My pedalboard: Delta Sleep’s Glen Hodgson on why three delays are better than one, and getting fancy with Fibonacci

Guitar Showcase 2022: It's apt that we should meet Glen Hodgson at the UK's Arctangent festival; he and his band Delta Sleep are exactly the kind of forward-thinking musicians that have set this UK event as a showcase of inventive guitar music.

And Glen's approach to his pedalboard reflects his desire to create engaging tones, with no less than three delay pedals in the mix. 

Boss TU-3 Guitar Tuner

“Okay, we’ve got a tuner but that’s kind of boring…” 

Seymour Duncan SFX-01 Pickup Booster

“This is probably my favourite pedal. It works really well with valve amps. It’s a Seymour Duncan Pickup Booster. It is basically an EQ pedal. It is a flat EQ. For the studio, it sounds really good. You are just turning the volume up, but with valve amps it is really nice to push the valves before you get into the amp. And this is a flat EQ that pushes everything up. 

"When it is on zero, which is what I use it for, it is a 12dB volume boost, so it is really nice on valve amps when you’ve got your clean sound and you want a slightly gnarly clean tone. That’s the one. It’s my newest pedal. It’s probably my favourite if I’m totally honest.”

Maxon VOP9 Vintage Overdrive Pro

“I’ve then got a Maxon Tube Screamer, which is like an imitation of an Ibanez Tube Screamer, and all of these four [dials] are my tone and overdrive settings. 

"That one’s really nice. I like keeping the drive level nice and low, and pushing the volume up, so again, it’s gnarly clean, even gnarlier clean tone, and then…"

Domovoi Audio (Dave Larkin) Rat Clone

“This is a Rat imitation. It was actually made by Dave Larkin who played in Black Peaks. He made this one for me. 

"There is a little picture of my cat on there. But it is basically a Rat distortion or fuzz pedal, and I use that for the more clippy, digital-sounding distortions.”

MXR M234 Analog Chorus

“Next up is an MXR Analog Chorus. This is my second-newest pedal – [I’m] quite new to the world of chorus. Used to be dead against it but now I really like it. I think chorus is on-trend at the moment. 

"It is just really nice, lots of different kind of variables for the tone, but to be honest I like keeping it nice and simple. I don’t really know what I am doing with it most of the time, it’s just on or off.”

Electro-Harmonix Stereo Memory Man With Hazarai

“Next in my chain is the Memory Man With Hazarai. I’ve had this one for ages. It is a really good digital delay.

"It gets lots of nice ambient sounds, and kind of washy echo sounds, but to be honest it is mainly good for very digital-sounding ambient delay. If you wanted to make a Brian Eno sounding guitar sound that is probably what I would go for.”

Pigtronix Echolution

“This is like an old-school sounding analogue echo pedal but it has all of these funky dials. Not meaning to get too deep on it, but each of these has different numbers for different Fibonacci sequences – it sounds really pretentious but it means if I turn one of these on, instead of an echo like, ‘BAP, Bap, bap…’ It is like ‘Bap-a-bap, bap-a-bap…’ Turn another one on and it is ‘Bap-a-bap-bap-a, bap-a-bap-bap-a, bap-a-bap-bap-a…’ And you can basically mess around having all these different kinds of sounds. 

“It is really nice running with this delay, because they both have stereo outputs, so this one goes to the left, and this to the right, and then having the left and the right from both of these [Memory Man and Echolution]. You get a really nice 360-sounding delay settings. It is nice for overdubbing ambience, or just overdubbing delay if you want it to sound trippy, psychedelic, whatever. It is pretty good. 

“This pedal also has a second channel that you can click on and it has got a chorus and an LFO filter, so you can basically have a kind of chorus-y/tremolo sounding delay, which is pretty nice to experiment with. Unfortunately, this is broken at the moment but it is good when it works.”

Boss DD-6 Digital Delay

“Next up is probably the oldest pedal on my pedalboard. This is a digital delay, DD-6. The two things that I use it for – one of them is it has a Hold setting, which if you just tap the pedal it gives a really nice kind of ‘Brrrrrr-bap! Brrrrrr-bap!’ tap digital delay sound. 

“The other thing I use it for is a really nice slapback, so if you have the slapback on and the delay set really, really quite tight, it is really good for lead guitar parts if you just want to make it pop out a little bit more. Yeah, lots of options there. 

“I have these three delay pedals, and I use each of them for something slightly different. Also, sometimes, all of them running through each other – it’s really nice, and gives it a really wide-sounding delay.”

Boss TR-2 Tremolo

“A really nice and simple tremolo pedal. Sometimes the simple stuff is the best.”

• For more information visit Delta Sleep