Barry McKenna

“Our old guitar tech, Brian, also worked for The Strokes and one day I was talking to him about overdrive. He recommended this - which was the only pedal The Strokes used on their first album, and he had the actual pedal they recorded with, which he lent to me for a bit. The tones are insane, and you can hear it all over that debut record.

“I even got to use it live, but I had to give it back when he was next out with them. The company had changed hands and the newer models didn’t have the same components, which is why I found this specific version.”

¨We made our second album with Gil Norton - he suggested I could use a bit more girth in my tone, instead of always sticking to Strats. He asked if I´d ever tried a 335, and I had, but I´d never really thought about them. He said he had this mate who could lend us one and I used it throughout the sessions. Halfway through, he said we could use it for a video shoot, but to be careful as it belonged to his mate Joey. And we asked, ´Who´s Joey?´ It turns out it was Joey Santiago from The Pixies! That guitar inspired me to switch and this was the second 335 I bought. (Total Guitar, January 2017)¨

This is the most badass pedal I’ve ever owned. There’s a switch between gated and oscillated modes - when it’s gated it still sounds mental, but in oscillation… everything just kicks in. The moment you stop playing, you get these crazy wails and siren noises. It’s quite untameable, but I quite like that. Every night we use it, things sound a bit different because it’s impossible to control.

I’m always searching for new sounds out of boredom. Every guitar player should fuck around with their tone, you don’t want the same sound all the time. And what I love about the Whammy is that it can do so much more than what it’s famous for. It’s actually my new favourite chorus pedal… I almost don’t want to give that secret away! Basically, if you stick it in deep detune and leave the heel all the way up, you get this really sweet chorus.

In this tweet from McKenna, two Fender Supersonic 60W heads are visible in his rig. He thanked Fender for those amps in the Tweet.

It’s simply a fact that Eventide make amazing pedals. The Modfactor takes care of a lot of my choruses and fl angers, tremolos, swells, they are just so many tricks to it.

I liked it so much I got the Timefactor over the Strymon delay, it just made me want to stick with Eventide. Plus I can control everything from my Mastermind [MIDI controller].

So what I’ll do is play parts, loop them and then play over them… which has gone disastrously wrong at times. But that’s part of live music, you know? No one expects everything to be perfect, in fact I quite like the weird sounds you get when it goes weird.

In this photo, which comes from an interview with Music Radar, the POG2 can be seen in the photo.

In this photo, which comes from an interview with Music Radar, the Mission EP-1 can be seen.

In this user-uploaded photo from Futurecdn, Barry McKenna's pedal board features the Boss RV-2 Digital Reverb, highlighting its use in his setup.