Jon Gutwillig

Jon "Barber" Gutwillig bought his Gibson ES-135 in the mid 1990's as the frontman for the Disco Biscuits jamtronica outfit. This photo was taken during the Setbreak is Over tour in the fall/winter of 2019-2020.

"No, I actually play Becker guitars. They build my Roland [GK-3 Divided Pickup] right into the guitar for me, so my Roland [VG-99 and FC-300] system is seamlessly integrated. It makes it so easy for me to run the Roland system. It’s literally plug and go. It’s really a wonderful piece—the guitar is 100% handmade. It’s made with the quality of a Paul Reed Smith, but it has more of a bluesy tone, an earthy, deep tone."

"No, I actually play Becker guitars. They build my Roland [GK-3 Divided Pickup] right into the guitar for me, so my Roland [VG-99 and FC-300] system is seamlessly integrated. It makes it so easy for me to run the Roland system. It’s literally plug and go. It’s really a wonderful piece—the guitar is 100% handmade. It’s made with the quality of a Paul Reed Smith, but it has more of a bluesy tone, an earthy, deep tone."

"Yes, I do have one of those. I’ve had a DD-5 or a DD-7 in my setup for as far back as I can remember."

"No, I actually play Becker guitars. They build my Roland [GK-3 Divided Pickup] right into the guitar for me, so my Roland [VG-99 and FC-300] system is seamlessly integrated. It makes it so easy for me to run the Roland system. It’s literally plug and go. It’s really a wonderful piece—the guitar is 100% handmade. It’s made with the quality of a Paul Reed Smith, but it has more of a bluesy tone, an earthy, deep tone."

"Yes, I do have one of those. I’ve had a DD-5 or a DD-7 in my setup for as far back as I can remember."

"You also have a BOSS OD-20 Drive Zone. Yeah, that’s a great pedal, too. I really like that pedal."

"I noticed you have an FS-5U Foot Switch with your DD-7 for tapping in the delay time. Do you tap in the rate at different tempos?

Yeah, all night long. I have some analog delays, too—which I use because they have a cool sound to them—and I put them before the DD-7. Then, I use the DD-7 to tap the analog delays. Because the DD-7 goes last, it sets the tempo of the other delays. Even if they’re out of tempo, the DD-7 will loop them at the appropriate tempo."

"You have an RV-5 Digital Reverb pedal. Do you use that for just a hint of reverb, or for a more obvious effect?

In the studio, I’ll use it for effects. I’ll tweak it and get some cool stuff out of it. It has a lot of cool features to it, and if you want to roll the knobs around while you’re playing you can get some really crazy things that I think are cool, frankly. [Laughs.] But live, on stage, I put it on a light plate and just leave it on the whole show. I never turn it off."

"Yeah. The EQ pedal is really used as a distortion boost. I use it when I’m [playing] at the top of the neck, [because the sound] quality of the guitar changes a little bit. It gets a little thinner. When you listen to Disco Biscuits’ music, I’m all over the neck. I play every single fret on the guitar twice at least every single night. My guitar is a 24-fret guitar, and I use every one of those frets up top.

When I get up there, I use the BOSS EQ to put a little bit more emphasis on those higher frequencies, and I also reduce some of the lower frequencies. When you’re up high and you have a lot of distortion on, you’re going to get some weird feedback coming at that lower range, so you want to dampen that lower range just a little bit. So, that’s what I use the EQ for.

Back when my clean sound was closer to a Wes Montgomery sound, I used to use the EQ to turn that sound into more of a classic Stratocaster sound. It was like a Stratocaster button! I’ve experimented with so many sounds over the years."

"What other BOSS pedals do you use?

Well, I have the [TU-2] tuner and the [GE-7] EQ pedal."