NEVILLE’S ADVOCATE ...
Neville Marten asks why it’s fine to play multi-thousand pound guitars through multi-thousand pound amps but a snazzy ’ board feels too showy
It’s true. I’ve always aspired to lovely guitars and have owned quite a few – vintage and new – from all the best makers. Amps, too, have been a thing with me since I bought a giant Fender Dual Showman 2x15 stack when I was just 22, nabbed one of the first Boogies in the country a few years later, and graduated in 1994 to a Matchless DC30 that was used by Hank Marvin on kids’ TV (in an all-star line-up alongside Suzi Quatro on bass). I know this because when I bought it from Mansons Guitar Shop in Exeter they gave me a VHS video of said performance, clearly showing Hank playing through the green combo they’d loaned him for the event. And which was now mine.
But when Dan Steinhardt built me a very grand pedalboard a couple of years ago (you know, the double-decker type that would pass for SpaceX’s mission control), it always felt too ostentatious for me. People would make ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ type comments, ask me about all the pedals (and I’m not buff when it comes to such things), then expect me to play like Guthrie Govan. And that was never going to happen.
I plucked up the courage, and asked Dan if he could streamline my pedals onto a less showy single-deck board. He kindly agreed, but it wasn’t ready for a gig that required a basic old-fashioned rig, and Mick Taylor had already pulled my old unit to bits, ready for the new build. So Mick asked me over and set about putting an emergency board together that would get me by. I needed a tuner, an overdrive, boost, delay and chorus, and this was duly rigged up onto a single-row layout on a D’Addario extendable board.
The gig in question was a charity bash for my old friend Robbie Gladwell, himself a great guitarist, and with our mutual friend Steve Laney also on six-string. They were the main event and had most of the guitar parts sorted. I was the filler in between.
Steve was going to play one of his many party pieces, the awesome Tommy Emmanuel version of Les Paul and Mary Ford’s Bye Bye Blues, as also covered by Jeff Beck and Imelda May, with rockabilly legend Darrell Higham on second guitar. I got to the theatre first and set up my titchy single-strip board, planted my Les Paul on its stand and waited for the others to arrive.
Jaws On The Floor!
Robbie’s pedal setup turned out to be a little more extensive than mine, but not by much. However, when Steve pulled out this thing that must’ve been five feet long and two feet deep, containing every possible drive, delay, modulation, volume, wah, MIDI switcher, and whatever else one c
