Pinn Panelle’s Derek Song:
12 Million Views and Counting

Pinn Panelle’s Derek Song.

A highlight of this year’s NAMM show was hanging out with Derek Song, a 23-year-old digital guitarist whose band, Pinn Panelle, has racked up an astonishing 12.5 million YouTube views with their realtime cover versions of electronic music hits, especially their version of Skrillex’s “Scary Monster and Nice Sprites”

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A Generic Stompbox Wiring Diagram

I had to share this image sent by reader Gerald Good. (Thanks, man!)

Gerald Good made this pretty picture. (Click to embiggen.)

It’s a handy stompbox wiring diagram that’ll work with all the stompbox project on this site, and most other simple circuits. It’s not the only way to do it — there […]

NAMM 2013: The Analog Edition

UPDATE: My apologies if this page failed to load properly before. After a much screaming and crying some careful troubleshooting, it seems to be working correctly now.

I put together a little slideshow of some of the interesting things I saw last week at the 2013 NAMM show in Anaheim.

I covered some of […]

NAMM I Am

It’s that time again, folks.

“It’s the most won-der-ful time of the year…”

Oh wait — that was last month. Now it’s January. NAMM time!

I’ll be there for the duration, partly to hang out with my Pure Guitar pals, and partly to meet with Fishman about the upcoming TriplePlay release. But mostly […]

Ring Modulation: The Effect from HELL!

Only very bad dogs like ring modulation!

No disrespect to Chuck Berry, but I seriously doubt Johnny B. Goode played guitar just like a-ringin’ a bell unless he was using a ring modulator. That’s the only effect that can give you the complex, clangorous harmonics of a bell or a cymbal. Or make […]

New Frontiers in Fuzz:
The Devi Ever Interview

Some boutique stompbox builders pursue endless refinements of classic pedal designs, developing ever-more-suave iterations of the Tube Screamer and Ross Compressor.

And some just want to blow shit up.

Guess which category Portland, Oregon’s Devi Ever falls into? Hint: Her extensive line of guitar and bass pedals includes such anarchy boxes as the Little Shit, […]

Museum of Lost Effects:
The Systech Harmonic Energizer

A homely clone cowers in the shadow of a ramshackle original.

Okay, here’s an old weirdo I’ve been meaning to write about for ages. The Systech Harmonic Energizer is an ultra-rare filter/distortion effect from the ’70s that takes the fuzz-wah formula in some interesting directions. Its signature is edgy, ultra-resonant filter sounds. You’re […]

The Future of Wishful Thinking

Coming soon to a star system near you!

Last week I dared all incautious chumps you to prognosticate about our guitaristic future. I knew the resulting comments thread would be fun, but I didn’t expect it to be that fun!

And also oddly uplifting. Future predictions just seem to skew in an optimistic […]

The Effect-Order Follies

This effect order ALWAYS works great!

Weird, isn’t it? You can explain the rules of thumb for ordering your guitar effects in about ten seconds, but you can still get stumped after years of experimentation.

You probably know the conventional effect-order advice, which goes something like this (in order of appearance):

Distortion effects […]

Who Dares Predict Our Fretboard Future?

“We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives.” — Criswell, Plan 9 from Outer Space

UPDATE: Wow, I can’t believe all the cool stuff folks have been posting to comments. I find myself feeling quite inspired about the […]