmaster.

The Bluesbreaker was a pretty light overdrive, the Drivemaster was supposed to sound like a Marshall JCM-800 (think classic rock) and the Shredmaster was a high gain pedal. It would not qualify as very high gain nowadays but at the time it was. The Shredmaster has been replaced in the Marshall pedal lineup by a much higher gain model: the jackhammer. As its name indicates, it was aimed at the shredding audience but the most famous guitarists to have used it are not exactly known for shredding, I am talking about Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead. Actually, once it was known they were users of the Shredmaster, the prices for the pedal on the second hand market rose considerably.

The Shredmaster has a lot of fans but also a lot of detractors, I know that a lot of guitarists who have tried it or owned it think it does not live up to its reputation. Quite frankly, I think the Shredmaster was truly one of the first “Marshall in a box” pedal: properly setup and plugged in a good tube amp, it really does wonders. Mind you, as I have mentioned earlier, it does not have that much gain depending on your perspective and this is where people get disappointed if they expect a “death metal” kind of tone, although it can probably do it with the right type of guitar and/or a boost.  That said I think it does cover everything from blues to classic rock and 80s shredding alike while retaining a true Marshall color. Moreover, the equalisation section featuring bass, treble and a contour knob to scoop frequency is pretty efficient. It is completed by the classical gain and volume knobs. I find the gain most efficient between 2 o’clock and the maximum setting, the first half is frankly a bit useless. The volume will give you a nice boost but nothing over the top.

I have recorded several videos of the Shredmaster plugged into a little 5 Watt all tube Fender Silverface Champ. It is a fairly bright amp so I had the following settings:

  • On the Champ: Volume 2.5, Bass 10 Treble 2
  • On the Shredmaster : Gain 3 o’clock, bass 1 o’clock, contour 8 o’clock (minimum), treble 9 o’clock, volume 2 o’clock

The Shredmaster is plugged directly into the Champ which was miked by a Shure SM-57. The reverb was added in Cubase 5 afterwards and I used the Reverence 3s Plate Reverb setting.

With a Gibson SG 61 Reissue, here is how it sounds:

And with a 1978 Telecaster equipped with stock pickups:

And a last one with the SG that shows a more “classic rock sound”:

I have improvised in these videos so pardon the mistakes.

The Shredmaster is not made anymore so you will have to look on the second hand market to find one. You might also want to check the Hellrazor from Pure Analog Effects which is a very reasonably priced Shredmaster clone. There is also word that the distortion side of the  Jekyll and Hyde from Visual Sound has a circuit close to the Shredmaster but I must say that the samples on the vendor’s website sound a lot heavier than a Shredmaster so I am not too sure about that.

Whether you find a real one or get a clone, happy shredding!

Boutique, Effects

Boutique Effect Manufacturer : Retroman

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I will feature boutique effect manufacturers regularly and I would like to start with Retroman. I found them while looking for a small footprint Univibe clone.

Retroman Uber Vibe
Photo courtesy of Retroman

The Retroman pedals are made to order in the USA and they now have a full range:

The sound samples speak for themselves: check out the uber vibe, the lola or the sybil. Be sure to check all the product pages for more samples!

They ship everywhere in the world and prices are on par with other boutique manufacturers, pedals range from US$ 165 to around 300. Note that orders take 6 to 8 weeks at the moment.

Effect News

MXR on fire

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The guys at MXR are on fire. They have released at the NAMM a host of very interesting pedals. MXR is known for pedals such as the Dynacomp compressor, used by almost everybody, or the Phase 90 phaser, used by Eddy Van Halen to create the “Ain’t talking about love” swooshy tone and lots of other swooshy tones.

MXR is releasing more of these little foot print, easy to operate models. Apart from brand new models such as the Zakk Wylde Black Label ZW38 chorus and the CSP 202 Custom shop compressor, three models are re-released :

New MXR Micro Effects

First the M148 micro chorus was an 80s one button chorus. The Rate control is apparently enough to give you a wide diversity of tones. This 2010 version features the welcome addition of a true bypass.

