J Mascis Talking About Pedal Stacking

In the world of pedals it’s often split into two groups. People that like clean amps and then build their tone/dirt with pedals. Or people that like to start with a dirty amp and then modify the tone with pedals.

Both have their pluses and minuses for sure. Usually clean amps will give you the most options and dynamics, but sometimes the tone is not the most desirable. Going with a dirty amp gives you great tones, but you lose on dynamics. Yesterday, I was very interested when I saw a video by Reverb.com with J Mascis (Dinosour Jr.) talking about pedals, and specifically stacking. J is easily known as a master or crazy and wild dirt tones, so I wanted to know what his game plane was.

J Mascis Talking About Pedal Stacking

So it’s cool to know what he leans on the side of the clean side. I was surprised by that. When you see J, it’s all about full stacks of Marshalls behind him, so I thought it was interesting that he kept it clean, but I his tone is incredibly dynamic. I also thought it was interesting that he used pedals to chop the volume or compress the signal post-muff too. That’s clever and didn’t think about that as an option. Very cool. What did you think? Comment below!