What are your four ‘must-have’ pedals? That is what we ask our guests to share with you in our Four On the Floor podcast segment. John is pretty new to the pedal building world but he knows great tone and has a penchant for unique pedals. If you are not familiar with Rare Buzz Effects do yourself a favor and check them out. He gave us a fantastic interview too! You can hear the episode for yourself right here. Check out these choices for his Four On The Floor.
1. Pine Box Customs – Tersas Medium Gain Overdrive
“How I got mine is kind of an odd story. Jordan Clayton the founder of Pine Box needed some capacitors and I had a whole lot of capacitors, so I mailed them to him and as a thank you, he sent me a Tersas. So as a thank you for that, I sent him one of my Cranberry Overdrives because, you know, that’s just how we operate around here. I fell in love with the pedal. It’s one of those where I plugged it in and the first time I strummed a cord I thought, well (expletive). You know, I wish I had come up with this. It just, the way it shapes the tone, it’s beautiful. It just warmed up the guitar tone. I like to listen the first time I play a peddle, listen to it on its own and kind of figure out what it’s doing. That particular pedal, the knobs are not labeled as many of Jordan’s are not. So it took me a minute to kind of figure out what was doing what. And it took me a while to figure out what everything was doing and then I realized that he had included instructions. So had I been more astute, I probably could’ve figured it out right away. So, yeah, just absolutely love it.“
Check out the Pine Box Customs – Tersas Medium Gain Overdrive
2. Mask Audio Electronics – No! Octave Fuzz
“Mine is, let’s call it an unauthorized version of the pedal. The founder of MAE, Alec Breslow sent me a list of materials and a circuit board, so I was able to kind of build one on my own. So I can’t guarantee component-wise that it is exactly what someone else might have. In fact, I’ve only had that together for maybe five days now. So I haven’t had a whole lot of time to get real deep into it. But just the octaves and the noise and what it does is, is pretty slick. You know, two knobs and a switch, there’s not a whole lot of expectation there, but what it actually does to your signal as it’s going through it is pretty amazing.”
Check out the Mask Audio Electronics – No! Octave Fuzz
3. Shoneswood – Dual Grub Drive
“It doesn’t even have a serial number on it and it’s the one, if you guys follow his Instagram account, it’s the one that’s got the matching wooden knobs. So it’s got the four matching skateboard knobs and then obviously the skateboard pedal. It sounds lovely – and you’ve got two of something sounding lovely, but it could not do anything and it’s still just an absolute piece of art. His work is just amazing. He puts a lot of time into every pedal. For those of you that are considering purchasing one, he spends two or three weeks building each one of these so it’s not something where he’s just throwing parts together and stamping something on the enclosure. He builds these from scratch by hand from using the skateboard decks and, and they, they’re just, they’re beautiful. He’s got one, and I think it’s another grub that the art on the skateboard deck is a car and he’s got two LEDs for when it turns on and they’re the headlights of the car. And it kinda wraps around the side of the paddle. It’s just, it’s about the neatest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Check out the Shoneswood – Dual Grub Drive
4. Loe Sounds – Atari Fuzz
“I went on a bit of a journey for a, for flangy type chorusy effects, and I really didn’t like them for the longest time but wanted to because it’s just one of those effects that you’ve got to have. I had not wanted to like it so much and it just never did until I got hold of an Ibanez Prime Dual Chorus. So it’s a PC 10, one of the older effect. So it says a Dual Chorus when really it’s two pedals in one. The first pedal is a two knob chorus and the second pedal is a four knob flanger, still labeled chorus. Whenever I A/B test this against any over chorus or flanger it just sounds 3D compared to it, just so much better. And I couldn’t live without this one now. It’s just a fabulous pedal.“
Check out the Loe Sounds – Atari Fuzz
Huge thanks to John Esterly for being a guest on our show and please check out Rare Buzz Effects We wish him continued success!