Video: How to Get Neil Young's Live Tone with 3 Boutique Pedals

Neil Young (1976). Photo by: Michael Ochs Archives / Stringer. Getty Images.

Of all the guitarists to gain fame in the '60s and '70s, maybe none more than Neil Young has remained so true to the gear of the time period. Among his ragged and road-worn rig, he famously uses a 1959 tweed Fender Deluxe, an independent Fender reverb tank, and an Echoplex, with a custom pedalboard and electro-mechanical Whizzer controlling the vintage assortment.

To recreate his live guitar tone with exact pieces of gear would be costly, to say the least—and you probably don't have a dedicated tech on hand to make sure all the ancient, beaten goods still work as they should. Luckily, you have options in the realm of boutique pedals.

While decidedly not the real devices Young uses, in our video above, you can see Andy nails a solid representation of Shaky's tone with pedals that are new, reliable, and can withstand future decades of abuse with ease.

The Catalinbread Belle Epoch grants tape-echo timbres in a sleek, digitally powered package. The not-quite-truly named Source Audio True Spring Reverb offers convincing DSP emulations of spring reverb sounds. And, in what has to be the best deal of them all (when comparing to vintage prices), the Crazy Tube Circuits Falcon gives you two options of tube-amp breakup—'55 Tweed or '61 Brownface—in one stompbox.

Grab these pedals to get Neil's tone for yourself on Reverb today.

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