Guitarists, whether playing for fun or headlining a major festival, are known for amassing sizable collections of pedals. If you don’t have one yet, you’re probably working your way towards it! So it comes as no surprise that a guitar player like John Mayer would have a very large collection of guitar effects pedals. There are several videos on YouTube where Mayer, or his guitar tech, reveals a small chunk of his pedal collection. Mayer also occasionally shares images of his pedalboards on Instagram.
This article covers Mayer’s guitar effects pedals and at the end of the article, we recommend a number of pedals that you can use to achieve his iconic tone!
To keep things organized, we’ll categorize his pedals in ten categories: Boost, Overdrive, Distortion, Fuzz, Compressor, Delay, Reverb, Modulation, Wah, and Others.
Boost
Boost pedals are a great way to provide a volume boost for guitar solos without changing your tone. When it comes to boost pedals, Mayer really only uses two. The first is a Keeley Katana Clean Boost, which is a $169 pedal that provides a really transparent volume boost and is very simple to operate.
The second boost pedal that he uses is a Strymon OB.1, which is actually a clean boost and compressor pedal. The pedal costs $199, which is a little more expensive, but considering that it’s a 2-in-1 pedal, I’d say that’s a pretty decent price.
Overdrive
As most of you would expect, a large percentage of Mayer’s guitar pedals are overdrive pedals. Overdrive pedals are so different from one another in terms of tone and response, which is why for most guitar players, the search for a perfect overdrive pedal never really ends.
While researching Mayer’s overdrive pedals, the first pedal that really stood out from the rest was the Klon Centaur. This pedal has reached a mythical status within the guitar community for its ability to go from a transparent overdrive to full on distortion, all while maintaining a warm and pleasant tone. However, unlike the other pedals I will mention in this article, the Klon Centaur isn’t easy to obtain. It has been out of production for more than 20 years and the units on the second hand market begin at an insane $1,500. Thankfully, there are many companies out there that have made clones of the Klon Centaur that sound really close to the original pedal. A few good alternatives to check out are the Paul Cochrane Timmy, JHS Morning Glory, and EHX Soul Food.
While the Klon is known to be a transparent overdrive, meaning that it doesn’t color your tone much when engaged, there are times where you’d like to have an overdrive with a mid-range bump to help push your guitar through the mix. This is where the Tube Screamer series of pedals from Ibanez excel. Mayer is known to have played through the TS808, TS9, and TS10 in order to get that “Stevie Ray Vaughan” style of overdrive. Ibanez Tube Screamers are also relatively inexpensive, beginning at $100 for a brand new unit.
Another Tube Screamer style overdrive that Mayer is known to use is a Fulltone Fulldrive 2. This pedal provides the same mid-range bump to your overdrive tone, but it also has a toggle switch that allows you to switch between two other overdrive modes. Additionally, the Fulldrive 2 also has a boost section built into the pedal, allowing you to give your overdrive an extra gain boost when you need it to cut through during a solo. The Fulldrive 2 can be bought for $109 brand new, which is a pretty good deal for a 2-in-1 pedal.
No pedal collection would be complete without the inclusion of a BOSS pedal, and for overdrives, Mayer often uses the BOSS BD-2 Blues Driver. The Blues Driver’s tone sits somewhere between being a transparent overdrive and a Tube Screamer style overdrive. It also sports BOSS’s trademark rugged design that has been road-tested by countless gigging musicians throughout the years. The Blues Driver can be easily found on the market and it retails at $100.
The last overdrive pedal we’ll be checking out is one from boutique maker JHS Pedals, and it is simply known as The Bonsai. This overdrive pedal is a Tube Screamer style overdrive pedal, but what sets it apart from the other overdrive pedals is that this pedal has nine different overdrive voicings built into it. Over the years, there have been many Tube Screamer style overdrives that have come and gone, and only a few have managed to stand the test of time and be regarded as classics. The Bonsai manages to replicate and cram the circuitry of nine classics into a single, easy to use pedal, and it retails at $229. That’s a pretty steep price for a guitar pedal, but considering the versatility of this pedal, it’s hard to argue with the price that JHS has set.
Distortion
Distortion tones aren’t something you hear very often from Mayer as it’s not a sound that is necessary for the kind of music he plays. However, there are instances where Mayer will use a distortion pedal, and from the research I’ve done online, there’s been only one distortion pedal that he’s known to use -- the MXR M104 Distortion.
The MXR M104 Distortion is a very simple, two-knob operated, distortion pedal that can also double as an overdrive. Thanks to its simplicity, it has become a really popular pedal over the years, and it’s responsible for many of the classic distortion tones from the 80’s. Like many other MXR pedals, the M104 Distortion is readily available and can be bought for $79.99 at most retail shops.
Fuzz
Fuzz pedals first became hugely popular thanks to Jimi Hendrix and his trio, The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Fuzz pedals tend to work best when there aren’t that many instrumentalists in the band as the fuzz sound takes up a lot of sonic real estate. Just like Hendrix who came before him, Mayer also uses a fuzz pedal when performing with his trio, the John Mayer Trio.
The fuzz effect that can be heard on Mayer’s recording of “Crossroads” from the Battle Studies album was reportedly achieved with a Cornish NG-2 Fuzz pedal. However, it is very hard to get your hands on one of these units, and they cost at least $700 on the secondhand market. As regular, non-celebrity figures, getting our hands on one of these is unrealistic.
A fuzz pedal that is attainable that is also used by Mayer is the Fulltone ‘69 Fuzz. The ‘69 Fuzz is a vintage-voiced fuzz pedal that cleans up really well when you roll back the volume knob on your guitar. As fuzz pedals are known to be tricky to dial in, the ‘69 Fuzz deals with this issue by providing a trim knob that can be found inside the pedal as well as two external knobs to adjust the input gain and contour. Playing around with the volume knob on your guitar also allows you to get a range of different tones that can make this pedal triple-up as an overdrive, distortion, and fuzz pedal. Like any other Fulltone pedal, the ‘69 Fuzz is really well built and it can be bought online for $151.20.
Compressor
Compressor pedals are often an essential effect to our “base” tone. For many players, their compressors are left “always-on,” and removing them from pedal boards will completely change their tone. When it comes to compressors, you don’t have to get too fancy with them, and in Mayer’s case, he’s been known to use two pedals.
The first pedal is an Analog Man Mini Bi-Comp. This pedal is a ROSS style compressor that has been tweaked and improved by the pedal builders at Analog Man. All pedals from Analog Man are hand built and made in the USA using high quality components, making them one of the most reliable pedal makers out there. In fact, Analog Man pedals tend to have great resale value as they are known to last for a very long time. Of course, they sound great as well, and the Mini Bi-Comp is no exception. As Analog Man is a boutique pedal maker and they don’t produce that many pedals a year, it may be easier to find the Mini Bi-Comp on the second hand market. They can be found on sites like Reverb.com for $200.
Another compressor that has recently surfaced on Mayer’s pedalboard is the Strymon OB.1, which I’ve already mentioned above in the “Boost” category. This pedal can be found on the pedalboard that Mayer uses for his Dead & Company shows.
