My Favorite Keeley Pedals

on today's episode i'm going to walk you through my absolute favorite robert keeley pedals they're really good don't want to miss it don't go anywhere don't leave here we go don't go [Music] robert keely needs no introduction when it comes to the world of guitar pedals he is a huge inspiration to the industry and i like to call him one of the pedal fathers of the boutique movement i've been fortunate to become friends with robert and learn a lot from him and this is his 20th anniversary so in honor of that this year i'm going to show you my favorite robert keeley pedals why i love them why they sound so good and tell you little bits of info that i've learned from him first up i'm going to play the super fat mod now why is this called super fat mod well it's actually a blues driver with his modifications to it you see he modded blues drivers back in the day i mentioned it earlier how it got me into pedals and this is his fully modified version and it is really really nice if you like low medium gain i think it's one of the best overdrives out there for a amp like tone it responds really well to your guitar's volume knob as well i think he mastered that sound in a box and he found a really really cool fat transistor that is very consistent and it makes this operate consistently across big production runs and i'm going to throw in the caverns so the caverns is probably one of the jhs show's favorite pedals right nick absolutely i use it all the time nick uses it on crap it shouldn't even go on it's just like it's becoming a staple and it's a two-in-one and basically the reverb is a really nice spin fv1 algorithm that robert is a master at and his team you've heard the spring sound in products like the milkman amp robert design that he's designed tons of other things for people but this is like where he's at is best here really nice reverb with a modulated setting that i'm going to use there's spring and then there's shimmer a lot of controls and then this delay now this delay is freakishly good in my opinion for the topology it uses a 2399 chip that i've never been able to get to sound like he's getting out of this it's actually wizardry i've asked him how he does it he kind of explains it i don't understand it is a fantastic sounding delay i'm going to use the deep mod setting now i believe the way he's using this is he started with hey the 2399 has a data sheet most people build pedals off the data sheet he hated that he got into it started playing around fighting with it and he came up with some really creative solutions to use this chipset and he threw in a boss style lfo circuit along with that for the modulation so it's a very very beautiful delay pedal and reverb in a very affordable package and play these together i'll start off with the delay and the drive on and then i'll smash the reverb on for another part [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] next up is the oxblood take a guess at what this is anyone no one that's fine a clown has oxblood colored knobs so this is his take on the clone now here's what's really interesting myself and millions of others we just have replicated a clone at some point he decided to make the clone get the sound of it without using any of the original circuit so he just took a wild stab at how would i do that sound and it came out in his words more of just a really good overdrive distortion with the clean blend it's really really good i think that it is a unique flavor of distortion i think when you start cranking this up some really cool stuff happens yeah i think it came out around 2016. in my opinion this may be one of the more underrated devices he makes you should try this out because it doesn't really sound like any other overdrive and that's really good if you're looking for something different let's jam [Music] [Music] um [Music] that jam was super spicy and yeah i don't know what what that was it was honestly it was just me playing guitar like a virtuoso would you agree you guys sound like clown jazz it was it like like if a clown played a blues solo yeah it's how i feel right now so that's what i play that is my art i do also want to give a big shout out to uh creighton who also designed this with robert he's a brilliant design engineer at keeley and robert has an amazing team i'm going to try to talk about more of these people as we go through it let's jump to the next pedal next up is the dyna trim so this pedal does tremolo obviously because it's called dyna trim but it is a really cool thing that happened within keely electronics where robert has a design engineer with dsp his name is aaron tackett and aaron is really good at what he does and when they first started the whole idea was can we start writing code to sound like or pull off the feeling and sounds of old analog gear and one of the first things they went after is harmonic trim this has three settings it has basically like the dynamic rate dynamic depth and then the harmonic trim so i'm going to play in that and then you have a reverb here a really interesting i would say it's a plate-ish reverb that's what it feels like to me i'm just going to play something see what happens trim just gets you going when you're not ready to go so i'm going to turn this on to see see where the road goes i don't know i'll see on the other side though [Music] [Music] [Music] hey [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] that was slithery that was like a swamp snake slithering through the swamp um i liked it and i wasn't at all playing any type of you know ccr licks like from suzy q i wasn't doing that at all next up i'm going to pair a fuzz with an echo the fuzz bender this came out in 2019 i believe it was in our episode my favorite pedals of the year this was my favorite fuzz it is his take on the three transistor tone bender style fuzz and in typical robert fashion he did something a little crazy he put an active boss style eq in it because you can do whatever you want you can create your own road so to speak you make your own destiny and basically robert is a master of that this thing with the bias control is wild you can go from full to just spitting dying hyena sounds and i'm going to live somewhere in the middle i'm going to put the mag echo on which is my favorite kili delay overall and it is just the delay in here so like this came and then this happened this was originally released as is uh from the 2399 chipset and when robert was getting his feet back on the ground and kind of his big relaunch several years ago the first units of this i believe it was all given away for like hurricane katrina and then he revisited it and ended up putting it back out it made its way into this so it's kind of all over the place so i'm gonna play these together i'll do a big long ambient delay with modulation the mod on this is so good i don't know what's gonna happen neither do you that's why we're here [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] um that was rowdy let's move on to the next one i'm going to use the mag echo again but i'm going to do one of my favorite delay sounds ever which is a single really hard high mix repeat tape sound so you're going to hear the note the note again and it just disappears in it in certain ways almost can feel like reverse or something it feels otherworldly if you play into it the right way instead of the fuzz i'm going to use the super fat mod germanium or the germanium super fat mod so you saw this earlier well it's the same pedal meaning it's his modded blues driver but in the center of the circuit he inserted a dallas range master style thing so