# Billy Corgan's pedals



## NB_Terry (Feb 2, 2006)

At 3:05 he shows a pedal called a Bloody Finger. 

This pedal is made by a friend of mine in NYC named David Harrington. 

[video=youtube;YZemTcTyJKs]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZemTcTyJKs&amp;feature=player_embedded#at=164[/video]


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## GuitarsCanada (Dec 30, 2005)

There was always debate as to whether he was using a Big Muff for a lot of those albums. Clearly after seeing this video there was a lot of Electro Harmonix going on there on Siamese and Mellon Collie. 

Uuumm, whats with that intensely disturbing rash on his left hand and arm?


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## captainbrew (Feb 5, 2010)

GuitarsCanada said:


> There was always debate as to whether he was using a Big Muff for a lot of those albums. Clearly after seeing this video there was a lot of Electro Harmonix going on there on Siamese and Mellon Collie.
> 
> Uuumm, whats with that intensely disturbing rash on his left hand and arm?


It's a birthmark.


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## GuitarsCanada (Dec 30, 2005)

captainbrew said:


> It's a birthmark.


He must have been covering it up in the past then, I have seen them live at least three times and seen him a hundred times on tv and in interviews. Never see that before.


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## screamingdaisy (Oct 14, 2008)

GuitarsCanada said:


> There was always debate as to whether he was using a Big Muff for a lot of those albums. Clearly after seeing this video there was a lot of Electro Harmonix going on there on Siamese and Mellon Collie.
> 
> Uuumm, whats with that intensely disturbing rash on his left hand and arm?


I used to have a series of Guitar World articles where he detailed the gear used from the first couple of albums. The Muffs were heavily featured as part of the wall of fuzz tones, but a number of his solos were cut using other effects. The one I remember off the top of my head was that he used the Micro-Synth for the intense/searing solo effect that's all over Siamese Dream and Pisces Iscariot.


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## Joey D. (Oct 16, 2006)

GuitarsCanada said:


> He must have been covering it up in the past then, I have seen them live at least three times and seen him a hundred times on tv and in interviews. Never see that before.


Here's his old band pre-Pumpkins, The Marked - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 
Named so because of his birthmark, I don't think there was any deliberate hiding of it.


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## Roybruno92 (Jul 20, 2011)

The use of the Muff, Blender (and even a Univox SuperFuzz at one point) was mostly for the first record, Siamese Dream. I hear that afterwards he mainly used a JMP-1 preamp live and in the studio for distorted tones on Mellon Collie. Nowadays, he's into boutique stuff (as most of us are) ; especially Devi pedals. Great to see him experimenting with other stuff though.

As for the birthmark, I guess he might of hidden it in the 90s but if you look at the documentary (If all goes wrong) and his solo album, you'll see that he's comfortable with this predicament. 

Damn, I love talking about Billy, he is IMHO, one of the quintessential guitarists/musicians of our time.


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## TWRC (Apr 22, 2011)

The Muff and various other pedals that he talks about in the video were only used to record Siamese Dream. During the SD tour, you can see that he was using the JMP-1 for his live distortion sounds (as was James). The muff in high gain applications live is one of the worst pedals in my opinion to use. I've never been able to EQ it properly in those settings as it usually just gets lost in the mix.

For Mellon Collie, his live rig became a part of the record. Mellon Collie definitely has a more focused and more muscular guitar sound. Flood was a major part of that but his rig was definitely the major difference there.

When he recorded Adore, he went back to a simple setup which comprised of mostly pedals (boutique stuff if you will) and a lot of experimentation with different guitars. Subsequently his simplicity spilled over on the Machina record and tour as he ended up using pedals rather than his usual MIDI setup live. Billy and James also incorporated some solid state amps in order to facilitate a lot of the lower tunings they used on that record, ie: The Everlasting Gaze C-tuning.

I've seen the latest incarnation of SP 4 times now and it seems as though his live rig has changed to incorporate a few boutique pedals but the major difference in his sound is coming from the Diezel heads he's using live. I think his tone has thinned out quite a bit in comparison to their earlier days but still sounds quite heavy live.

As for the birthmark, if you look at old SP videos, he always wore long-sleeved shirts to hide his birthmark. It wasn't until his solo record that you really got to see his mark which was donned on the album and most of the promotional / marketing material that came out during that time.

I'm the same way about BC and the Pumpkins. They were MY band for many years and are one of the reasons why I play guitar.


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## GuitarsCanada (Dec 30, 2005)

TWRC said:


> The Muff and various other pedals that he talks about in the video were only used to record Siamese Dream. During the SD tour, you can see that he was using the JMP-1 for his live distortion sounds (as was James). The muff in high gain applications live is one of the worst pedals in my opinion to use. I've never been able to EQ it properly in those settings as it usually just gets lost in the mix.
> 
> For Mellon Collie, his live rig became a part of the record. Mellon Collie definitely has a more focused and more muscular guitar sound. Flood was a major part of that but his rig was definitely the major difference there.
> 
> ...


Excellent post. So if you wanted to incorporate some SP tunes into your resume, what rig/setup in terms of pedals especially would you try and use above the rest.


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## screamingdaisy (Oct 14, 2008)

GuitarsCanada said:


> Excellent post. So if you wanted to incorporate some SP tunes into your resume, what rig/setup in terms of pedals especially would you try and use above the rest.


I've gone through a few periods of experimenting with SP tones and what I found was that the fuzz pedals generally don't work well live and I always got my best results from using high gain amps. By the time I realized this I'd already switched from a clean amp/dirt pedal setup to a Dual Rectifier, and in comparison to the Recto the dirt on a Big Muff is rather tame and somewhat thin and muddy sounding. I also tried a Fender Blender, Tone Bender, various Devi Ever pedals back when they were still called Effector 13, and a bunch of misc stuff that Corgan was never known for using but I tried anyway.