Secondly, the M152 Micro Flanger is based on the M117 flanger model (so good that some people actually committed murder to get one, so I am told). It features two controls, Rate and Regeneration, as well as a true bypass.

Last but not least, the Phase 45 is a limited edition reissue. Akin to the much acclaimed Phase 90, it features a single speed control and has a hand wired circuit board.

For more detailed information, the excellent i heart guitar blog has a NAMM report about these babies.

Price wise, I have spotted the micro chorus for 100€, the micro flanger for 110€  and the phase 45 for 120€ on various European websites.

I for one can’t wait to try them!

Effect Combinations, Effects, Guitarists

Guitarists: Robert Smith of The Cure

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I could have started this series about guitarists by featuring a fast heavy metal guitar slinger (and believe me, I love them) but instead I have decided to scrutinize the style and tone of The Cure‘s Guitarist: Robert Smith. We will also see how we can reproduce his tone using some common pedals.

robert_smith2
image courtesy of thecure.com

The Cure formed in 1976 as “the Easy Cure” to be renamed “The Cure” two years later. Characterized by a dark sound  and gloomy lyrics, it was at the forefront of a movement labeled as new wave alongside acts such as Joy Division. The Cure is still in activity today and released an album (4:13) in 2008. Although the line up has changed constantly through the years, guitarist/singer Robert Smith has been a constant in the band (alongside bass player Simon Gallup) and the main writer/composer. Look here for a complete biography of the band.

As a guitarist, Robert Smith is very much into creating atmospheres using various modulation effects as well as delay. Starting with the disintegration album released in 1989, the Fender Bass VI, a baritone guitar, became an essential part of his sound and he is one of the rare users of the instrument in the realm of rock.

But I will focus here on an album which, to me, defined The Cure sound: Seventeen Seconds released in 1980. In particular, this album features ‘A Forest’. This song was so influential in the 80s that I remember it being the very first song I ever played in a band (I was playing the keyboards at the time and was shockingly bad at it).

The production of  ‘A Forest’ is explained in details in the December 04 edition of Sound on Sound Magazine. What is particularly interesting in this article is the fact that the base of the guitar sound was a Fender Jazzmaster plugged into a Roland JC-120 whose built-in stereo chorus  and clean tone was captured using two microphones. On top of that, a lot of outboard effects (flanger, delays and reverb) were used to create that very atmospheric sound. At the beginning of the song, the guitar sound is fairly dry, only some modulation is present and towards the end more delay is introduced.

This pattern is reproduced in this quite early live rendition and Robert Smith uses pedals to reproduce the studio tone:

There are plenty of versions of this song on youtube and you’ll notice that in the more recent versions, the guitar tone is even more modulated and that quite some delay is added.

Let’s try to reproduce this particular tone using these simple pedals (the makeup and the hairdo are optional but they help in getting the tone right):

  • A Boss BF-2 Flanger (now replaced by the BF-3 but easy to find on the second hand market). The settings were manual 60%, Depth 75%, Rate 50% and Res 25%.
  • A Boss DD-3 Delay: all knobs more or less at 50%.
  • A Boss RV-3 Reverb (discontinued too and replaced by the RV-5): balance 25%, tone 30%, r.time 40%, mode 10.

Of course, other brands than BOSS are fine to emulate Robert Smith’s tone as long as you have a good chorus or flanger (a flanger is preferable but a strong chorus can do the trick) but the man himself uses a BF-2 (he actually has been using the whole Boss modulation/delay collection over the years).

In these examples, I use a Fender Custom Shop American Classic Fender Stratocaster from 1997. It is equipped with noiseless Kinman pickups (the av-n blues set) and plugged into a Marshall JMP-1 preamp set clean (channel “clean 1”, gain 9) and plugged straight into the recorder, a Boss MICRO-BR. The drums are provided by the drumbox built in the recorder.

Guitar only first (first part is clean, second part has the BF-2 flanger on, third part has the Boss DD-3 delay and the flanger on):

Audio MP3

And now an attempt to capture the atmosphere (I have played the intro followed by a kind of improv) :

Audio MP3
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