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What's a good distortion pedal for eric johnson type tones?


mbengs1

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the chandler tube driver is not made anymore right? plus i don't think it has enough gain. a good pedal i know that sounds like a marshall is the Friedman BE OD. but it still has too much hair. i want a really smooth sounding distortion with lots of sustain.

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From what I remember his lead tone is a BK Butler tube driver (with the bias mod) and a silicon transistor Fuzz Face. Last I checked, the Tube Driver was available new direct from BK Butler on eBay. Dunlop, of course, makes the Fuzz Face now, and they do have an Eric Johnson sig model with gain-selected transistors and a couple of secret circuit tweaks so it nails the sound of a genuine late 60s Fuzz Face. I think the bias mod is one key to getting the violin like 'soft attack' that featured on 'Cliffs of Dover'. Probably my favorite instrumental piece of music.

 

I was lucky to see Eric Johnson perform live in Dallas at a nightclub, he's an amazing musician.

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Golden Cello is the only plug in EJ tone thing. The rest of his sound is his voicings and picking.

 

Short of following DeepEnd's link and duplicating his rig (which still won't make you sound just like him), that's a good option. I reviewed one when they first came out and I thought it was a cool sounding pedal. Definitely has kind of a EJ vibe to it, and for those who don't want to mess with multiple pedals in an effort to catch that violin-sustain vibe, it's a good choice.

 

http://www.harmonycentral.com/expert-reviews/mad-professor-golden-cello

 

 

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Short of following DeepEnd's link and duplicating his rig (which still won't make you sound just like him)' date=' that's a good option. . . .[/quote']

Sentiments like "Become a better guitarist" or "Develop your own sound" never seem to drive the point home. The OP asked if there was a pedal that would give him Eric Johnson's distortion. Since he's apparently too lazy to use Google, I pointed him in the right direction. As you noted, even with all the right gear, he'd probably sound more like Eric Johnson than I would but it still wouldn't be exact.

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I've heard he uses a cheap tube pedal I forget if it's that one or not.

 

 

Again, from DeepEnd's link... it's a Chandler Tube Driver - it's in the upper left corner of the 2016 picture of EJ's pedalboard shown below.

 

 

march_2016_pedalboard.jpg

 

 

His signature sound though is whatever delay he's using and a Fuzz Face. The Golden cello gives you a pretty credible delay together with an appropriate fuzz.

 

Yes, he uses a Fuzz Face, as you can also see in the pedalboard pic. There is also a Ibanez TS-808 overdrive on the board too, so he has three different "dirt boxes" he can select from, or use in various combinations to get hybrid sounds.

 

As far as delays, I spot three Catalinbread Echorec pedals (no doubt replacing finicky tape-based Echoplexes) and a EHX Deluxe Memory Man on the board. The TC Electronic pedal in the lower left corner of the board is a Stereo Chorus / Flanger. I'm not sure what the two knob pedal (laying horizontally) to the left of the wah and to the right of the TC is - that's the only one I can't identify based on the picture.

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  • 4 weeks later...
i'm sure he mods his pedals. doesn't matter if you buy the same pedals EJ has. we'll never get his tone..

 

He might, or he might have someone else mod them for him... but to be honest, I've never heard anything along those lines either way. :idk: I could probably check with the folks at Catalinbread and ask if the three Echorecs on his board are stock or if they modified them in any way. I doubt seriously that he'd ask someone else to mod those for him. The dirt pedals would be easier to modify, but again, although he's a notorious stickler for the tones he wants and apparently has a well-developed ear, I've never heard anything that suggests he mods or has his pedals modified.

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Here's something more middle of the road.

 

[video=youtube;Km2JcTHGQnQ]

 

I was getting ready to call shenanigans on that one... it was painfully obvious that he was miming that and playing along to a recording... hall reverb in a free field space? Not gonna happen in nature! :lol: Of course once the band kicked in, it was even more obvious... ;)

 

Very cool cover - thanks for posting that! :cool2:

 

 

 

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