you have the touch dynamics sensitivity blah blah blah the blues driver which is amazing the phet style thing and then you have germanium in the middle with the frequency it's just wild really good stuff i like how this looks too it looks like when i touch this like i'm like i'm solving something like i'm fixing something i don't know what is what am i saying here does it have it has like a look like a like there's something about this right it's like a tool it's like a tool it's a button of rock it's like a tool of rock button let's say the circle says do this do this do this [Music] [Music] [Music] that was awesome it wasn't at all like a toady's thing i wasn't trying to do that really robert keeley yelled at me this yeah yeah yeah explain it's just it it's you know stuff happens and people do things it's fine why you got i don't know are you guys okay yeah i talked to him yesterday i mean we talk all the time i mean it was just it's a it had you know i'm a different person and ever and he's he's allowed to change too you know what i mean sure yeah don't hold it over his head he ever yelled at him have you ever yelled anyway well yeah well that's all it is it's no big deal i don't know why it's getting turned around on me well you need to stop worrying about him okay this next and last jam will have two pedals first up is the keely modded tube screamer i guess the mod plus that's the blue sticker here this is where most of us first saw robert keeley he doesn't new mods anymore and the second pedal i'm gonna play came out at a time when he only did the mods and he only made his famous compressor now this is the java boost this is the first ever kili pedal i actually saw i used the mods i had seen this at like a 2002 summer namm show and the george l booth i didn't put two and two together that it was the same modification guy whatever it's a trouble booster so it is the range master style thing with a bunch of mods so you know he's making the compressor he's making some mods he gets into this article by a diy legend named rg keen and he just does this uh treble booster so you have different ranges so in the middle is kind of traditional and then you have two different kind of bass frequencies so more or less bassy volume and tone it's a classic this is the only vintage one i'm showing here today but that's okay and uh i'll have this on and then i'll slam this into this because i'm playing a clean findery style amp and a treble booster needs a little grit on the other end of it i don't want to play this into a clean amp because i would bleed and you would bleed and your computer would shut down and you'd have that fatal syntax error message pop up on your phone [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] uh [Music] [Applause] [Music] right some honorable mentions here i can't play everything i like so i'm going to show you some things that i really do like that deserve to be looked at 30 ms double tracker this is a killer idea it's basically emulating the way people would double track things with tape so this first started probably with the beatles and you track a vocal and you track the same vocal and you have this double layered version of a singular thing so this does it on guitar it's really nice you could call it a reverb delay but it's specifically tuned for a doubling effect and i find that though you can do that on a delay this is much easier this is quicker and dare i say more inspirational next up is the synth one this is a really fun pedal you've probably seen it on the show it looks great it sounds great it's weird if you like weird this is what you want to go for basically it's a synthesizer engine with a boss slow gear involved in how it opens and closes what can go wrong the ds9 this may be you know i said this was underrated maybe this is the most underrated so the ibanez sonic distortion sd9 and the ds1 are similar this is both of those and more if you like 80s 70s distortion just buy this just go by right now well why don't you you bought it good next this got to collaborate with with robert got to collaborate with robert this is a real honor he's just such a big hero of mine i remember meeting him at namm we went and talked in the food court yelled at each other over the symbols got to know each other and we ended up collaborating and so this is a morning glory and his compressor in one it's called the steak and eggs it's about 500 of these made i think so they've been off the market for a while you can find them used it's really cool special to me maybe special to you i know it has a lot of fans out there i still see it on boards that's my honorable mentions now let's go to record time today's record time is brought to you by werewolves of portland by paul gilbert this is new record uh 2021 these are both autographed copies so what we're going to do here is going to give these away but first it's a really good record and it has argument about pie on it this song debuted on our channel with the paul gilbert release if you know the song it's been stuck in your head for about two years now you can listen to it go check this out paul is at his best heavy heavy amazing van halen vibes and very typical uh paul gilbert humor and fun just really great musicianship the band is amazing i think paul plays tons of stuff on this so yeah argument about pie the title track werewolves of portland i want to cry even though i ain't sad great track as well we're going to give one away there's a link in the description below so go down there and check that out we'll give that away here and then we're going to give the other one away over on the patreon so if you're a member of the patreon you have a chance as well that's a thing thanks so much for watching this episode in the comments below let us know your favorite robert keely petal let us know all about it if you've owned one that you loved and got rid of and regret it which you probably do drop that in there as well let's just talk about robert keely let's spread the love he's made some amazing devices this is 20th anniversary and that's a big deal so yeah go follow him on instagram as well bother him tell him he's awesome if you like this hit like subscribe to the channel click the bell icon to get notifications of future episodes in the description below there is a link to band lab you can jam along with today's jams or any jams we've ever done really for the most part you can sing you can play harmonica you could play jaw harp we don't really care you can do whatever you want you can go to the jhs store there's a link there as well and you can be a member of the patreon and help us support the preservation of petal history that's it for today what i really need to know why robert yelled at you it's not about the yelling it it's fine well i knew i was listen i knew yelled at me i knew i was filming this and i wanted to go back to that moment to remember that life is precious why'd he yell at you it doesn't matter why he yelled at me it's just that we're not there anymore why'd he yell at you why are you yelling nick yelled at me make me a shirt hey make i need that shirt now who are you talking to that bird over there do it do it okay do it [Music] you

Channel: JHS Pedals

Views: 156,247

Keywords: JHS, JHS Pedals, The JHS Show, Guitar Pedals, Guitar Effects, Guitar Gear, Guitar Pedal Demo, Music History, overdrive pedal, chorus pedal, distortion pedal, boss pedals, compressor pedal, univibe, delay pedal, octave fuzz, reverb pedal, reverb, eq pedal, boost pedal, behringer

Id: FSfs--RuZWQ

Length: 22min 0sec (1320 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 12 2021