Benmont Tench

Visible in this Instagram post, this Twitter post and this photo from Tench's keyboard tech, Ken Rich. It was mentioned by Tench in this May 2017 KeyboardMag article.

You’re known to have a real penchant for effects pedals. Don’t you have an effects loop on your Hammond?

Yeah. Bill Beer put that in. I didn’t know there was an effects loop in it. I thought there was a “direct out,” and then I thought that there was a “line in” in case I wanted to run the keyboard that was sitting on top of the Hammond into the Leslie as well. After I had it for about 10 or 12 years, I did a session with The Cult. Someone said, “This Leslie sounds so clean, can you distort it?” And I said, "I don’t think so." And they looked at my Hammond and said, “Oh, you’ve got an effects loop. Let’s get a fuzz pedal!” I was like, “What?” And I was off to the races. I started out with a little Turbo Fuzz, that I also used on a song on the album All Shook Down by The Replacements. Over the years, I’ve tried other things as well. I have a couple of pedals by Line 6, and Ryan Adams, God bless him, gave me a couple of Electro-Harmonix pedals like the Memory Man and the Electric Mistress flange pedal. I also have a tremolo pedal and a turbo boost as well. These are all for the Hammond, and I also use the spring reverb that’s built into it as well. Ever since I got this organ back around 1977, I’ve used this reverb. It gentles it up. Nobody can do what [Band keyboardist] Garth Hudson does. However, there are settings on that Lowrey organ he plays where the attack is a little softer. And that changes the effect of how you play. So I find that using things like the Electro-Harmonix pedals allows me to soften the attack. It’s fun. I even have a Line 6 modulation pedal on the DX7 to give it a little bit of chorus. That makes it tolerable. I also sometimes run my Vox Continental through a Leslie simulator.

Visible in this Instagram post and this photo from Tench's keyboard tech, Ken Rich.

Featured in this Twitter post.

Rockin the 'lectric mistress, courtesy of the too-kind Mr @TheRyanAdams

It is also visible in this Instagram post, this other Twitter post and this photo from Tench's keyboard tech, Ken Rich. It was mentioned by Tench in this May 2017 KeyboardMag article.

You’re known to have a real penchant for effects pedals. Don’t you have an effects loop on your Hammond?

Yeah. Bill Beer put that in. I didn’t know there was an effects loop in it. I thought there was a “direct out,” and then I thought that there was a “line in” in case I wanted to run the keyboard that was sitting on top of the Hammond into the Leslie as well. After I had it for about 10 or 12 years, I did a session with The Cult. Someone said, “This Leslie sounds so clean, can you distort it?” And I said, "I don’t think so." And they looked at my Hammond and said, “Oh, you’ve got an effects loop. Let’s get a fuzz pedal!” I was like, “What?” And I was off to the races. I started out with a little Turbo Fuzz, that I also used on a song on the album All Shook Down by The Replacements. Over the years, I’ve tried other things as well. I have a couple of pedals by Line 6, and Ryan Adams, God bless him, gave me a couple of Electro-Harmonix pedals like the Memory Man and the Electric Mistress flange pedal. I also have a tremolo pedal and a turbo boost as well. These are all for the Hammond, and I also use the spring reverb that’s built into it as well. Ever since I got this organ back around 1977, I’ve used this reverb. It gentles it up. Nobody can do what [Band keyboardist] Garth Hudson does. However, there are settings on that Lowrey organ he plays where the attack is a little softer. And that changes the effect of how you play. So I find that using things like the Electro-Harmonix pedals allows me to soften the attack. It’s fun. I even have a Line 6 modulation pedal on the DX7 to give it a little bit of chorus. That makes it tolerable. I also sometimes run my Vox Continental through a Leslie simulator.

Featured in this Instagram post by Tench.

Visible in this Instagram post and this photo from Tench's keyboard tech, Ken Rich.

Visible in this Instagram post.

Visible in this Twitter post.

Visible in this Instagram post by Tench.

Visible in the top left corner of this Instagram post.

Visible in this Twitter post.

Visible in this March 20, 2018 Instagram post and this photo from Tench's keyboard tech, Ken Rich, in this this March 2017 Ken Rich Sounds blog post by Maxwell Butler.