Jack White teams up with MXR for new guitar pedals
MXR is one of the go-to names for anybody wanting to add some new tones to their guitar sound. Most famous for their innovative phase pedals, MXR gives you pretty much anything you could want: delay, reverb, and distortion are just some of the effects that MXR manufacture. And if you’re talking about guitar effects, you can’t leave out legendary tinkerer Jack White.
White talks a big game about old-school technology and how modern effects don’t do much for creativity. That’s all well and good, but the truth is that White was on the cutting edge of guitar effects during his heyday with The White Stripes. Without a bass player, White figured out that all he needed was a pitch-shifting DigiTech Wammy pedal to pull in the low tones of songs like ‘Seven Nation Army’ and ‘Blue Orchid’.
Anyone who has stared at White’s feet during one of his concerts knows that he has quite an arsenal of pedals and effects. “In The White Stripes, I only had three pedals: I had a Big Muff, a Whammy Pedal, and an MXR Micro Amp,” White explains. In the years since his pedalboard has grown much bigger and more eclectic. That makes it all the more understandable that White has teamed up with MXR to produce a new pedal, the Third Man Hardware Double Down.
“I’m not big on the, ‘This is the Jack White distortion pedal—get that Jack White sound’—I don’t really want to sell that concept,” White explains in his demo for the new effect. “I’d rather try to make something useful that other people can get their sound out of.”
White and Third Man Records have a brief history in the world of effects pedals. The first time White put his record company on the branding of a pedal was for the Bumble Buzz, which can be heard on White’s ‘Over and Over and Over’. Then came the Triplegraph pedal, which gave White the autonomy he needed to work with octave shifts.
Now, the Double Down brings a micro amp design with the specific usage of splitting a signal between two amps and controlling them independently. White’s onstage setup has included two different amps for years now, and the Double Down offers the user some sweet overdrive for whatever they want to use it for.
Check out White demoing the new pedal down below.
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