Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh – Effects on Guitar

Patric Carver, a friend of mine that is a professional photographer in the San Francisco/Oakland area recently took some photos at a Devo concert. Devo is a band that I’ve always been fond of. People know generally know “Whip It”, but Devo’s history is so much more. If you’re not super familiar with them, you definitely need to go down the YouTube rabbit hole and check some out.

For example, check out this performance from Saturday Night Live in 1978.

As you can see back in ’78, Mark Mothersbaugh has effects attached to the guitar. And this is what brings me to current times. At this recent performance, you can see Mark with a left handed Strat strung right handed (with only 4 strings E / A – – B / E). I thought was pretty brilliant to use a lefty guitar. That way he can get that surface area to mount a couple of pedals nicely without interfering with the knobs. Now, he’s had different pedals over the years, but the Boss DS-1 (foot pad removed for easy access to the push button) has been pretty standard on the front horn. Check out the photo from Patric Carver

I was confused by the larger pedal. At first glance, I suspected an older EHX Big Muff, but thankfully I was able to get a high resolution version of this photo, which provided the clues needed to ID this pedal.

So based on this, we’re talking about a very early version of the Electro-Harmonix Frequency Analyzer. Very cool

I would like to thank Patric Carver for letting me use these photos! Let me know what you think by commenting below!