Paul Gilbert—the high-speed shredder known for his bands Racer X and Mr. Big, as well as his solo work—sat down for a lengthy interview with JHS' Josh Scott. They played some tunes, shot some hoops, and introduced the PG-14, a new signature distortion pedal.
As you can hear for yourself in the video, it's based off of the sound—or at least the memory of sound—from Gilbert's childhood amp, which had a habit of getting overpowered by his high-output pickups.
Josh Scott set up recreating this tone with a FET distortion circuit and a front-loaded mid-frequency preamp.
By dialing in varying amounts of mid-frequencies and gain from the preamp, you'll change how the distortion grabs and rips the signal, while being able to tame down or slam the dirt via its individual controls. "It's the ultimate dirt-channel box for a clean amp," Josh says.
Hearing Paul's aggressive use of the pedal, Josh says it reminds him of a Fuzz Face going into a Marshall, even despite the quiet overall volume of the rig they used for the video. But Josh stresses the versatility of the pedal, which has a wide range of tones depending on how you set the mids-to-distortion balance.
Watch the whole video above for the full experience, or skip to the 19:50 mark to get the backstory on the pedal and hear it in action. Then, you can skip ahead to about 25:20 to catch the cameo by Andy Martin and see some of Paul and Josh's more dubious basketball skills.
Click here to order a PG-14 now.