My friends at Keeley Electronics and Paralleled Lives Tones recently gifted me some guitar pedals and impulse responses (IRs), respectively, so naturally I got inspired and put together a little song called “Solid-State”. The convenience of both pedals and IRs lent itself to a fully solid-state signal chain for both the guitars and the bass. The result is a massive modern rock sound without a tube to be heard!
Gibson Mach-III
One of my favorite guitars returns! The rhythm and lead guitars stick to the highly percussive and articulate 500T bridge pickup for the entirety of the song. The clean and “lo-fi” guitar parts are played on the 496R neck pickup, split for a rounded-out single coil sound.
Keeley Mk3 Driver
A combination of Keeley’s Germanium Super Phat Mod and the now-obsolete Super AT Mod (both being flavors of the Boss BD-2 Blues Driver), the Mk3 Driver serves as a light boosting overdrive in the song. It is audible on the clean, rhythm, and lead guitars. I’ve opted for the “RK” germanium diodes for a much gentler break-up, since I’ll be relying on other elements down the road to provide the actual distortion in my sound. The tone curve is set to “AT” mode, which tightens up the guitar tone significantly.
Despite being a self-described overdrive guru, the Blues Driver lineage is one that I have not spent a lot of time with, maybe due to a lack of prominence in the sort of music I tend to make (guess Misha Mansoor hasn’t been seen with a BD-2 yet, maybe things will change). However, after spending significant time with one, I can’t help but wonder… where’s the unrealistic hype around BD-2s? The jangle it imparts, the wide range of gain… I can’t help but feel that these sorts of overdrives should be getting the rave reviews that the Klon basks in.
Keeley Blues Disorder
When Robert Keeley showed me the protoype for this pedal, I was immediately estactic. The Blues Disorder combines the Marshall Bluesbreaker pedal with the Fulltone OCD, which are also important influences for my own Opaque Drive. Where the Opaque Drive only takes inspiration from these pedals in its quest to be the perfect light-to-medium overdrive package, the Blues Disorder copies them outright and allows you to combine them in hybrid ways not previously possible, with a lot more distortion on tap.
I used the “BB” soft-clipping diodes with the “OC” tone circuit at high gain settings for my primary distortion sound, heard on rhythm, lead, and lo-fi guitars. Overdriving this pedal with the Mk3 Driver results in a surprisingly crunchy, mid-forward and modern rock guitar tone.
Quilter Superblock US
The Superblock US is a workhorse of a tone solution. I’m a long-time fan of Fender amplifiers, and this thing boasts those tones in an insanely small and feature-rich pedal profile that is still capable of driving big cabs. For this song, I used it in the Bassman “61” mode and instead of driving a cab, I used the direct output in “FRFR” mode (i.e. cabinet simulation disabled) so I could take advantage of some wonderful IRs…
Paralleled Lives Impulse Responses
My friend Troy from Paralleled Lives graciously sent me their “Primary Cabs” and “Lo-Fi Cabs” IR packs to play around with. These cabinets contain both “mix” and “raw” cabinet captures. I naturally gravitated towards the raw ones, and ended up utilizing them as follows:
- Rhythm guitars – EDH, an EVH 4×12 cab loaded with Vintage 30 speakers
- Lead guitars – MES, a MESA/Boogie 4×12 cab loaded with Vintage 30 speakers
- Clean guitars – FEN, a Fender 4×10 cab loaded with P10R speakers
- Lo-Fi guitars – a mysterious “112” cabinet with pleasant, telephonic qualities
I was pretty impressed with these IRs, the EDH cabinet in particular. I should also note that the primary cabinets pack also includes a Marshall cabinet that serves as a nice alternative/complement to the MESA cabinet (choose your favorite low-mid presence), and a 2×12 Vox cabinet with silver cones, which I’ve always favored over the popular Alnico blues. These two IRs are honorable mentions because they almost made it into the song.
Darkglass Microtubes B7K Ultra
I have yet to find a more satisfying bass sound than the Darkglass Microtubes B7K. I love the mid-range clank, the low-end grunt, and the low-mids scoop. I can’t get enough. This pedal continues to see action every time I record bass. The first part of the song has the distortion disengaged, but I turn it on when the guitars and drums come on full blast!
Substation Onyx 
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