WHAT WAS REALLY UNDER THE HOOD?
By Nick Bowcott
IN ADDITION TO his synonymous pair of 100-watt, Marshall stacks and his Jackson, Gibson and Sandoval axes, another vital component in Randy Rhoads’ signal chain was the large pedalboard he used on stage and in the studio. This big black behemoth was custom-made, housed in a flight case and boasted no fewer than eight switches and nine control knobs. Ozzy Osbourne nicknamed it the “chip pan” because it was so darned noisy! [Editor’s note: “Chip” is a common U.K. term for french fry.] The $64,000 question, however, is: Were the stompboxes under the hood of Randy’s “chip pan” totally stock, or were they modded in some way? Read on and all will be revealed… or will it?
On Monday, October 13, 1980, at Malvern Winter Gardens, England, I was fortunate enough to watch Randy play on Ozzy’s first U.K. tour. To say I was blown away by what I saw that night would be a massive understatement; I knew I was watching a man destined to become a legend.
The opening band was the criminally underrated and oft-overlooked Welsh power trio, Budgie. Shortly thereafter, I became good friends with Budgie’s guitarist, “Big” John (JT) Thomas (now sadly deceased — RIP, mate). As John and Randy became really close on that tour, I learned a lot about Rhoads, both as a musician and as a man, from JT.
One of the many fascinating things John shared with me concerned Randy’s now-mystical pedalboard. “It started acting up after a roadie dropped the bloody thing,” John recalled when I interviewed him several years later. “All the techs had looked at the board and drawn a blank, so Randy and I decided to give it a go ourselves.” Before they started “tinkering,” though, the pair sensibly decided to get duplicates of all six pedals used: namely the Roland Volume and Dunlop Cry Baby wah pedals that flanked the board; plus the MXR Distortion+, MXR 10-band Graphic EQ, MXR Flanger and MXR Stereo Chorus that
