Says a lot coming from a pro...

Oh no, it’s me!

It is an interesting read he was in awe of that group of musicians. I would be also but he is, obviously, much better known than I am.

 

Larry McCray did the same thing with my ‘72 Strat and PV Bandit amp years ago at a friends late night basement jam. It was hard to believe how quickly he dialed in his sound.

 

Shiflett is/was from this town. I was looking at my now ex's yearbook & chuckled asking her about this guy. She just muttered "some guy that played guitar". I had to tell her what he's doing now.

Good on him for recognizing & verbalizing it, putting it out there for all the kids that listen to him in an effort to encourage them. I'm not even a FF fan, but one cant knock Grohl's way of PR/imaging. He's a machine.

Isbell is a monster though.

 

Yeah Shiflett is in this week’s Santa Barbara Independent newspaper. Talks about the local band scene in 80s and 90s.

 

He is not the only person around who thinks that you can get great sounds without a pedalboard.

 

What's a pedal board?

 

Don't know
I just plug into a Marshall, Sessionette SS amp, or my preamp that goes into whatever full range powered speakers. Haven't tried a Princeton.

 

Seems like it's more about the player than the gear. A good player can work and sound great with just about anything.

 

Pedals? We don' need no steenking pedals!

 

what pedal should I get to get the no pedal sound?

 

Don't underestimate the power of an onboard midrange boost or preamp boost built into the guitars tone circuit. That said, I am a proponent of straight into the amp. However, I've had a similar experience where my clean tone was overshadowed by someone with a little extra in the guitar which is not always visible.

 

I tend to agree.

And more to the point, while it took me decades to come to this realization, I think that to a large extent a certain player is going to sound like his or herself regardless of the equipment they are playing on/through.

Clearly different guitars running different pickups, strings, solidbody vs. hollow, various amps and effects, etc. are going to impact sound, but to me the player is more recognizable than the overall sound.

If I hear Brain May or Joe Walsh or Billy Gibbons or Jimmy Page playing, I am going to know who I'm listening to whether they are playing a '59 Les Paul through a Marshall Stack or a Strat through an old Fender tube amp.

 

You definitely need more than one pedal. The no pedal sound is achieved by stacking several pedals.

 

Best thing in the world, experts who play to my confirmation bias.

I think, deep down, we all know it's the player. Ever hear BB King do his guitar impressions of everybody from Django to Jimi? Yeah. Knopfler, Gibbons, Clapton, Beck, etc. could get 'their' sound (and great sound) out of anything from their vintage Washburn, Martin, or National to your kid's Squier / Peavey rig.

 

But in bypass mode to layer the sounds of a pedal not used.

 

I only agree up to a point. If you want to have a little grit, or a lot of dirt, in your sound, and you are playing a bone clean amp that will not yield even a speck of dirt at tolerable volume levels, then you need to do something....which is often solved by using a pedal. Sure, a cranked Princeton reverb will yield perfectly good dirt at reasonable volume levels-- but duh, we knew that already.

 

I love Isbell. One thing about Princeton's is they dont take pedals as well as the larger amps.... especially if you are going to push them like in that situation. My impression is that it creates too much "preamping" in front of the circuit. It may be the 12AX7 in the PI slot they use, or it may be the PI circuit (not long tailed!) itself. So giving that it can have some great natural grit in it anyway, plugging right into a Princeton is a good thing!

 

Larry McCray is awesome! How cool to jam with him.