The Smashing Pumpkins – Monuments to an Elegy

Gifted to Corgan by creator Jeff Doucette, as documented by Kit Rae on his website. It does not seem to have been used much, if at all, on any recordings.

The Creamy Dreamer is a unique and original pedal created by a young, ingenious Canadian pedal maker, responsible for the all of the Smashing Pumpkins guitar tones...umm, well no, not really. It actually turned out to not to be a Smashing Pumpkins used or endorsed pedal at all, but simply an expensive boutique modded Big Muff circuit. Before you hear about how the pedal actually sounds, you may find the story behind this infamous pedal interesting, entertaining, and educational.

In the mid 1990s Billy Corgan's guitar tones from his band Smashing Pumpkins were all the rage in the guitar world. Specifically, many guitarists were after the tones heard on the 1993 album Siamese Dream, arguably the Pumkins [sic] best album (though I like all of them!). Billy had stated he used a vintage Big Muff on SD, but no one knew which version, or how it was used. In 1998 a high school student from Ontario, Canada named Jeff D (I'll leave the last name out to protect the guilty and/or innocent) was modifying Russian Big Muffs with a combination of several mods for the circuit. It seems he gleaned his Muff knowledge mostly from questioning other knowledgeable DIYers on the old AMPAGE forum and his own experiments, in an attempt to make it sound like the SP Big Muff tone. Jeff then began offering to mod the Russian BMP pedals online through a Smashing Pumpkins fan site (smashing pumpkins.org), and eventually sent one to Billy Corgan in 1999, who sent an email back to him complementary of the pedal. Jeff then began offering a new "Creamy Dreamer" pedal for sale through his sustainpunch.com website for around $200, which was very high for a boutique pedal at the time. The Sustain Punch website noted Billy's email about the pedal, and implied that the Pumpkins liked it and that an endorsement and signature series was in the works. Many people thought the website implied the pedal was something new, endorsed and currently being used by the Smashing Pumpkins on their new album, Machina. I saw the old website, and I have to say, that is exactly how I remember it, and it was implied this pedal was an original design, and all the work of Jeff, with no mention that it was essentially a Big Muff clone, or thanks to the people who explained how the circuit worked for him, and gave him advice on mods. The circuit board of Jeff's CD was coated in thick paint, presumably to hide the fact that it was simply a modded Big Muff.

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The Creamy Dreamer seen in the demo sessions for Zeitgeist in 2005. From the Inside The Zeitgeist Documentary.

I do think the consumers who bought the pedal and the dealers who promoted the pedal blew the SP relationship more out of proportion than what was actually stated on the Sustain Punch and Smashing Pumpkins websites, but the hype spread, and the pedal became very popular for a few years as THE pedal for the Smashing Pumpkins tone. A story appeared in the Toronto Sun about Jeff, claiming the pedal created by the 19 year old was responsible for the Smashing Pumpkins sound and that they contacted him about doing an endorsement deal. Even Rolling Stone magazine reported the sound on the new Smashing Pumpkins album was created with Jeff's Creamy Dreamer pedal. Some were even stating that this was the pedal used on Siamese Dream, an album recorded years before the pedal was even made! A few major music gear chains picked up the pedal and thousands of units were sold. Billy Corgan has since stated he did strum a few chords on the pedal he was sent, and did send an email to Jeff complementing him as a matter of politeness, but nothing more. I have read in a few places that one of the Pumpkins crew claimed that they did use the pedal at some point on the Arising tour in '99, but that it was never used on any recording prior or since. It was used by Billy in 2005 during the demo recordings for the Zeitgiest album in Scottsdale, Arizona, although it is unknown whether it was used in the later recording sessions for the actual album.

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The Creamy Dreamer seen in the demo sessions for Zeitgeist in 2005. From the Inside The Zeitgeist Documentary.

Billy's statements indicate he feels that his comment was exploited, as he never endorsed, or used this pedal on any Smashing Pumpkins recording, and that he was just being nice to a kid who sent him a pedal. When word about the real story behind the CD pedal spread quickly on the internet, the hype soon died down. There was a lot of backlash against Jeff on the DIY forums over the whole affair, to say the least. Many people expressed anger over him using their ideas to make his pedal. Ron Neeley of Ronsound even claimed Jeff stole the ideas used in the CD from mods he was already doing to BMP's at the time.

In the end, the Creamy Dreamer was simply another modded version of a Big Muff made by another boutique pedal builder, no different that what dozens of other builders have done, using mods now commonly and freely shared. There has been no shortage of boutique pedal makers since then who have sold pedals that attempted to reproduce the Smashing Pumpkins sound. Skreddy Pedals is one maker that did it, with pedals given obvious Smashing Pumpkins-like song names like the Zero, Mayonaise, and Mayo (Billy Corgan has actually used Skreddy Pedals - the Skreddy Echo was on his 2012 pedal board). Devi Ever made several Pumpkin's inspired pedals, like the Rocket (Corgan owns one), Soda Meiser, and another supposedly requested by Corgan, called the Silver Rose (Corgan hated it, resulting in another messy non-endorsement). Those makers also sold a range of other non-Pumpkins inspired pedals though. The CD was perhaps a good lesson on why not to attempt to run a business based on one product that was not terribly original. The Sustain Punch website was closed down in 2000, although the BMP mod was still offered by Jeff for a few years afterward. I'm sure he has moved on to other things now, but the myth of the Smashing Pumpkins' use of the Creamy Dreamer pedal remains. At the time I wrote this article (2008), it was still being perpetuated on various websites and ebay auctions. I even pulled this silly and very inaccurate tidbit off of Amazon.com's Pumpkins' bio.

'After Gish, the band toured, enjoying a cult following from the release of Gish, which sold close to a half million records in a couple of years. Billy began some experimentation with the band's sound, often setting up multiple effects loops for one guitar alone. The sweetheart of this era is the "Creamy Dreamer" Sustain distortion, behind some of the band's "wall of sound" that defines this era of the band.' - Smashing Pumpkins bio on Amazon.com

While working on the Smashing Pumpkins' abandoned Teargarden by Kaleidyscope project in 2009, Billy Corgan revealed in a blog that he used a vintage late 1970s Big Muff for Siamese Dream, which appears to be an op-amp Big Muff. I have written about it in this section.