In this post… Dave Pinoli and his enormous pedal board. A disastrous gig at a children’s music recital. Handbag CEO. Gear Nerd characteristics. The basic guitar gear needed to play local gigs. The Gear Nerd is always a middle-aged guy, and nearly always an electric guitar player. He is obsessed with the technical specifications of various guitars, amplifiers and other guitar-related gadgetry, and has downloaded a lot of guitar apps onto his computer. He can talk knowledgeably for hours about the pros and cons of all manner of guitar gear. He spends a lot of his spare time reading online reviews of the various products. In most cases, this time would be better spent learning basic musicianship: for example, how to play a C major scale. Gear Nerds support a global industry of guitar gear manufacturers that totals billions of dollars in annual sales. As you form you first bands and start to play gigs, jam sessions and open mics, you are bound to come across the odd Gear Nerd or two. Perhaps you have already? Compared to other 'types' of musician I will mention in future blog posts though, the Gear Nerd is mostly harmless. I would rate the average Gear Nerd a moderate 6 on the musician toxicity scale. However, do read on as this blog post will help you to:
Dave Pinoli One amateur musician I knew, Dave Pinoli, was a gear nerd par excellence. Dave had a huge pedal board. For those of you who don’t know what a pedal board is, it’s a collection of small and colourful metal boxes containing electronics that flavour the basic sound of an electric guitar. The pedal board is placed at the feet of the guitar player and it is operated by tapping little switches on and off using the foot. Normally, an amateur guitarist playing local gigs has a modest pedal board that takes up the same amount of floor space as a shoe box. Dave Pinoli’s pedal board, on the other hand, occupied the same space as a large dog basket and would not have looked out of place as the control panel of an alien spacecraft in a 1970’s sci-fi movie. A few years ago, Dave was asked if he could help out at a music school recital, where his young daughter and other children would be performing to an audience of mums and dads. Dave was scheduled to play two rock songs along with two other dads: a drummer and a bassist. They were to support a singer who was a 12-year-old girl. Dave had set up his enormous pedal board before the recital began and it effectively cornered off a quarter of the available stage space for the entire evening. Teachers and young kids were constantly tripping over it during the course of the evening. When it finally came time for Dave to step up to the stage and perform, he himself tripped over the pedal board. Halfway through the first song, he got confused, activated the wrong pedal and the resulting feedback (a high-pitch squeal) forced everyone in the audience to cover their ears with their hands. Bewildered young children in the audience anxiously looked up to their parents for reassurance. An equally bewildered Dave frenziedly tapped his foot on random pedals until his guitar suddenly went totally silent, and it remained that way for the rest of the song, much to the relief of the audience. Dave’s second (and final) song thankfully went better. After the show, Dave’s wife came up to me and asked “What do you think of all of his little boxes on the floor?" She was referring to Dave’s pedal board. I gave a non-committal shrug and she replied, “It’s pathetic, isn’t it?" Others were standing close by and within earshot, including Dave himself. I’m not sure if he heard his wife’s disparaging words. Mrs Pinoli was not one to save her husband’s blushes after a disastrous gig! Handbag CEO I offer the following story as an example of a case of gear-nerdery so severe, the sufferer was most probably never able to get his guitar playing to the level required to play in an amateur rock band. In fact, he was most probably never able to play the chord G. Years ago, the CEO of a well-known deluxe handbag company hit me up for some guitar lessons. He took three lessons with me. At each lesson, he brought along a different Les Paul Gibson guitar. These were expensive guitars and he wanted to talk about their features (or ‘specs’ as they are known in guitar circles): the woods used, the chambering (?), the inlays, the tuners… I tried to teach him the chord G. He wasn’t interested. He just wanted to show me all of his guitars for some reason. As he owned three Les Pauls, three lessons were enough, and he didn’t book a fourth lesson. However, two months later, he re-contacted me and he did book another lesson. As it turned out, he had bought a fourth Les Paul. This one had state-of-the-art robot tuners. In other words, the guitar tuned itself up at the push of a button. After this lesson, I never heard from the handbag CEO again, so I presume his guitar collection remains at four items. Gear Nerd characteristics The Gear Nerd is generally not a great musician nor a great creator of art. His priorities, in order of most important to least important are…
Typical Gear Nerd behaviour at rehearsals includes…
I have painted Dave Pinoli, Handbag CEO and gear nerds in general in a rather pathetic light here. I should say that the Gear Nerds I have known were all very decent people and successful in their day job professions. And, in their defence, a guitar player, or indeed any musician, does need to have some good equipment and knowledge of how to operate it (as we will see in a future blog post concerning the Gear Nerd’s arch-nemesis… The Gearophobe). However, perhaps you shouldn’t let gear get in the way of making music and art. Once you have some half-decent gear, stick with it and concentrate on creating within the gear’s limitations (all gear has limitations). Which guitar gear to buy to play in a local rock band Here is my take on gear if you are an amateur rock guitar player looking to play local gigs. Get yourself a combo amp with a 12” speaker. My preference is a single-channel amp. A two-channel amp would effectively have an overdrive pedal built into it that could be activated via a foot switch. Another preference of mine, and many guitarists, would be that the amp is a tube amp (a.k.a, a valve amp) due to the warm sound of these old-fashioned-styled amps. A 30- or 40-watt amp is normally sufficient. The amp can be miked and put through the P.A. at larger gigs if necessary. As for pedals, you probably need one or two overdrive pedals. Most of them are similar in my opinion. (OMG! Gear Nerds will NOT agree with that!). If you have a couple of them, you are sorted and you don’t need to buy any more. You can use these two pedals together for a more complex sound and more distortion. A tuner pedal is also a good idea. With this relatively simple gear, and the use of the volume control on your guitar, you should be able to get these three distinct sounds:
For most types of rock music, there is no need to go on a crazy quest for gear, in my opinion. Ultimately, your sound comes from your hands, not your gear. I’ve heard this old cliché many times over the years, but it is true to a large degree. For example, two guitar players who have been very popular with Gear Nerds over the last few decades are Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughn. They both hit their guitar strings hard with accuracy. They set up their guitars so their strings were high relative to the frets and this enabled them to hit the strings hard without fret buzz. (This is called ‘high action’.) Both Jimi and SRV could play soft and delicately also, and so their range of possible dynamics was vast. Playing around with this dynamic range made for very expressive music. Also, both Jimi and SRV played with great groove and timing. These things are the secrets to their sound. Not a certain green Tube Screamer pedal nor a certain amp from 1968 nor a curly guitar cable. Conclusions about Gear Nerds Guitar Nerds are not the most disruptive character you will come across in a rock band. You may need to excuse yourself from tedious conversations about equipment occasionally. You may need to gently convince the Gear Nerd to simplify his rig (amp and pedals) so that there is enough room remaining for the singer to stand on the stage at a small venue.
Gear obsession is often coupled with other traits however, such as being unrealistically ambitious or being rhythmically dyslexic. (We’ll examine these two traits in upcoming posts.) Then there can be a problem. So, evidence of gear-nerdery is not on its own a red flag when auditioning a guitarist for your band. (Some names of individuals mentioned in this blog post were changed to protect identities.) Mark Baxter (c) 2024
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Blog: How to form a rock band. Also, how NOT to form a rock band.About this blog
These blog posts contain info I would like to pass on to my music students when they form their first bands and start to play live gigs. I explain more here in my first blog post.
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Mark Baxter, musician, music teacher, guitarist, bassist, drummer. English expat living in Belgium.
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