That said, I was never trying to nail Corgan's studio tone. After reading up on how it was achieved I figured it was pretty much impossible... something that even Corgan seemed to agree with since even he modified his tone to suit a live stage.

Truthfully, I wouldn't really worry about what gear is being used and just focus on the content of the songs and making them work for you. A number of Corgan's best "live" performances that I've seen via YouTube have been unaccompanied on an acoustic. He captured the meat of the music and left all the fluff out. If you cover a song like Zero people won't care whether it's done on a JMP-1/Strategy 500 or a Fender Twin... provided you hit the harmonics they'll recognize what you're doing as correct.


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## TWRC (Apr 22, 2011)

Thank you. I'm 32 now and have been listening and following the Pumpkins for over half of my life so I'm able to spew a bunch of stuff about them at any given moment. 

Well, the only way I can formulate this is to analyze the gear from each Pumpkins record (without James' equipment into consideration). I don't want to get too specific but the general effects that I will list can help you achieve those sounds live.

Gish sounds:

Very simple, Strat usually in the neck position into a Wah, Fuzz, Delay into a JCM 800. Mind you, Billy Corgan didn't have a "stock" JCM 800 as his main heads were loaded with KT88's for a tighter sound. And he did the master volume trick where you would max out the channel input and control the overall volume with the master.

Siamese Dream:

More complicated. His main strat during this time was a '57 reissue with Lace Sensors. In the bridge he used red, white in the middle and blue in the neck. As far as pedals are concerned, a version 4 or 5 Big Muff is essential. The Op-Amp Big Muff is arguably "smoother" than it's transistor counterpart and was able to be a bit "bigger" sounding. Other pedals to keep into consideration is a flanger (think of the solo for Cherub Rock) and a phaser "for movement" as Billy mentions in the video. When you hear most of the solos on Siamese Dream and see Billy play them live, he used a Wah a lot to cut through the mix. Most of the time he would just turn it on and leave it in that cocked position. On top of that, I'd have a delay in the arsenal for songs like Soma or for a bit of thickness during chordy parts. It was a common practice for Billy and James to have a medium length delay on in the background to thicken things up live.

Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness:

This is when it gets REALLY complicated. The "bat-strat" is still in play here (along with SG's, 335's etc) and as I mention earlier, most of the distortion sounds you hear on that record come from the JMP-1 into an Alesis compressor, Digitech DHP-55, Eventide Ultra Harmonizer into a Mesa Boogie Strategy power amp with a Marshall cab. However, when I saw them in 1996, he had an Orange amp and cab along with an AC30 in his backline. It's hard to say what you should use to emulate these sounds live as there was so much gear and production involved on this record. However, over the years, I've been able to get these sounds with a nice high gain distortion pedal, phaser, wah, delay, whammy and flanger. 

Adore:

This record is definitely less high gain than the others. Billy plays a lot of acoustics on this album and live, he was mostly using Fernandes Elites with the Sustainer. His live rig was still intact during this tour but he had a monster pedalboard that included a lot of different fuzzes, Moog ring modulator and various delays on different settings. This album was very delay heavy and I recall seeing a Memory Man or two (one on long and the other on short) on his board. The sustainer is also key to this album as there's a lot of E-Bow type sounds on the record too.

Machina / The Machines of God:

This is where I start to get lost as a lot of the record has direct input distortion and a LOT of production value. Live, he was using a lot of Les Pauls loaded with P-90's. I recall a lot of the same pedals that he used during the Adore era but he added small Gorilla branded amps that went direct into the soundboard for buzzy over-distorted tone and he was big on the Marshall Valvestates at the time in order to reign in those detuned songs.

Zeitgeist:

Essentially this album is a high-gain wet dream. I don't really know what he used on the record gear-wise as there hasn't been too much coverage on the topic but it's definitely a hot sounding record. However, in live situations his rack seems to be bigger now and on the floor he only uses a Rocktron All-Access and a plain Dunlop wah for those solos. The last time I saw them, I saw 2 Diezel heads on the backline and by the looks of them from my photos, one is set for dirty and other other one in high-gain mode. 

Ultimately, it's next to impossible to copy Billy's tone. I've been chasing it for many years but have gotten to the point where I'm just happy with my own sound. I try to keep my gear as diverse as possible so I can cover tones from Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie when I want to, yet it's a tone that I can call my own.

I'm currently running a Custom Shop '62 Strat with a Hot Rail in the bridge, DiMarzio HS-3 in the middle and DiMarzio Fast Track in the neck (I also own the Billy Corgan signature Strat but don't play it often). Pedals: Whammy > Retro-Sonic Preamp / Boost > Vox Wah > Maxon Tube Screamer > Stomp Under Foot Screaming Panda distortion > V4 Op Amp Big Muff (or more pedalboard friendly clone) > Malekko Omicron Fuzz > Boss EQ > Boss Delay > Line 6 Verbzilla all into a Digitech 2120 rackmount processor, Korg DTR-1 Tuner, BBE Sonic Maximizer into a 70's Vox AC30. I control everything with a Ground Control Pro. I'd like to think of my rig as a cross between Billy Corgan's and The Edge's setup (albeit on a budget).


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## Roybruno92 (Jul 20, 2011)

BEST THREAD EVARRRRRR.

I myself recently modded a strat with some lace sensors(they sound great btw) and you're right, nailing that tone is a b****. I personnaly tend to stray away from it because it doesn't really fit my playing/my band's style.(although i do own a multitude of fuzzes and modulation pedals similar to his early setup) You're insight into the evolution of billy's rig is eye opening and clearly show's why he should be considering one of the greatest guitarists of our generation.


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