Richard Lloyd

In 2003 Richard Lloyd told Vintage Guitar Magazine that "I’ve been using a TS-808 Tube Screamer and a Boss SD-1 for years."

A mainstay of Lloyd's rig, particularly his live one, according to the following sources:

Musician, December 1986, "Richard Lloyd" by Bill Flanagan, pg. 26

"Onstage I use my Stratocaster and my JC 120 with a Boss Super Overdrive distortion device and a Korg SDD 2000 digital delay. I just traded an acoustic guitar for this little Acoustic amp to play at home and I've lately been using that onstage, too. Because the JC 120 is not giving me what I need. When we're in Europe we use Marshall amps, because they do something with the electronics of Fender amps in Europe and they're not as good. I'm probably going to switch to either Fenders or Marshalls, because the JC 120 has transistors and it's driving me crazy. It doesn't contain enough threat—it's too damn stable. Very pretty color tone. I mean, Adrian Belew swears by it—but he uses so many boxes he doesn't know what it sounds like anyway."

Guitar Player, January 1988, "Richard Lloyd: The 6 String Alchemy of Richard Lloyd" by Mark Dery

Lloyd runs his Strat into a Cry Baby wah-wah and then a Boss Super Overdrive with the tone set at three o'clock and the overdrive at one o'clock. That feeds into a Korg SDD-2000 digital delay set at 400 milliseconds: "I keep it at about eight repeats, to get that old Echoplex-type effect. That goes into the high channel of the Roland JC-120, and there's a small cable going into the Acoustic, which has its own overdrive, preamp thing, which I use. I like to have things so they're just at the point of bursting – just this side of overload – but I get quite a clean signal. The Boss Super Overdrive is not that dirty an effect, and the wah-wah pedal doesn't overdrive. I tried different orders, but the signal-to-noise ratio was the cleanest this way, with the digital delay closest to the amp."

Vintage Guitar, 2003, "Richard Lloyd: Still Broadcasting" by Kathleen Johnson

I’ve been playing through a Vox AC-30 live and a blackface Fender Deluxe. The AC-30 is from about 1980, and the Deluxe is a ’65. I use the same thing with Television. I’ve been using a TS-808 Tube Screamer and a Boss SD-1 for years.

www.richardlloyd.com, Ask Richard

q: Hello Richard, I saw at guitargeek that you use a boss super-overdrive together with a Ibanez Tube Screamer. How do you use both (knob settings)? One for boost and the other for distortion?

Best regards! Fl�vio Campos

a: Hello Flavio,

While the knob settings might change depending, when I use both pedals I will normally use the Ibanez as the main pedal and all most of the time. The Boss would be used as a volume boost and to add a little more grit to leads/ Lately I have been only using the Ibanez, and using the volume controls on the guitar for differentials. More work perhaps, but a more stable tone.�where they both would be all out would be for something like the beginning of Rocket, which wants feedback and convoluted tonal turns.

Best regards, Richard Lloyd

Premier Guitar, "Richard Lloyd: The Alchemist" by Tzvi Gluckin (December 25, 2018)

What pedals do you bring on tour?

I had a Tube Screamer TS808 that I used for a long time. It and a couple of other pedals got lost by Air Canada, which really upset me. They only pay by the pound when they lose your luggage. They don’t pay the value, so I lost that. I wasn’t able to replicate it. The new ones, the reissues, even if they say they have the same chip in them, for some reason they just don’t sound the same comparatively. I had one from the first year that they came out. I also have a Boss overdrive, the yellow one, that Overdrive OD-1 [sic], which had the same chip as the Tube Screamer. That’s a pretty good overdrive pedal. Lately, I’m using a Vertex T Drive. I have an Echoplex preamp, which adds up to 8 dB to the signal and softens it a bit. And some kind of delay. On one tour I took an actual Echoplex around the world and, surprisingly, it kept up. They’re infamous for breaking and it didn’t break. I was lucky.

Guitar Player, "Electric Lloydland" / "“People Talk About the Good Old Days, but the Good Days Are Today”: Television Guitarist Richard Lloyd Reflects on His Highly Influential Career in Music" by Richard Bienstock (2019, republished February 23, 2023) (about The Countdown)

Pedals were minimal as well – an Echoplex, an “old Boss overdrive,” an MXR Carbon Copy and a DigiTech FreqOut, which, Lloyd says, “is essentially a feedback machine. I used that specifically on the song ‘The Countdown,’ because you can be at a low volume and still get good feedback. I didn’t have to turn the amps on 10 and be in a room with earplugs and, uh, you know, flying saucers.”

