Guitar players can often get bogged down by the lure of pedals in the everlasting quest for tone. But some players keep it extremely simple – and Greta Van Fleet electric guitar ace Jake Kiszka is a shining example of that.
Now pedalling his new band, Mirador, which he formed with Chris Turpin of Ida Mae, Kiszka's approach hasn’t changed. And it left his new bandmate gobsmacked.
“When I first played with Jake [on tour with Greta Van Fleet], he was playing a Marshall-based amplifier and an SG. And I thought, 'Well, what's going on on the floor?'” he says in the new issue of Guitarist. “And generally, at those early shows, it was like two Electro-Harmonix Holy Grails [reverbs] and an MXR Micro [Amp] booster – maybe one or two of those. Then you had another pedal that you didn't use [laughs]. That was the rig.”
Of course, quantity doesn't always mean quality, and in the case of Kiszka’s guitar rig, that school of thought is particularly applicable.
“That was for playing shows to five-and-a-half thousand people three nights in a row, sold out,” Turpin continues. “Having toured for the best part of 10 years up to that point, I'd never seen a guitar player really do that.”
There’s a purity to his tone, then. There’s very little to hide behind.
“The thing is, Jake doesn't appreciate how spectacularly special that is,” Turpin smiles. “That's partly due to the amplifier, partly due to the player, partly to the guitar.”
“I think it was just really out of necessity at the time,” Kiszka returns. But as the band's budget has gotten bigger, he hasn't been swayed to switch things up.
“When I had the opportunity to take an amp down and drive it more with a pedal, just for volume and things like that, or to get different preamp and drive sounds, I always prefer to take the pedal out and push the amp up more for some reason.
I probably end up in traditionalist territory based on the way I've approached guitar playing
Jake Kiszka
“For me,” he adds, “that always just sounds better. I don't think that I would be a traditionalist or purist by some people's standards, but I probably end up in that territory just based on the way I've approached guitar playing.”
It’s a rig that would certainly get the approval of bluesman Joe Bonamassa. Speaking to MusicRadar in 2017 he perhaps somewhat controversially said that players who rely on pedals for their sound are “fucking lazy.”
Granted, he’s since gone back on that statement, recently telling Guitar World that “players can do whatever the fuck they want, I don’t care.” However, he has challenged those who lean on pedals a little too dependently to “roll your volume back and challenge yourself to play cleaner.”
Kiszka certainly does that, using his own techniques as pedal alternatives, amplifying the theory that tone is in the fingers, not the overdrive pedal.
In related news, Kiszka recently deemed his main band's rise an astounding success thus far, but admits there are a few things he'd change about it.
Mirador’s full chat features in the new issue of Guitarist, of which they are the cover stars. Head to Magazines Direct to grab a copy.
