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Music Features

Nine-step program

The best pedals ever to happen to rock music

By DANIEL BROCKMAN | September 8, 2008

The history of rock, as a technical story, is a mix of skilled craftsmen and total doofuses sticking their fingers in wall sockets over and over. Nowhere is technical innovation and retarded abandon more on display than in the world of guitar effects pedals, where the goal is to distort and/or otherwise screw up a guitar’s natural signal. Here are nine of the more infamous interfaces of man and pedal.

TYCOBRAHE WAH PARAPEDAL | Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath on “Paranoid” | Iommi’s wah took on a bizarre edge with this beyond-obscure artifact, and that gave his “Paranoid” solo a baby-thrown-down-a-well feel that has made it the stuff of legend.

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Topics: Music Features , Black Sabbath , Jimi Hendrix , Aerosmith , More

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