Mark Smith

On August of 2016, MusicRadar did a Rig Tour with Explosions in the Sky, taking a quick look at their gear. On his board, he has a Mastotron from Zvex as his second distortion.

“This is the one I use for the thick, viscous distortion sounds, like the volume-swell washes from Greet Death or the power chords of Have You Passed Through This Night? - it’s a really pleasingly heavy pedal.”

On August of 2016, MusicRadar did a Rig Tour with Explosions in the Sky, taking a quick look at their gear. On Mark Smith's board, his signal is first affected by a Boss RV-3.

“It’s been indispensable, and now that I think about it, this exact pedal has lasted me about 15 years without breaking. And we finally bought some backups - so I’m feeling good about that! There are other super nice reverb options these days, but back 15 years ago it seemed far and away the best way to get the most warmth and grandness from the guitar.”

This is the one I use for the thick, viscous distortion sounds, like the volume-swell washes from Greet Death or the power chords of Have You Passed Through This Night? - it’s a really pleasingly heavy pedal

On August of 2016, MusicRadar did a Rig Tour with Explosions in the Sky. For his guitar, the well known Fender Toronado, Mark said this:

It’s hard to go back and separate myself from this guitar. After our first album, we decided to basically go all-in on this band."

On August of 2016, MusicRadar did a Rig Tour with Explosions in the Sky, taking a quick look at their gear. On his board, he has a Bixonic Expandora after the Afterneath.

“I probably don’t need three distortion pedals! But I borrowed this from Congleton in the studio, and ended up loving it so much I bought one off eBay. It has a nice sharpness to it without being harsh, and you can just lightly distort the guitar so it growls a little without being piercing.”

On August of 2016, MusicRadar did a Rig Tour with Explosions in the Sky, taking a quick look at their gear. On Mark Smith's board, the last pedal in the chain is a Sansamp GT2.

“This is the one I use for the real apexes of our songs. It can just boost a melody so it shoots through in a way that works really well - like when Munaf and Michael are playing really heavy chords on songs like The Only Moment We Were Alone or Greet Death, I play this pedal for the melodies.”

On August of 2016, MusicRadar did a Rig Tour with Explosions in the Sky. Regarding Mark's Fender Twin Reverb, he had this to say:

"I really love this, and I know that I can count on it - it’s consistent and versatile. But this is one of those things where sometimes you just do what works best for us as a team."

On August of 2016, MusicRadar did a Rig Tour with Explosions in the Sky, taking a quick look at their gear. On Mark Smith's board, he starts his chain off with a Boss tuner.

On August of 2016, MusicRadar did a Rig Tour with Explosions in the Sky, taking a quick look at their gear. On his board, he has an Earthquaker Devices Afterneath directly after his Boss RV-3.

“This is another new addition. There have been times when I want the reverb to be even thicker and spacious and alien, and this pedal is my first try at it.”

On August of 2016, MusicRadar did a Rig Tour with Explosions in the Sky, taking a quick look at their gear. On his board, his only modulation pedal is an EHX Super Pulsar tremolo pedal.

“This is brand new. With this record, we didn’t play a lot of it live before recording, so we had to reverse engineer the sounds we got in the studio. I got this to replicate the tremolo sounds on Disintegration Anxiety and Colors In Space, which we made in the studio using a pedal I borrowed from [producer] John Congleton.”

On August of 2016, MusicRadar did a Rig Tour with Explosions in the Sky, taking a quick look at their gear. For his Line 6 DL4, Mark uses an EX-1 expression pedal as a control.

On August of 2016, MusicRadar did a Rig Tour with Explosions in the Sky, taking a quick look at their gear. On his board, he has the Line 6 DL4 as his second dedicated delay pedal.

“This is the only pedal I’ve been using since our first record. It makes a brief appearance on that record, and then I’ve used it on pretty much every song since. Of course, this is probably the 15th one I’ve had to buy, because they tend to break too easily, in my opinion. I use the expression pedal three or four times in the set, generally to add longer decay times to delay settings to just use in certain sections of songs, and then switch back to shorter decay times.”

On August of 2016, MusicRadar did a Rig Tour with Explosions in the Sky, taking a quick look at their gear. For powering his pedals, Mark has a PP2+ by Voodoo Labs.