Guitar Gear

When I was growing up in the 60’s, dress code was important. You always looked groomed and at least as far as my father was concerned, you always shined your shoes. Granted, he came from a military background, so shining your shoes and belt buckles and making your bed so that you could bounce a quarter on it were important things.

But shining shoes was also de rigeur in that era. Shoe shine stands are a thing of the past and pretty rare nowadays, but they were numerous when I was growing up. If you didn’t shine your own shoes, you went to a stand to have it done.

So what does this have to do with gear? This morning when I was shining my shoes – yup, I still do it with my oxfords and brogues – I thought back to a conversation I had with my dad.

“Dad, why do we have to shine our shoes all the time?” I asked.

“You want to look neat, son,” replied my dad, “And part of looking neat is having nicely shined pair of shoes. People may not know what it is that makes you look neat, but when you wear shined shoes, it just completes the package.”

Wise words. It’s all about subtlety and nuance.

And then I thought about my approach to gear; especially pedals. For the most part, I don’t necessarily want people to know that I’m playing a particular type of pedal, like reverb. You hear it if you look for it, but when you look at the whole presentation, it’s just one piece. Just like a nice shiny pair of shoes.

Of course, there are times when I want something to stand out, like deliberately turning up my digital delay when a song calls for it. But for the most part, I like to deal in subtlety with respect to my tone. I don’t want anything to specifically stand out.

Even with overdrive, my philosophy is that you’d be hard-pressed to tell if it’s coming from my pedal or it’s coming from my amp. In actuality, the way I set up my overdrive pedals, it’s a combination of both. Again, you know it’s there, you just can’t pinpoint what it is that makes the sound.

I realize that this is just my approach and I’ve made a conscious choice to use my effects in this manner. Others are much more overt. But for me, taking this approach has also trained me to trust my fingers and never rely on effects. You never know when you might have to just plug in directly…

But when I have my effects, it’s like a newly shined pair of shoes: You know it’s there, you’re just not sure what it is…