John Mayer has doubled down on his dedication to tube amps, even if Dead & Company's recent Las Vegas residency required significantly imaginative workarounds. But for players restrained by tight budgets, he recommends a pedal that he says will let guitarists enjoy tube amp tone on the cheap.
His latest comments come from a new chat with Guitar World which centers around last year’s Dead & Company shows at Las Vegas’ ultra-futuristic venue, the Sphere, a six-week run of shows that grabbed the headlines for several reasons.
Joe Bonamassa had played his part in lending Mayer Jeff Beck’s infamous custom-built White Strat for several nights, and he played the final with just three fretting fingers. Then, of course, there's his clever solution to the venue’s strict amp-unfriendly policies.
The absence of amps on stage at the shows had sparked theories – or fears – that the guitarist had bought into the digital amp modeler craze, but it turns out he was just abiding by the venue's insistence on low on-stage volume levels so that the front of house has a far easier job. And so Mayer, still wanting to blare his tube amps with wild abandon, opted to hide the amps in the depths of the backstage area. He tucked them away in wooden shipping crates and mic'ed them up.
“I grew up playing tube amps,” he says. “I grew up feeling the combustion. My style of playing relies on a certain amount of pushback. I need shocks on the tires. And I think that can only come from the ignition inside of a tube.”
Trey Anastasio — who’s just ripped a stellar Beatles cover with Peter Frampton and Grace Bowers — once told Guitar World that “no one will ever have an amp onstage at the Sphere.” Indeed, The Edge’s switch to Universal Audio amp-in-a-box pedals for U2’s shows there backs up his statement.
But not everyone is John Mayer.
“For me, I need a larger space for soundwaves to come out of a guitar amp and be caught a little bit further away than an iso box allows,” Mayer says, prefacing the problems the Sphere shows posed. “There has to be more of a comet tail so that the note can bloom.
“So we had to devise a system that would give a little more space to the speakers. And what we decided to do was use shipping crates as much larger iso boxes – kind of a ‘mini room.’’
Mayer, though, had plenty of loose change to throw at solutions. He recognizes not everyone is so lucky, so he’s offered the next best thing.
“I really like the UA Enigmatic ’82 Overdrive Special Amp pedal, and I think if you’re a young guitar player, that’s money well spent.”
The pedal is modeled on the famed Dumble Overdrive Special, and the boffins pedal the stompbox captured three different models from different eras to faithfully capture the amp's golden-era essence. It even comes stocked with cabinet simulations for an all-in-one solution, for a not too shabby $349.
Guitar Player's four-star review of the pedal, in conjunction with Dumble aficionado Ben Harper, echoes Mayer's sentiments. Harper says the pedal is scary good, gushing that I haven’t met a guitar player yet who disagrees.
Dead & Co band will kick off a second residency at the venue tonight (March 20), and Mayer has given his wooden crate set up a serious upgrade. The mini room is now fully fledged, and it looks gorgeous. Feast your eyes on it below.
Mayer has also recalled how he put his Custom Shop Fender Strat in the freezer to try and fix its tone and has likened learning blues solos note-for-note to “playing last night's Lotto numbers”.
