Lu Wan Rock

i know you have all been following pepsi’s battle of the bands with rabid attention. congratulations to winners, focus 5, who score 200,000RMB and a trip to LA for some serious production sessions. but the real prize is a swag of new instruments including some guitars from fender, though i can’t imagine getting much use out of the pepsi branded stratocaster:

you should check out dan shapiro’s take on the pepsi competition as it draws to a close and he considers the value of branding in music and the justification in remaining “indie”. as a luwanrock exclusive, i have been given access to the pedals of wayne from guanxi band, danke. here is wayne rocking out for pepsi.

and here are his pedals. (thanks to dan shapiro for the photo):

wayne has an excellent cable aesthetic – the colours of those two leads compliment each other nicely and they appear to be coiled to perfection. the first pedal we see on the right of his pedal board is a vox wah. this is a classic wah pedal, for someone who is serious about their tone. other prominent users of the vox wah are jimi hendrix, eric clapton and bruce thomas from the ancient marinators. (trivia – i just learnt that the wah pedal was originally designed as an effect for wind instruments to electronically emulate the sound of a trumpet’s mute)

after the vox wah we have the OCD – (obsessive compulsive drive) from Fulltone, as seen a couple of weeks ago with strobolight at yuyintang. then there is another classic, the proco rat. this pedal has been very popular on these pages, being used by joyside, ratatat, and carsick cars. the last pedal in the chain is the MXR carbon copy, a nice sounding, true analog delay pedal.

overall this is a really nice, no-frills setup. having the wah first in the chain is quite important as the wah is constructed to apply an effect to an uneffected guitar tone. putting it after almost any other pedal will diminish it’s ability to alter the tone of the guitar appropriately. like me, he puts the overdrive next and then the distortion. if i were using this setup i would use the RAT when i need some screaming lead guitar power and the OCD for some crunchy overdrive. it makes sense to have the distortion after the overdrive as typically this is louder and you want this to be the dominant sound if both pedals are on simultaneously. placing the delay at the end of the chain also makes a lot of sense if, as most guitarists, you plan to use it to echo the exact sound you are making. if it were placed earlier in the chain the delays would get lost in the distortion or the wah would have too much influence over the sound of the delays.

are there too many self-referencing links, fabi?