Dave Grohl's Pristine Pedals

Dave Grohl likes to have his guitar heard, so he needs to keep his guitar tone clear and pristine. He has a wide variety of pedals to help him accomplish this. He also likes to show off his crystal clear tone with a lot of delay. Not bad, eh? Dave has definitely found what he likes. With no help.

In this lens, I will go over the pedals that Dave uses. I can't find any information on his settings, however, and I'm not completely sure of what his signal chain looks like now. To see his signal chain from 2000, Click Here

image from fineartamerica.com

info from http://www.uberproaudio.com/who-plays-what/78-foo-fighters-dave-grohls-guitar-gear-rig-and-equipment

What can I say, Dave likes his delay. This was one of his core pedals. This pedal takes a large amount of electricity to power, so not all power sources will work with it. The DM-2 was discontinued in 1984, so it's a vintage pedal(obviously). None the less, this pedal is still very popular, and can be found on eBay pretty often.

A pedal close to the DM-2 is the Retro-Sonic AD. It is a copy of the DM-2. Another option id the Ibanez AD-9.

Click Here to check out the Retro-Sonic AD

Click Here to check out the AD-9's page

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Another delay pedal. What did I say? According to Boss, this pedal is the pedalboard equivalent of a rack unit. It has pretty simple controls: level, feedback, delay time, and an interesting mode knob with 4 options.

Click Here to go to the DD-3's page

image from guitarcenter.com

Every guitarist needs a tuner, it's a necessary evil. Boss is among the top dogs for pedals(obviously), and of course for tuners. Dave has two of these on his pedalboard, just to make sure. Of course, Boss went all out with this pedal with 7 different tuning modes: chromatic, guitar standard, guitar half step down, guitar whole step down, bass standard, bass half step down, and bass whole step down. It also remembers your preferences. Cool, huh?

Click Here to go to the TU-2's official page

image from americanmusical.com

Dave is one of the hundreds of artists that use this pedal, but I'm not quite sure when he uses it. It doesn't seem like any Foo Fighters songs have a phaser in it. It only has one knob, for speed.

Click Here to check out the Phase 90.

image from sweetwater.com

I thought of a song: Breakout from There is Nothing Left to Lose.

The Proco Rat is used by alternative artists from all over, Dave being one of them. After all, the Foo Fighters wouldn't be the face of Post-Grunge without distortion, right? The Rat has pretty much standard distortion controls with distortion and volume, but then it also has filter. at first glance this may seem like a specialty knob or extra, but it's basically just tone.

Click Here to check out the Rat.

image from effectsdatabase.com

I think of quite of times when the Foo Fighters have used a chorus pedal. First thing that comes to mind is on Headwires from There is Nothing Left to Lose. Chorus is used by countless artists, and there are just as many pedals as there are guitarists that use them. There's one for everyone. This pedal has pretty simple straightforward controls and can go anywhere from a thick phasey tone, to a vibrato effect.

Click Hereto go to the Univibe's page.

image from pulseonline.com

Surprise! Another delay pedal! Oh wait... This pedal is also a chorus and a vibrato pedal. Cool. Like most EHX pedals, this ones a little overboard and out there. It has 6, count them, 6 knobs for delaying, chorusing, and vibrato-ing. It even comes with an overload light! How nice.

Click Here to check out the Memory Man

image from keymusic.com

An envelope filter. I don't know why, but I guess he has it. The Q-Tron creates a large variety of auto-wah and envelope filter effects with it's, once again, 6 knobs.

Click Here to check out the Q-Tron

image from robrobertshomes.com

I really think this thing was only used on one Foo Fighters song: Generator from There is Nothing Left to Lose(I really like that album). This is a pretty unique pedal. You basically have the sound from your amp coming out of a tube that's next to a microphone. From there, you put your mouth over the tube, or close to it anyway, and make different shapes with your mouth. The result is a combination of your voice and your guitar. Pretty cool, huh? After all, no knobs to deal with.

Click Here to go to the Talkbox's page

image from amoeba.com

Remember how I said Dave really likes his tone? Well this is one of those contributing pedals I was talking about. This pedal provides both a clean boost, or a distorted boost by pulling the knob uniquely placed on the side of the pedal. Turn the knob to determine how much of a boost you want.

Click Here to check out the Katana

image from dirtbox.net

An intelligent noise gate, oh the joy! This is exactly what all guitarists who hate hum need. It has 3 settings in addition to the sensitivity knob: hiss, mid, and full band.

Click Here for more info on the Smart Gate

image from altomusic.com

Another contributing factor to Dave's pristine tone. This eliminates hum from power sources, so that no noise can come into his rig from the mains power supply

Click Here to check out the Eliminator

image from americanmusical.com

Dave definitely uses this piece of gear a lot. It allows you to get a full distortion sound at any volume. The creators claim that the Hot Plate is the most popular attenuator out there. Do I believe them? I don't know. Keep in mind that Dave uses the purple version.

Click Here to check out the Hot Plate

image from 3-b-s.eu

With so many pedals, it's no wonder that Dave needs a pretty big power source for his pedals. This power source goes all the way and regulates power extremely well. Best part? It's hand made in the USA.

Click Here to check out the power source

image from stevesmusiccenter.com