Billy loves his BOSS pedals, “I’ve always used BOSS pedals. They’re part of the signature sound on “She Sells Sanctuary,” which was all BOSS pedals. If I had to pick only one brand of footpedal, I’d have to use all BOSS pedals. Y’know, they pretty much make everything. I like the delays — I use the old analog delays.”
“People used to bribe the producer to tell them what pedals and effects I used to get the guitar sound in the beginning of the song, that whole kind of mystical Easterny sound. The story that goes along with that is, it was a whole BOSS pedal board. I definitely had two delays in it, ‘cause there are two delays working against each other —long and short delays. It’s 400 and 800 milliseconds, approximately, at the beginning of the song. Also, it’s the way I pick — the attack of the pick and where I pick it on the neck. It sounds like a silly old story, but we were recording “She Sells Sanctuary” in a studio in London called Olympic, where Zeppelin and Free used to record. It subsequently was bought by Virgin and has become a more modern studio, but back in the day it was an orchestral studio where they’d record film scores. I was in there during “She Sells Sanctuary,” and I found a violin bow, and I started to play the guitar with the bow like Jimmy Page. I did it to amuse Astbury, who was in the control room, and in order to make it sound weirder, I just hit every pedal I had on the pedal board. Then once I stopped banging the strings and doing all that, I played the middle section of the song, which was kind of a pick thing with all the BOSS pedals on, and that sound just leaped out. The producer went, “Hold it, hold it, that’s great!” And we decided to start the song with that mystical sound. If I hadn’t found that violin bow laying around, we wouldn’t have gone there.”
Don’t expect to pick one of these up at your local music store because the BOSS DM-2 is no longer manufactured as it is an analogue effect pedal and has be replaced by the digital version DD-3. Billy says sadly ‘They don’t even make this pedal anymore they have no plans to re-issue it but they should do!”
Whilst this is Billy’s original Delay pedal he actually twins it with the newer digital one to get his signature sound.
Here’s the current full layout of Billy’s Pedal Board for gigs…