John Fogerty thought effects pedals were a “communist idea” and didn’t want to use them
John Fogerty has admitted to being skeptical about effects pedals during his Creedence Clearwater Revival days, even going so far as to call them a “communist idea.”
In a recent interview with Rick Beato, the CCR guitar legend says that back in the ’60s, he “didn’t know anything about pedals”, nor did he have any desire to use them.
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“It’s one of those weird things in life,” says Fogerty. “You notice – especially culturally or politically – people will change their mind about some subject. At first they are one way and then with some education or whatever they are like ‘oh’. I was kind of that way about pedals. ‘Why do I need a pedal?’ It seemed like some communist idea or something.”
Instead, Fogerty gravitated to Kustom amps, which he describes as having “some hair on the notes”.
“The amp I used a lot almost exclusively in those days was the brand Kustom. Basically it was solid state but they had created this amp in such a way that it [has a] natural sound,” he explains. “If you turned it up pretty loud – it was a 100 Watter amp – it didn’t have that horrible, tight, too clean sound that so many of the solid state amps were into.”
Paired with his Rickenbacker, the Kustom amps gave Fogerty the exact tone he wanted.
“I always felt that a Blackface or the Silverface Fender – the Twin Reverb, the big amp, I thought was too harsh for me. I still do,” says the guitarist. “The Kustom amp kind of had some hair on the notes – and it was perfect for strumming an electric guitar, especially a Rickenbacker. The toaster pickups on that guitar weren’t real, real loud, so that the amp had some finesse to it.”
“That combination was perfect, the Rick with the Kustom amp,” he concludes.
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
