John Mayer's current solo tour sees him playing acoustic (including a double-neck Martin), electric guitar and piano, but mostly the former. And that means a pedalboard – actually two for acoustic, and another for electric. Excessive? It makes sense as he's moving between three distinct sections of the show.
The ever-reliable John Mayer Gear Instagram has used its eagle eye to spy on what he's using for each 'board in three specific setups around the stage. One is for seated acoustic playing and its pretty sonically flexible in its own right – featuring not one but two Strymon reverb pedals with the Midnight black edition of the NightSky alongside the brand new Cloudburst Ambient Reverb. That's a lot of reverb.
Those are joined by two Boss TU tuners (one could be used as a splitter we wonder?), the TC Electronic Infinite Sample Sustainer, Boss RC-500 looper pedal for soloing over chords and Eventide's new box of wonders; the H90 Harmonizer. We could have so much fun with this 'board and we're sure Mr Mayer is. But there's more.
Next to that is a Hammond XPK-130G MIDI Sound pedalboard if Mayer wants to lay down a bass line with his feet.
The standing acoustic pedalboard is similar to the sitting segment one, dropping the Cloudburst and adding a Providence Chrono DLY-4 delay that Mayer has favoured for a while. All this seems to be used subtly because by and large Mayer is keeping things pretty intimate and direct in these song performances.
The electric effects obviously allow for old favourites on the pedalboard studio for select songs including All I Want Is To Be With You from Sob Rock and Wheel from Heavier Things. But despite the inclusion of a Tube Screamer TS10 and Klon overdrive pedal, Way Huge Aqua-Puss delay and Strymon Flint that his guitar fans know him for, the performances stay intimate and low key when it comes to dynamics.
It also looks like these shows are being professionally filmed so there will be plenty of opportunity for fans to pick apart the rig elements if the performances see a future release.
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