Over in the UK, prominent techs like Pete Cornish were working toward similar goals. Essentially, long before the multi-FX units of the '90s came into being, Bradshaw was custom-building bespoke "multiple-effects systems" out of whatever any given artist might want to incorporate into a rig, and the service caught on big time. Once the effects no longer needed to be on the floor under the guitarist's feet, the rig could be perceived, and conceived, in an entirely new light. There weren't drawers yet, per se, there were just pedals mounted at a slant on top, and the rack stuff mounted down below it."įrom this rudimentary start, Bradshaw pioneered methods of mounting discrete effects units and building custom remote foot controllers and switching systems to assimilate them into an artist's stage or studio rig. There was a Technics home stereo rack, and I had to put rack rails in it in order to mount the stuff. This was for Buzzy Feiten, who was my first major client. ![]() "In fact, the first racks that I ever worked with were stereo component racks, that had a glass front. So, I was taking pedalboards and instead of them being on the floor, taking them out and rack-mounting pedals, or putting them in different enclosures." "When I started," Bradshaw tells us, "it was really just pedals still. When Bradshaw first arrived in Los Angeles in 1978 to work in the industry, however, guitarists were still largely struggling to make disparate collections of pedals and the occasional big studio outboard unit play nice together with traditional guitar amps, and he was navigating uncharted territory to get there. Having started in the business before the stage rack was even a thing for guitarists, he would not only create such rigs for the biggest artists in the business, but would develop and drive much of the technology that helped to make those rack systems work. He veritably initiated the trend, was at its epicenter throughout the boom, and continues to make custom touring rigs to this day. Robert (Bob) Bradshaw's name and his Custom Audio Electronics (CAE) company are synonymous with custom pedal controllers, switching networks, and rack-based guitar rigs. or just evolved into something different. So what happened to those rack-centric rigs, what replaced them, and have they found a fresh role in today's music? To get there, let's talk to some of the key techs from the heyday of that sector to find out how the whole phenomenon got started in the first place, why it suited guitarists' needs so well at the time, and whether it really went away. But for a while, that's sure where the guitar world appeared to be headed. Analog pedals and integrated traditional amp heads and combos? Chances are, soon nobody would even make them anymore. Even your aspiring weekend rock warrior at the 200-capacity local venue was racking it up circa 1989. And where would your three-channel tube preamp go, and the dual-100-watt power amp that you slaved it all into? Guitar pedals and old-school amps-leave that stuff for the garage bands and blues clubs. ![]() The rack system was it, baby, and who would expect to see anything but a big-ass rack rig in the backlines of concert stages the world over?Īfter all, those 19-inch reverbs and delays and harmonizers weren't going to wire up themselves. There was a time in the mid-'80s to early '90s when any guitarist working in the realm of rock would have bet their Boogie that the traditional rig-consisting of a few effects pedals into a guitar amp-would soon go the way of the dodo.
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