My Favorite JHS Pedals — The JHS Show

In this article, I'm going to share some of my favorite JHS pedals with you. And I know it’s weird. Somewhere, a kid in a newsboy cap just shouted, “Stop the presses!” Some guy just spat out a full glass of water, purely for the dramatic effect. I never plug my own gear, but I’m doing it today. Even though it feels totally strange, I’m going to talk about my own pedals.

You okay with that? Yeah, you're fine. Let's do it.

So, when I design a new pedal, the most important question I ask myself is: will it fit on my board? If the answer’s no, we go back to square one. Usually, these pedals are inspired from the fact that I'm not finding something I want out there in the pedal market. Necessity is the mother of invention, am I right?

In this article, I'm going to take you through my favorites, seven of my go-to JHS pedals. If you go back and watch this episode of the JHS Show, you’ll actually hear the demos, which helps fill in a few gaps, but I can definitely get the gist of this across in an article. I'm going to show you exactly how I use these pedals when I’m writing, when I’m playing, and everything in between.

Pulp ’n’ Peel Compressor

In the first jam session of the episode, we went for a sound that’s honestly pretty hard to pull off. It's so hard, in fact, that I created two pedals around it. It's the sound of classic Hendrix when he cranks the amp. It's clean and he has a Strat, but it sounds huge and powerful. You hear John Mayer pull this off, and a lot of other great artists, but it's hard to achieve at lower volume levels. The amp needs needs some help to pull off this kind of sound, which is where my Pulp ’N Peel comes in.

I made the Pulp ’N Peel compressor mainly because I hated (almost) all compressors. One exception? The Dan Armstrong Orange Squeezer. I loved this thing. I wanted to make a pedal that created the same kind of sound, and after months of tinkering, we found a way to get into something that made sense for the style of music I wanted to play and that gave me that same dynamic range of a higher wattage amp.

In that Hendrix-style, John-Mayer-esque powerfully clean amp sound, the Pulp ’n’ Peel helps even out my heavy picking and my soft picking, plus it gives my entire rig the feel of 100-watt amps, something a lot more beefy and a lot more powerful. This thing responded in real time as I strummed hard, or pulled off the hammer-ons within the chords. This is what glued it all together.

But it needed a little extra help to do it. And by “extra help” I mean “my beloved Morning Glory.”

Morning Glory Overdrive

If there’s one JHS pedal you guys know that I love, it’s the Morning Glory. Like, if I weren’t happily married, I’d probably hop on a plane to Vegas and marry this pedal. It has not left my board in 10 years, and I love it. I love everything about it. When you plug a Strat into this or Jazzmasters, the single coils just breathe really well. It's phenomenal. On my pedalboard, it's pretty much always on, and I have it set kind of a light/medium gain.

This is the definition of “tried and true” for my pedalboard. I literally haven’t taken it off in ten years, and honestly, it’s probably going to stay on there for at least one more decade.

Twin Twelve Overdrive

This next song we jammed to (to which we jammed?) was a lot of fun. To start off, I pulled out an SG and plugged it into my Twin Twelve Overdrive. This is one of my favorite overdrive pedals we make, just because it's so original. It's the sound of a Silvertone 1484 Crank Sears Amplifier. People like Beck and Jack White have used this one, but in this application it did a great job because the genre of the song we jammed to was this really loose slacker rock / Wilco / Pavement vibe.

The secret? I left my Twin Twelve Overdrive on the same setting the entire time. I started a riff, and I just let my overdrive sit. Didn’t mess with it. Didn’t tweak it. If you go back and watch the demo, I want you to watch something in the video. At the beginning, I'm picking lightly and then kind of playing a chord. I don't touch the pedal. And when I start strumming hard, it feels exactly like I went to a different amp or pedal, but I didn't.

That’s the beauty of the Twin Twelve Overdrive. This responds to your picking dynamic that well. In this song, I'm overdriving and it sounds like a cheap amplifier, kind of on the edge of destruction, but in the best possible way. That’s honestly the base sound of the whole song.

I needed to call in some backup when we got the epic solo. And by “backup” I mean “my beautiful Crayon.”

Crayon Preamp Fuzz

The Crayon is without a doubt the most unique drive pedal we've ever made, so much that when you Google it, it might come up as an overdrive, a distortion, a fuzz, or a preamp. Honestly, you wouldn’t be wrong with any of those answers, though I’d categorize it as a preamp fuzz.

Basically, it's the sound of an old Neve 1073 OPX console. In the demo, I have it set to this crazy sound like it's breaking up, it's giving away, it's harsh, but it still fits beautifully in the mix. It makes a very original sound when you're looking for something different.

Plus, you can have a pedal on your board that’s called the Crayon. Purely for the fun factor, that’s a win.

Mini Foot Fuzz

This next jam was a little different, as we based it around one of my favorite bands, Sonic Youth. It starts with the Mini Foot Fuzz, because why not? This is a silicon fuzz that reacts really well to any guitar and amp, and it's just all in the whole time. It's the foundational fizz and fuzz and gnarliness of the whole track. Coincidentally, in the video I played a Jazzmaster guitar, and the Mini Foot Fuzz fits so well in with that sound.

But it needed a little more spaciness, a little more ethereality, a little more oddness. Enter the Panther Cub Analog Tap Tempo Delay.

Panther Cub Analog Tap Tempo Delay

The Panther Cub Analog Tap Tempo Delay is my favorite delay, hands down. It’s always on, and always in quarter-note mode. I used it in this jam session just to add space, to make my notes fall away a little later, and it did so perfectly.

It also added a rhythmic element. It's faint, but it's very important to the overall sound.

In this same jam session, you'll also see the Morning Glory come back on; I place it on my board after the Mini Foot Fuzz. The reason I do that kind of suddenly is because I want to focus on the fuzz that's really round, kind of loose and everywhere. My Morning Glory is going to turn on after it and focus it in, give the fuzz a little bit of a mid-peak. This is a perfect standout effect and sound for a big room.

Charlie Brown Overdrive

In the next session, we rocked out to a genre I can only describe as “mid-2000s adult contemporary alternative country rock that your Mom would love.” I don’t know how much more clearly I can put it than that. I used a Telecaster, and my secret sauce was the Pulp ’n’ Peel, again just evening out those dynamics.

My main overdrive sound is the Charlie Brown overdrive. I love this thing. It’s amazing. It provides absolutely fantastic light-to-medium gain. It's based around the old Bluesbreaker sound from an early ’60s Marshall, so it stacks great and works with tons of amps.

In this same jam session, I also had the Panther Cub back on and set to the quarter-note delay, just adding some links to the notes. This is a great trick to add some extra presence when you have a small band. In this demo, it’s literally just me, Zach, and Nick playing guitar, bass, and drums, respectively. You’ve got to have a little something filling in the gaps, and this does that perfectly.

And then on the epic solo, the mighty Crayon reappears. It’s a little different, though. I have it set with a more normal setting. It's not sputtering or fizzing; it's a true and nice thick kind of just lead tone. The single coils cut through, and shows the normal side of a pedal that a lot of people think is quite crazy. Now you know, this wacky pedal has a happy side. It can do the standard, tried-and-true stuff, too.

Okay. Wrapping up this article, I honestly feel like a new man. It felt really good to talk about my own merch for a change, you guys. I feel like I've had a breakthrough. I've talked about my own stuff, and the world didn’t blow up? That’s progress.

Thank you for letting me do that. Thank you for being here for me right now. That’s what real friends do. That’s why we’re friends.