The first installment of our My First Pedal series kicked off with Mark Holcomb and his Boss MT-2 Metal Zone. Our second installment featured Nick Reinhart of Tera Melos and his DOD DX79. Next up, we sit down with Dweezil Zappa to hear about his first pedal, the MXR Distortion +.
Dweezil told us that he first heard Randy Rhoads—a player he looked up to—talking about the stompbox in interviews, inspiring Dweezil to pick one up himself. He goes on to talk about how, after picking up his first pedal, he realized that actually getting the Randy Rhoads tone he was looking for was going to be a bit more complicated and nuanced than he'd originally thought.
Check out the video above to hear the rest of Dweezil's story and catch him playing a little of his very first fuzz box.