Welcome back to the Reverb Mystery Box Challenge, where we invite experienced tone jockeys to build new rigs and craft new sounds from a collection of surprise gear. The rules are simple: we provide a box full of pedals, noisemakers and other gear gadgets to our guests, giving them a short amount of time to choose which pieces to use to forge some fresh sounds.
With our first Mystery Box Challenge, we invited two titans of guitar improv, Nels Cline and Julian Lage, for a round of avant garde sonic exploration. This time around our lineup included Juan Alderete of the Mars Volta on bass, synth head Adam Smith on his Moog Sub 37, and Earthquaker Devices pedal guru Jamie on drums. The result was an epic jam with more explosive and mutant movements than the most recent Marvel movie.
With his trusty fretless P-Bass in hand, Juan chose three Earthquaker favorites: the Organizer, the Afterneath and the Terminal Fuzz. He then rounded out his line with a classic Boss DM-2 Delay. Adam opted to test out a rare Earthquaker Grim Reefer, running it into a Grand Orbiter Phaser and a Boss RE-20 Space Echo. Backing everything up, Jamie rocked a Crush clear Acrylic kit with a set of Zildjian K cymbals.
EarthQuaker Devices