r/Slowdive

The instrumental outro is honestly the best part of the song. Almost feels intentional that it was removed to make it less noisy but it's the best part. Wish someone could polish the outro up from the demo and stitch it to the studio version and upload it to YouTube. It's just a chaotic outro that's great.

My life's greatest achievement continues to be the fact that my birthday is the same date as this utter banger

Hi all. I am finally going to see Slowdive at Saturday in Tbilisi Open Air Festival. I'm beyond excited about it and i really want to get some autographs. I'm planning to go early and be at the front row and wait for them to see and sign. Is there any other ideas? Any tips are welcome!

They use guitars to somewhat recreate the sound during shows but it does not sound like that on the record. It has that bagpipe sound even though no one in the band plays pipes.

I remastered the video and audio of the 1994-05-21 show to improve the overall quality.

Download: https://archive.org/details/slowdive-1994-05-21-upgraded

Hope you enjoy it!

Hello, shoegazers.

So, I was watching the Toronto ‘94 gig on youtube and noticed that for a few seconds at the end of When the Sun Hits, you get a pretty good look at Neil’s pedalboard.

I was lead to believe that Slowdive’s setup during this period was well documented and essentially “solved”, as, along with many Slowdive or shoegaze fans, I have seen the rig diagrams from guitar.com and taken them as gospel.

However, I was always a bit wary of those diagrams, as they have no source that I can discern and, strangely, are often sited as a source themselves, when Slowdive gear is mentioned by others.

But, this shot from the Toronto ‘94 gig suggests that what we know about their setup in this period is incorrect.

https://preview.redd.it/ecolc7pts19h1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=f0bd6d39d234381c9331fdfa34390426cea2ed4c

Based on their colour (thank you, Boss), shape and sounds, I believe we can much more accurately gauge what Neil was using during this period.

Firstly, there are six pedals in total, not the eight stated in the guitar.com diagram. From bottom to top (right to left) we have the Boss PN-2 Tremolo/Pan, the mint green colour and 3 knobs being the giveaway.
Then, a Boss OD-2 Turbo Overdrive. As with the PN-2, the colour and the knobs are dead giveaways. This would be the non-R version, as that came out after the group had already disbanded. Interestingly, this looks like the only drive pedal on the board, meaning there is no sign of a ProCo Rat, a pedal that most would consider synonymous with Slowdive and the shoegaze genre as a whole, but it’s not here, so...did he ever use one back then? Who knows, but we can see he’s not using one here, at least.

After the OD-2 comes a Boss PS-2 Pitch Shifter. This has also been synonymous with Slowdive and has been well documented as being the pedal used for the outro of Souvlaki Space Station (confirmed by this gig, as Neil is fiddling with it during the outro here, too). This pedal is technically a delay, but I’m almost certain it was used as a chorus, or more accurately a “doubler” in Neil’s rig. Anyone familiar with a micropitch delay will know this sound well.

So, that’s the first three. Now it gets a bit tricky.
The pedal after the PS-2 is mostly obscured, but it does have a distinctive shape that only one manufacturer I’m aware of ever used; Yamaha.
I looked through the Yamaha pedal range from this period and found four pedals in this form factor: a delay, a chorus, a graphic EQ, and a distortion.
To cut a long sleuthing story short, context clues and sound from the gig, shape of the pedal and number of knobs lead me to believe this pedal is either a Yamaha DDS-20M Digital Delay Sampler, or a Yamaha DSC-20M Chorus.
If it is the delay, this would fit with the most common pedal order layout of drives in to modulation in to delays. If it is the chorus, it would suggest that the PS-2 is in fact used as a delay. This delay in to chorus setup would not be uncommon for Neil, as there is photo evidence that he laid out his earlier “Vestax” pedals the same way, though I still lean more towards this Yamaha pedal being a delay.

The next pedal is a bit easier to ID. The square enclosure shape and knob positions suggests that this is a TC Electronic TC XIII Programmable Phaser. Really nice analogue phaser, set slow and deep. The guitar.com diagram gets this one right, though not the placement.

Then, even easier, after the phaser is a DigiTech Echo Plus 8 PDS 8000 Digital Delay Sampler. Guitar.com right, again.

Looks like this had been at the end of Neil’s board for a few years, by 1994 and, coupled with a delay pedal earlier in the chain, was likely a big contributor to Neil’s spaced out sound, back then.

All this then goes in to a Korg A3 Multi FX Processor (for reverb, I’d imagine) and then stereo out to the two JC120s.

Quite a simple rig, really. Probably seemed a big setup, back then, but these days it’s dwarfed by boards of most blues-noodlers, let alone shoegazers.

Pretty illuminating though. The absence of the ProCo Rat is perhaps the most surprising. Perhaps he sold it, along with the Boss DD-3s that guitar.com claims he had in 1993. Many would imply if you don’t have a Rat, it ain’t shoegaze, but Neil’s board from the 90s would prove that incorrect. Not sure if Christian had one during this period (or at least this gig), his pedals are a bit too far from the camera to make out, though we can see that Rachel is using a single yellow Boss pedal, likely an OD-2, which her guitar.com diagram got right, at least.

Anyway, to those who did, thanks for reading all this. It was just something I noticed at a glance and it lead me down a rabbit hole, so I thought I’d invite you in to said rabbit hole and show you around, while I’m down here.

TL;DR

https://preview.redd.it/p4yy1788u19h1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=4fb9245dfb63d1da7b7f5a42dadfb2d999f05ef4