Fennesz

In the fifth photo at the bottom labled: "Fennesz's worktop". You can see the MXR Blue Box on top of what looks like a EHX bucket brigade pedal and his custom master distortion box. It's a very fitting unit for Fennesz due to the fact it can give you a synthy bass/lead tone if played in the upper register to glitching, clanging walls of fuzz if played in the lower register on a guitar. It makes since that he'd uses this to run into his chain of pedals and plug-ins.

Throughout Fennesz' career effects pedals have played a crucial role both live and in the studio. In this live session you can see a Memory Man on the table possibly being used for additional delay, looping, as well as it's filter and the reverse delay feature, but who really could know other than the man himself.

"I experiment and am always changing things in the studio, but when I play live or begin recording I use the same signal path. I start with a Fender guitar—a Stratocaster or a Jazzmaster, into a Boss FDR-1 Fender Deluxe Reverb pedal, which is a cheap preamp. It goes into a Boss PS-3 Digital Pitch Shifter/Delay pedal. From there the signal goes into my custom distortion box, and then directly into the laptop through an Apogee Duet (in the studio I use the Apogee Ensemble). On the laptop I have the Max/MSP patch, which is like a modeler/sampler/synthesizer thing. From the laptop, I go into a Mackie mixer, which sends a mono signal to an amp and a stereo signal to the house."

From an article describe a collaboration between Ian Bellamy and Thomas Strønen.

"I experiment and am always changing things in the studio, but when I play live or begin recording I use the same signal path. I start with a Fender guitar—a Stratocaster or a Jazzmaster, into a Boss FDR-1 Fender Deluxe Reverb pedal, which is a cheap preamp. It goes into a Boss PS-3 Digital Pitch Shifter/Delay pedal. From there the signal goes into my custom distortion box, and then directly into the laptop through an Apogee Duet (in the studio I use the Apogee Ensemble). On the laptop I have the Max/MSP patch, which is like a modeler/sampler/synthesizer thing. From the laptop, I go into a Mackie mixer, which sends a mono signal to an amp and a stereo signal to the house."

From an article describe a collaboration between Ian Bellamy and Thomas Strønen.

Around the time that Venice was made Christian Fennesz started using the Line 6 Pod 2.0 amp modeler and FX processor to save the presets of his amps and effects. Now he has AC-30 and Fender amps in his Rider. So a POD isn't really comparable.

Fennesz is known to use the Boss DS-2 Turbo Distortion pedal, as seen in his performances at the Norwegian National Opera House and in a Boiler Room set. The Juno Reviews article mentions this gear in the context of his setup.

A photo of various dirt pedals that Christian has used both live and in the studio

A photo of various dirt pedals he has used throughout his career.

In this picture from Christian's Twitter/X you can see the Life Pedal version III in front of his monitor and beside his Mac.

In this picture from Christian's Twitter/X you can see the Superego+ to the right of the Life Pedal