TECH TIPS > STOMP SCHOOL
STOMP SCHOOL GRADUATION DAY! BY TOM HUGHES
Greetings students of stomp and welcome back to
Stomp School. Your homework
last month was to look inside
one of your guitar pedals. Did
you do your homework? Good!
This month we’ll continue dis-
cussing what’s inside your ped-
als, and check out some more
photos of what we gearheads
refer to as “pedal guts.”
Let’s face it: In this day and age,
if you’re using any type of gear it’s
essential to have a certain amount
of technical knowledge. Back when
Zachary Vex first introduced the Z
Vex Machine, he declared, “Pedal
users in 1999 are very sophisticated
... we’re living in a ‘been there,
done that’ pedal world.” Well,
that was 12 years ago. We should
be even more sophisticated now,
right? Well, maybe.
No doubt, anyone using electronic music gear should probably have some degree of technical
aptitude. But there seems to be a
further assumption that guitarists
should also have a basic understanding of electronics, as if our
guitar lessons naturally included
a course in Electronics 101. In
truth, our education in “
electronics” has been given to most of us
in the form of advertising and
other questionable sources.
Over the years, manufacturers big and small have converted
various bits of electronic lingo
into marketing jargon and then
bombarded us with it. We’ve
been told, for example, that our
gear is “germanium powered” or
that it uses MOSFETs. Seriously,
do you know what a MOSFET
is? I mean, everyone knows a
MOSFET is a Metal Oxide
Semiconductor Field Effect
Transistor, right? Even if we happen to know that particular acronym, how many of us can actually explain what it is, or more
importantly, why we would
want it in our gear? Marshall
thought we understood well
enough back in the ’80s when
1. Here’s a point-to-point wired Triangle Big Muff, built by my friend Alex Carpenter (ATC). Alex built this pedal using terminal strips laid out in the shape of a triangle. Pretty cool, huh? 2. Look! Some builders actually want you
to open their pedals and poke around. The Foxrox ZIM has several interchangeable modular cards that the user
can swap out to get different sounds. 3. The “guts” of this Landgraff Dynamic Overdrive reveal a truly impressive
example of a well-crafted, handbuilt boutique guitar pedal. Nearly all of the components are socketed on a tiny
piece of perforated board.
1.
2.
3.
they offered us the Marshall
Lead 100 MOSFET amp. A few
years later, we had the MosValve
series of amps from Tube Works,
and more recently we’ve been
given the Fulltone Full-Drive
2 MOSFET overdrive. Clearly,
there are some things guitarists
are just supposed to know.
For the most part, I think
Zachary Vex is right—we pedal
users really are a pretty sophisticated lot. The technical expertise
required to set up and operate
even a modest pedalboard is usually quite a bit greater than the
average person needs to hook up
a DVD player, or assemble IKEA
furniture. But knowing how to
operate a complex gadget isn’t
quite the same as understanding
electronic circuit design. Likewise,
developing a large vocabulary of
misappropriated terminology is a
poor substitute for true knowledge.
Still, as guitarists we inevitably
pick up these random bits and
bytes of tech-speak, often taken
out of context and given a brand-
new definition that’s been conve-
niently translated for the uniniti-
ated gearhead. Thus, the meaning
of MOSFET becomes “sounds
like the thing has tubes in it.”
Never mind the acronym. There
often is quite a bit of validity
behind the techno jargon, but it’s
easy to see how a little knowledge
can sometimes be a dangerous
thing. The language of electron-
ics is a strange and mysterious
sound, and guitarists seem espe-
cially drawn to its magical appeal.
We’re also more prone than most
to superstition and mythologi-
cal folklore. This tends to make
us particularly susceptible to
electronically enhanced snake oil.
Even the savviest of us can fall
prey to the electro-hype machine.
I see it happen all the time,
especially on certain internet
guitar forums, with players who I
thought should know better.
This concludes our final semester of Stomp School. Hard to
believe, but it’s been four full years
since our first day of class. We’ve
managed to cover a lot of stomping ground in that time. I know
I’ve learned a ton of new things
about the gear I use—I hope you
have too. It’s time for us to graduate, but remember, your education
doesn’t end here. There’ll always
be new things to discover and
learn—it will continue for a lifetime. And though our classes have
come to an end, you’ll still have
access to the entire Stomp School
archive, available for reference
anytime on the PG website.
I’d like to thank you for
allowing me the opportunity to
be your “Personal Purveyor of
Pedals.” I’d also like to thank my
colleague Mike Piera (Analog
Man) for his collaboration
on many of the earlier Stomp
School columns. Finally, special
thanks to Premier Guitar for providing this space for our virtual
classroom. That’s all for now ...
class dismissed. And until we
meet again, keep on stompin’!
TOM HUGHES (aka
Analog Tom) is owner
and proprietor of
For Musicians Only
( formusiciansonly.com)
and author of Analog
Man’s Guide to Vintage
Effects. If you have questions or comments for Tom, feel free to email him at
stompschool@formusiciansonly.com.
52 PREMIER GUITAR MAY 2011
premierguitar.com
