KEYS
UGLY PREAMPS & WHY WE’ RE ALL WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING | David Pfaltzgraff
Last year I penned an article in this very magazine titled‘ A New Keys Era- the 90s?’
Not to pat myself on the back, but boy was I right. We’ re currently awash in a fresh new wave of nostalgia, from Justin Bieber’ s newest output to a brand spanking new Christian collab between Abbie Gamboa and Aodhán King, of which the very first thing you hear is a dry, DI’ d guitar sound prominently effected by a flanger.
I’ m not here to rewrite last year’ s article( though it’ s still a good read if you want to go dig it up) but as I listen to that new collab worship record something interesting jumps out to me. You see … that guitar sound that opens the record, and pops up other places as well, seems clearly inspired by an artist who’ s gaining a huge amount of attention lately, named mk. gee.
Specifically, guitarists of all sorts are nerding out about the rather unusual guitar tone mk. gee is known for and obsessing over the details of his signal chain. It’ s gotten to the point where multiple guitar pedal manufacturers have now released clones of the most central element of his tone, a singled, overdriven channel strip from the old Tascam Portastudio 424 cassette recorder.
This is where it gets weird.
WHY IT IS WEIRD
Here’ s the thing about those old Portastudios. Many musicians started out with these old four tracks, recording straight to cassette and doing everything they could to hide the fact it was recorded on a Portastudio. These old cassette records were quite simple, and their preamps were known for a sharp, brittle character if you pushed them too hard.
But now that’ s the exact thing people are chasing after. What those boutique pedal manufacturers are replicating, and what shows up, at least to my ears, in those first few, flanged out seconds of King and Gamboa’ s‘ Throwing Paint’ record would have been considered‘ bad’ tone just five years ago.
So how can we explain this radical change? What was once a tone to escape from is now firmly entrenched as the latest and greatest trend. Honestly, I would have said the same thing about flanger, and before that vibrato, and before that chorus.
I think the simplest explanation for this is that when it comes to art we tend to look back with a softer edge, a nostalgic bent, that makes things that were once rejected as cheesy or cliche seem‘ not as bad as we thought it was’.
86 September 2025 Subscribe for Free...