Sonic Youth needs no introduction. The game-changing, genre-defining rockers first came onto the scene in the ‘80s before finding mainstream success in the ‘90s with albums like Goo. The rest, as they say, is history.
Now, over a decade after their final show, the band is restocking The Official Sonic Youth Reverb Shop, giving fans and fellow musicians alike more chances to get guitars, pedals, and more that played a role in the band’s storied career.
The return of The Official Sonic Youth Reverb Shop marks the third time the band has partnered with Reverb to get gear from their personal collection into the hands of fans.
In 2018, the seminal indie rockers launched their shop with over 200 pieces of gear, including everything from test pressings and rare versions of records like Daydream Nation and Murray Street, to a ‘70s Fender Telecaster Deluxe used by by Ranaldo, Jim O'Rourke, and Mark Ibold from 1987 to 2009.
Then, in 2022, the band unleashed a stockpile of tape reels in assorted formats that they had acquired from various studios, stating their love of the analog medium and their hope it would be used to give new life to music. Now, they’ve got even more unique gear that’s ready to find a new home.
The freshly-restocked shop will feature Ranaldo’s first-ever electric guitar: A Hagstrom II that was mainly played in his high school bedroom—before being traded for a Fender Super Reverb amp.
Said Ranaldo, “At some point, when my first band, The Fluks, was playing, I needed an amp, and I traded this guitar and like $60 to my drummer at that time, David Linton’s sister, who had a Super Reverb Amp…that became my first target amp, and basically set the precedent for exactly what I wanted to play out of the rest of my life…This was responsible for me getting the first one, and it came back to me recently through David’s sister.”
Additional items available in The Official Sonic Youth Reverb Shop include:
- A Foxx Tone Machine used in the band’s earliest days. Stripped of its initial purple velvet, the well-worn pedal has a Confusion Is Sex sticker taped to it.
- A Ludwig Phase II Synthesizer that Ranaldo called “The sound of Washing Machine’s ‘Diamond Sea’” and “preposterously cool.”
- A Mu-Tron Bi-Phase, which Ranaldo called “one of the most coveted pedals,” that was used on A Thousand Leaves, Washing Machine, and more.
- A custom-built Parametric EQ that was gifted to Ranaldo by his old Fluks bandmate and used on Sonic Youth’s Confusion Is Sex.
- A Taylor 314ce acoustic guitar that Ranaldo played at Neil Young’s Bridge School benefit shows, complete with the recommended bridge pins from Neil Young’s guitar tech, Larry Cragg, and the violin/cello bow Ranaldo used to play it. Urei Studio Monitors from The Knitting Factory that were gifted to Sonic Youth when they first set up their own studio, Echo Canyon.
- Two stamp pads that Ranaldo would use when writing songs to impress an image of the guitar neck on his notebook so that he could write down the chords for each song.