Neil Fallon

"I’m a big fan of Pink Floyd’s early synth sounds, and this is the closest thing I’ve heard in making a guitar sound like that. There are others out there, but I often find them to be a bit too contemporary for me. You can switch this and make it percussive, with the gate open.

"You can make it really sizzly or really mellow, rolling off frequencies to the point where it doesn’t even sound like a guitar at all anymore, really.”

“It’s a killer compressor… I’ve used a number of them over the years, but this one seems to sound the best. We have a lot of dynamics in our set.

"I never used to appreciate compression because it was less obvious than something like a distortion pedal. As for modulation effects… that’s more Tim’s world. I won’t be doing a psychedelic solo anytime soon.

"That’s not in my future, I think.”

“I got this here in the UK when I left my Strymon Flint at home, it’s just a basic Tremolo. I think people sometimes over-think these things, maybe a Boss pedal might not sound as boutique as others, but it does the job just as good as any.”

“We keep this on just about all the time. It comes off for the more dynamic songs, like Son Of Virginia or Regulator. It also gives the Fender some more cajones, it helps with growl. It doesn’t colour the sound much.

"Sometimes it’s hard to differentiate boost from a distortion. I tend to want the same tone just more in quantity, and that’s exactly what this does.

"It’s feeding more food into it all, instead of being a glorified distortion pedal.”

Neil Fallon uses the MXR M135 Smart Gate on his pedalboard, as shown in MusicRadar's feature on pro guitarists' setups.

Neil Fallon uses the Radial Engineering BigShot™ ABY True Bypass Switcher, as detailed in MusicRadar's feature on professional guitarists' pedalboards.

Neil Fallon uses the Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail Nano reverb pedal, as shown in a MusicRadar feature showcasing 68 professional guitarists' pedalboards.