Joe Bonamassa says he no longer cares if you use too many pedals: “Players can do whatever the f*** they want. How about that?”
Joe Bonamassa has clarified that he doesn’t actually care what other players do with their rigs, saying instead that there’s room for every kind of guitar player. This is in somewhat stark contrast to an opinion he expressed a few years ago, where he bemoaned the existence of ambient players with complicated boards.
READ MORE: The best pedals for ambient music, from space-warping reverbs to experimental micro-loopers
In a new interview with GuitarWorld, he offers a strongly-worded rebuke to a question about players hiding the “natural” tone of a guitar with lots of effects. “We’ve been down that road before, us and the media,” he says. “Players can do whatever the fuck they want, I don’t care. How about that? [Laughs] You do you, I do me, and we’ll see how it works out. I don’t give a shit what anybody else does.”
Bonamassa has previously been a little less open-minded on the subject of pedals. In a 2017 interview with MusicRadar, he called guitarists who use lots of pedals “fucking lazy” for focusing on non-traditional guitar sounds, and challenged them to make compelling music on an acoustic guitar.
“I know I’ll get shit for saying this,” he said, correctly. “But it’s fucking lazy. It’s insulting to people who spent 35 years playing and learning, like a lot of players. And we continue to work at it! These guys can barely play a chord but call themselves soundscapists. Get the fuck outta here! It’s bullshit.”
Many players took issue with Bonamassa’s comments, stating that he was misunderstanding tonal preferences and the musical goals of non-blues players. Joe’s aversion to complex pedalboards was also a bit of a point of contention when his own rather involved board, stacked with vintage fuzzes and complex switchers, was revealed in a rig rundown.
However for 2025 he seems to have revised his opinion that players should avoid shoegaze-ready monoliths stacked to the nines with delays. “I’m not gonna comment on other players’ business; they can do whatever they want,” he tells GuitarWorld. Although he does add in a little jab at the practicality of a larger pedal-based rig: “If you want to lug a tabletop full of shit around to a club, God bless you. Mazel tov. And if you want to plug straight into the amp, it’s all good. It’s just guitar, man. It doesn’t matter.”
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