Lately, I’m using a Vertex T Drive. I have an Echoplex preamp, which adds up to 8 dB to the signal and softens it a bit. And some kind of delay. On one tour I took an actual Echoplex around the world and, surprisingly, it kept up. They’re infamous for breaking and it didn’t break. I was lucky.

According to Guitar World's interview, Lloyd uses the Dunlop Echoplex preamp pedal.

Pedals were minimal as well — an Echoplex, an “old Boss overdrive,” an MXR Carbon Copy and a DigiTech FreqOut, which, Lloyd says, “is essentially a feedback machine. I used that specifically on the song ‘The Countdown,’ because you can be at a low volume and still get good feedback. I didn’t have to turn the amps on 10 and be in a room with earplugs and, uh, you know, flying saucers.”

Pedals were minimal as well — an Echoplex, an “old Boss overdrive,” an MXR Carbon Copy and a DigiTech FreqOut, which, Lloyd says, “is essentially a feedback machine. I used that specifically on the song ‘The Countdown,’ because you can be at a low volume and still get good feedback. I didn’t have to turn the amps on 10 and be in a room with earplugs and, uh, you know, flying saucers.”

Mentioned in the January 1988 Guitar Player interview "Richard Lloyd: The 6 String Alchemy of Richard Lloyd" by Mark Dery.

Despite his lean attitude toward gizmos, he does have a soft spot for two old gadgets – the long-vanished MXR Blue Box octave divider and Vox' renowned Tone Bender (used by Jeff Beck with the Yardbirds). "The Vox Tone Bender, which I used on the studio version of 'Field Of Fire', is really hard to find. That particular one was in the studio in Stockholm. It's a very unusual device. It's like a distortion pedal, although it doesn't so much distort as squeeze the bandwidth, giving you a real silky, sustainy, bright tone. My Blue Box is one of the original octave dividers. It's really great, but you can't use it live. It makes the top of your fretboard sound like a bass!

"In the future, I want to get away from effects. I've found that when you record with effects, they fill up every available space in the record and then you have no air. And so many people are looking for something that's as magical as the classic rock records, without recognizing that it doesn't come from technology per se. You have to develop a sense of balance."

The in-house Vox Tone Bender at Mistlur Studios was used for the solo on "Field of Fire" as stated in this December 1986 Musician interview and in this January 1988 Guitar Player interview.

Musician, December 1986, "Richard Lloyd" by Bill Flanagan, pg. 26

For the solo on 'Field Of Fire' I used a Marshall 50-watt self-contained box through a Vox Tone Bender. A Vox Tone Bender is what Jeff Beck used in the Yardbirds. They're very hard to find, and Mistlur had one; every musician that went in there would touch it, but people are very honest over there so it's still there. I didn't rip it off; I don't know how I feel about that." Other than that tempting Tone Bender, Lloyd avoided devices and effects: ."It's mostly straight through the amps, turned up as loud as endurance could take.

Guitar Player, January 1988, "Richard Lloyd: The 6 String Alchemy of Richard Lloyd" by Mark Dery

Despite his lean attitude toward gizmos, he does have a soft spot for two old gadgets – the long-vanished MXR Blue Box octave divider and Vox' renowned Tone Bender (used by Jeff Beck with the Yardbirds). "The Vox Tone Bender, which I used on the studio version of 'Field Of Fire', is really hard to find. That particular one was in the studio in Stockholm. It's a very unusual device. It's like a distortion pedal, although it doesn't so much distort as squeeze the bandwidth, giving you a real silky, sustainy, bright tone.

Used live, as stated in the January 1988 Guitar Player interview "Richard Lloyd: The 6 String Alchemy of Richard Lloyd" by Mark Dery.

Switching effects on but not turning the dials up has become something of a Lloyd trademark. "Yeah," he nods, "I'm using a wah-wah pedal now, and when I put the wah on, I don't want to hear the phasing. I just want to use it as a tone control. That way, you can get tenacity, starting a passage in the bass frequencies and slowly moving it toward the treble. A lot of times, I use it to get extra midrange."

Lloyd runs his Strat into a Cry Baby wah-wah and then a Boss Super Overdrive with the tone set at three o'clock and the overdrive at one o'clock. That feeds into a Korg SDD-2000 digital delay set at 400 milliseconds: "I keep it at about eight repeats, to get that old Echoplex-type effect. That goes into the high channel of the Roland JC-120, and there's a small cable going into the Acoustic, which has its own overdrive, preamp thing, which I use. I like to have things so they're just at the point of bursting – just this side of overload – but I get quite a clean signal. The Boss Super Overdrive is not that dirty an effect, and the wah-wah pedal doesn't overdrive. I tried different orders, but the signal-to-noise ratio was the cleanest this way, with the digital delay closest to the amp."