Just a few weeks ago, John Mayer tried his hand at demoing gear, becoming JHS Pedals' de facto gear tester while the brand's captain, Josh Scott, was recovering from a serious mountain bike accident.
And while it was far from Mayer's usual role, we (and Scott) can safely say he did an excellent job putting the JHS Pedals 424 Gain Stage – the “perfect replica of the front end of a Tascam Portastudio” – through its paces.
For those wondering how Scott managed to clinch such an A-list product specialist, it turns out it was Mayer – a close friend and collaborator of Scott's – who offered to help.
“John texted me after my mountain bike accident and just said he wanted to do a video because he wanted to make sure that things kept moving forward in my obvious absence,” he reveals in a new Guitar World interview. “He knew I wasn’t able to film. He knew I was in a lot of pain.
“I think he just did it to be awesome and encouraging and a friend, and it was really special. It showed me that John truly is an amazing person, and he took a lot of his time out of his day to film that video and put himself out there just to help a friend.”
In fact, Scott goes on to call Mayer's timely assistance “a humbling and really wonderful experience, and I’m really thankful for it.”
He continues, “The video was a blast, and it reached a lot of people, and we sold lots of units because of it, and that’s exactly what John wanted. I love that he had the intuition to do that and that he enjoyed helping out our company in a time of need. That says a lot about him as a person.”
In the demo video, which has since gone viral among guitar circles, Mayer observes, “A revolution [is] taking place right now in guitar playing, and it has to do with dynamics. For most of guitar playing history, guitars were plugged into amplifiers, and the way that a tube amp responds has kind of defined the way people played guitar.
“But now people have been plugging into things that aren't tube amplifiers, like USB interfaces for DAWs, and they react completely different [to an amp],” he explains. “How it reacts, sonically, is 50% of the thing; feel is the other 50%, and the fun part about that is it makes you play different stuff.”
Mayer goes on to give the pedal his seal of approval by saying that, “a lot of times, when people have the same pedal, they have the same sound.
“That will not happen with this pedal, because this is a whole new dynamic approach. What you do with this pedal is up to you; it is not so much a paint color, but a whole different brush,” he asserts.
Guitar World's upcoming interview with Josh Scott will be published in the coming weeks. Head over to JHS Pedals to check out the 424 Gain Stage.
