The other day, one of our interns tragically spelled “pedals” with a “t” – guitar “petals” – which is actually kind of cute, since our beloved stompboxes do, in a way, look like colorful (square) petals. For fun, I Googled “petal shaped pedalboard” and this image popped up. A sense of admiration for the clever semi-circular design was soon overwhelmed by the realization that… that was none other than Prince’s pedalboard from around 2012!!!
Prince’s skill as a guitarist was wildly overlooked. The guy truly (and incredibly) excelled at everything (basketball included, apparently), and his talent as a composer, producer, vocalist AND performer shone so bright that most people “forgot” to give him due credit for his mastery of the six strings (it’s also not true that, when Eric Clapton was asked who he thought was the best guitarist of all times, he answered: “I don’t know, ask Prince…”).
It is fascinating to discover that what’s now seen as one of the greatest guitarists of all time was running his signal through 9 effects worth, at most, just 8-900 bucks in total! Needless to say, Prince was a big fan of BOSS pedals…
Here’s our little interactive recreation of that board – as usual, clicking on a pedal will open a video demo.
Check out also this video by Paul Glover trying to recreate Prince’s tone in Purple Rain.
