the Brighton Rock sound, which offers up either a chase-effect delay, emulated to sound as if it’s coming out of three amps, in ‘Toe’ mode, and an utterly May-like orchestral harmonizer with three-part harmony in ‘heel’ mode, which will have you growing your hair, putting  in the curling tongs and raiding granny’s coin jar for for a sixpence – unfortunately, it won’t make you understand astrophysics.

THE ERIC CLAPTON CROSSROADS PEDAL

We all know that Eric Clapton is a big deal in guitar world, as six-string magicians go, his influence is pretty gigantic, despite some post-seventies dodginess. The interesting thing with the Eric Clapton pedal, is that unlike the Brian May Red Special pedal, of which he humbly says ‘I claim no credit’, and, of course, the Jimi Hendrix pedal, is that here Clapton, along with his long-time guitar tech, Lee Dickson, actually had some input.

One other key difference between the Clapton pedal and the May and Hendrix units is that it’s a stompbox rather than a wah-wah-style unit. Other than that, the pedal follows the same principles as the other two, in so far as the smartest of the controls offers seven settings, which stretch a staggeringly long career of fret-noodling and contorted facial expressions. These range from songs like Sunshine of Your Love, from the 1967 Cream album Disraeli Gears, through obvious settings like Layla right up to the song Reptile from his 2001 album Reptile, not quite in the same league as the other tracks, but according to Digitech it features a Gibson L-5 jazz guitar played through a custom Cornell tweed combo. Other than the self-explanatory Level control, there are a further two controls on the top of the box simply labelled Control 1 and 2, which, as with the other pedals, change different parameters within the effect depending on which ‘song’ you have the pedal set to.

Much like Hendrix and even May to an extent, a lot of old Slowhand’s sounds were created through experimentation. Rock was a brave new world back then, where digital meant counting to ten on your fingers and recreational drugs were in copious supply. To give you an example, on the song Badge, with the booze and drugs flowing like water down the streets of Tewkesbury, he used rotary organ speakers with strategically placed microphones and an amp driven to breaking point. The beauty of a pedal like this is that is saves you all the hassle of having to actually do all that (that’s the mic placement etc, not the booze and drugs). Overall the pedal has a bright midrange although the real treat comes with the vintage overdrive sounds from the Cream days, reminding you of why Clapton was so revered in the first place.

CONCLUSION

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