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.
Robert Keeley is one of the guitar industries formost pedal builders, but even cooler than that, he truly loves his gear and has fantastic stories about all of it. If you are not familiar with Keeley Electronics do yourself a favor and check him 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. Line 6 – DL4 Delay
“This is such a magical pedal. It’s just a wonder for delay and effects. From a historical perspective, I think that thing came out a long time ago. It must be early 2000’s. One of the best things about the pedal is that it has got a built-in looper, not to mention the sound quality of the effects are absolutely wonderful. So you combine those things in one box, a looper and ping-pong delays then add syncopated rhythmic delays, and so it’s the complete package. So that thing has been kind of an inspiration for the entire time. Awesome—you know, it’s just right.”
Check out the Line 6 – DL4 Delay
2. Klon Centaur – Professional Overdrive
“I think that the Klon is an interesting pedal for so many reasons. You know, I have to admit that I totally didn’t get it when I was introduced to it so it’s kind of funny to have pushed it out of my purview for so long. I just seemed like a limited-range mild overdrive. I totally missed how to use it or how to operate it.
But a fast-forward more than a decade and I decided to listen to it a lot more critically and then it became addictive, right? And then I was like, ‘oh no!, I’ve met the perfect overdrive pedal!’ and so I fell in love with the EQ and all the wonderful stuff it does for me. I was amazed at how certain frequencies could be louder, more amplitude, but not as distorted as other frequencies that were lower in amplitude and that’s just not the way any standard overdrive pedal or any circuit really operates. Then I looked at this schematic and that was really a piece of art. There are these interesting feedback loops or they might even be called feed-forward loops, but these feedback loops that carve away at the sound depending on where the gain is and where the drive control is set.
The pedals, just amazing because it does certain things, so it’s, it’s voiced so perfectly, it’s hard to go back to other drives in and kind of realized, oh wait, there is a place, for other rock and roll sound.”
Check out the Klon Centaur – Professional Overdrive
3. Vintage Ibanez Tube Screamer – TS-808 Overdrive
“The Tube Screamer is much more than just that green box to me. The tube screamer is kind of like the instruction manual on how to build effects, you know? It is one of those circuits as a builder or designer teaches you so much because it has the right amount of diodes, the right amount of gain, the right amount of soft clipping and the right amount of tone control so that you could push those mids and dial up some highs or make it darker. It’s just a really simple thing.
I mean for, for me, uh, the tube screamer is Kinda like coffee, like when you go to a perfume store or Cologne store or something and they keep on spraying all these different flavors at you and you’re like, okay, that was cool. That was cool. And then feel all weirded out by all these different sounds. And then I go back to the tube screamer coffee and go, okay, I’ve got a baseline, now I’m ready to go.”
Check out the Vintage Ibanez Tube Screamer – TS-808 Overdrive
4. Beetronics – Royal Jelly Overdrive/Fuzz
“I have a Royal Jelly and it is serial number 11. Oh yeah—that one does go to 11. It’s awesome. Have you ever seen such cool design? So they all look like they’re like relics or whatever and they’ve got amazing plates that are bolted on and they’ve got Allen wrench connections. It just goes on and on. You know, there’s, there’s little you could do to improve it. Even the nuts on the stomp switches are not the standard thing.
When I first heard the live demonstration of this pedal by Philip, the founder of Beetronics at NAMM I was so enamored by every sound that came out of this thing. I just couldn’t believe it. He had so many ways to compound his own sonic drug and it was unbelievable. I told them I definitely want it to buy one. Man, I jumped on and bought one right away.
I hope I’m not wrong this, but I think he used an engineer, named Howard Davis, I think it talks about it on a website. He’s a great, great grandfather of effects pedals, you know, he did stuff in the seventies for Electro-Harmonics, several of their early pedals. I got a chance to exchange some emails with that guy. I’m an electrical engineer and this guy he was so far over my head. I am an electrical engineer and knew what he was talking about in general terms of what he was talking about, but much of what he shared with me sounded so magical! These currents and voltage curves, different phase angles and stuff like that. So yeah this thing is expertly crafted not only on the outside but on the inside.
Philip Pampuri aced it in every single category with the Royal Jelly for sure. Perfect. 10. I don’t recall the cost but whatever it is, it’s worth it.”
Check out the Beetronics – Royal Jelly Overdrive/Fuzz
Huge thanks to Robert Keeley for being a guest on our show and please check out Keeley Electronics. We wish him continued success!