Billy Corgan

Posted on TSP's facebook page on 2011/03/27 with the caption "current weapon of choice!"

The Smashing Pumpkins during rehearsals for their 'Shiny and Oh So Bright Tour' to chat about gear before they hit the road. Here, lead singer and guitarist Billy Corgan talks about how the Line 6 HX Effects Processor helps him get his lead tones on tour.

In the video, it is shown that Billy used two Phase 90s, labelled "2" and "3".

"MXR Phase 90s I've used for years to kind of get more movement during solos... like for example, on the 'Oceania' solo, I use the Phase 90 and the [Fulltone] catalyst, so you get some movement in the lead," he said in this Premier Guitar interview at (5:20).

At 1:14 minute mark, Corgan showed his MXR Distortion II pedal.

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.

Corgan_2005 demo sessions 3.jpg

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.

Corgan_2005 demo sessions.jpg / Corgan_2005 demo sessions.jpg 2

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.

In this video for Premier Guitar's Rig Rundown series, Billy Corgan says of his Strymon El Capistan dTape Echo [@ 6:09] "Really great delay; almost like a '60's tape delay, so I use that for a few things."

"Oh, the original 'pumpkins' Electric Mistress... Gish/Siamese era. (I'm) still rocking that." - Billy Corgan at 3:20.

"MXR Phase 100, for those of you looking for the Siamese Dream lead sound. you just pick one of these (modes) and turn the speed all the way down. It gives you a little bit of movement there." - Billy Corgan at 2:38.

At 1:39 in this video taken from documentary about making of Siamese Dream, Butch Vig (album producer) says: "This is one of the secrets to our seret sound - this is the MuTron Bi-Phase. We run everything through it, everything... it's fabulous". (In the same video Vig calls Gish "sad" and Siamese Dream "happy, with a lot of happy songs", so I don't know how much can we trust him about anything else in the video)

He was involved in the making and promotion of this reissue pedal (the orange color is probably a reference to Smashing Pumpkins) with Electro Harmonix. He used his Op Amp Big Muff to get the Siamese Dream sound, so a standard Big Muff won't quite get the same sound. It'll get you close, but the Op Amp version is the one you want if you're trying to get the same gear he used. This video shows him using the pedal & talking about it.

CORGAN: The Fender Blender. Kevin Shields [of my Bloody Valentine] told me to get one. It's just the destructo pedal of all time. Listen to the song "Bullet" - at about two-and-a-half minutes there's a part where the key changes and it comes in all loud and thick and the speakers sound real distorty. That's that pedal. There are so many weird harmonics in the thing that if you turn it up a certain way, you get distortion beyond distortion. It makes the guitar sound almost unintelligible.

In this photo, Corgan can be seen performing live during the Gish/Siamese Dream era, and visible under Corgan's right foot, to the right of his MP-1 controller is what appears to be a Dunlop Rotovibe.

This pedal is distinguishable from a standard Dunlop Wah due to it's red-orange base, and chrome rocker.

According to this page, Billy uses EHX Small Clone chorus pedal.

At 0:37 minute mark, there is Maestro SS-3 Sustainer pedal visible. Corgan only says that this is "a sustainer".

In a photo from the Torhout Festival in Belgium, Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins is seen using a pedal resembling the Electro-Harmonix EH-4800 Small Stone, identifiable by its distinctive one-knob design and reddish chassis. This suggests its role in achieving his live sound during the Gish era.

Billy Corgan uses a Fulltone Catalyst, "as a preamp for a few songs," he says in this Premier Guitar video at (5:20).

In this rig rundown video, Billy Corgon says, "We call this the Bloody Finger...it's got a little bit of that Brian May clean kind of lead tone but it's much more high gain than that," at 5:25. And on the pedal's product page, it quotes Billy saying, "the best lead peadl I've ever had."

"His photo of the actual Big Muff used showing his exact settings confirmed it was a V4 op-amp (IC) Big Muff. The graphics match second edition V3 and V4 Big Muffs, but the tone and sustain pot sweep as Billy set them were only possible on a stock V4."

-www.kitrae.net

At 0:40 minute mark, Corgan shows his EHX PolyPhase pedal. This one was used on the "Siamese Dream", according to him.

At 2:55 minute mark, Roland AF-60 BeeGee fuzz pedal can be visible, shown by Corgan.

This image comes from a "Rig Rundown" with Premier Guitar. As you can see, one of the pedals towards the bottom right of the board is a Boss PH-3 Phase Shifter.

At 0:35 minute mark, Corgan shows the Roland Phase Five phaser pedal.

Smashing Pumpkins guitarist Billy Corgan shows us his Skreddy Echo pedal in this Premier Guitar interview at (5:04). "As some fans know, this is what Pink Floyd used back in the day to create that kind of beautiful shimmering sound," Corgan said.

In this Premier Guitar interview, Billy Corgan shows us his Chicago Iron Octavian at (6:05). "This is the exact clone of Jimi Hendrix's Octavia - I use [it] for a few things," Corgan said.

On October 7, 2013, a photo shared by Salvation Audio on Facebook shows Billy Corgan's pedalboard, which includes the Catalinbread Echorec delay effects pedal.

In this 2014 photo posted by Corgan on his Facebook page, his setup can be seen, including the EHX Micro Synthesizer.

On the pedalboard below the NS-2.

Billy Corgan's pedalboard. On 10.7.2013

At 2:52 minute mark of Billy Corgan's pedal collection video, the Boss HF-2 Hi Band Flanger can be seen.

In the list on spfc.org, a comprehensive list of all equipment used by the Pumpkins over their career.