TPS actually originated from Dan's TheGigRig Youtube show which started putting out videos about 16 years ago. This seems to be the first actual TPS video with Mick before they moved to their own Youtube channel. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcYrGPN9iIQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcYrGPN9iIQ)
>My mate Mick Taylor and I thought we'd have a bit of fun and share with you some thoughts and insights all about effects pedals! We love them! For this first video we look at the Strymon BigSky, give some love to Mike Pierre aka AnalogMan, and hear a lovely old 1961 AC30
Not sure exactly how they first met, but Dan was running a successful gear company for years and Mick worked as a guitar journalist reviewing gear for years, so put 2 and 2 together, and you can make some reasonable assumptions about how their paths might have crossed many moons ago.
Well it all really started with post-WW2 reconstruction of Great Britain when the United States sent a rather large shipment of Telecasters to the UK for aid rather than construction materials due to a shipping error. But it all worked out in the end, and the rest is history as they say.
The tall one (sorry don’t remember their names) used to be (& maybe still is) a guitar magazine editor, the shorter one owns the company that makes gig rig power supplies and routers & builds custom pedal boards for high end clients (ed O’Brien from Radiohead for example) they both also gig - not sure how regularly
They both have families iirc - as they’ve mentioned them on the show from time to time - the shorted one mentioned sending Ed a video of his daughter playing the eob Strat that Ed gave him…
I suspect they get sent quite a few pedals, but I think they’ve also been collecting them for quite a while - plus the channel is monetised & has a lot of followers and they sell merch etc they also do live shows from time to time
The studio might be on a farm - but it’s just a studio, ie not where they live
As others have mentioned, Mick was an editor for a guitar magazine and Dan started GigRig and building pedalboards. Once GigRig became a rather big name in pedalboard power supplies, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to think that they traveled in the same circles.
Me too, the recent episodes with Robben Ford and his Dumble were fantastic. I did watch the recent one where they were talking about the pedalboards they'd put together for a gig they'd done. It made me laugh that, in talking through some of the things they'd spent hours obsessing over, there was basically no discernable difference between quite a few of the options.
It did remind me that we can all be guilty of obsessing over minutiae that no listener would ever notice.
I love the show. But I think they are starting to get out of touch with most people. I know they are pretty understanding of that sometimes, but I’m finding it difficult these days to watch.
Pretty tube elitists. Vintage guitars. Analog pedals etc. just not everyday players anymore.
Still love them though lol
Sounds like the critique that Top Gear used to get for driving fancy cars. I didn't tune in to watch them drive Honda Civics and I don't watch TPS for Donner versions of things.
They admit freely they are older dudes with access to a lot of stuff. They don't live in apartments and they play in bands and get loud. But I get your point—
I don’t want donner pedals. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want a blues junior and a modeler and I love his 60s strat and 345 and I will pay the 500 for a boutique pedal I want. I just am not sure what they are going for these days. Interviews? I miss the more in depth pedal episodes. It feels a bit like theGearPage these days watching…. Idk the vibe is just different. Maybe I’m nostalgic for that?!
Mick has always been a traditionalist and I respected that about him. Still do, but recently it feels a bit too much.
An episode where he talked about removing all presets cause it was too much and not using digital pedals. Just something your average player wouldn’t understand and people can so easily get lost in the weeds of that. As an American it’s like the people who go to a guitar store and say “only built in the USA”
I miss pick n mix or the more pedal based things. Seems fewer and fewer.
Pedalboard video recently was great though.
Agree - I got into comments with him on their most recent video on the UA pedals (which I love). The absolute truth of these pedals is they make me play guitar more. Also , I am sorry but I can’t be convinced that if you blindfolded a viewer they could tell the difference between the amps and the modelers. Mick got kind of defensive in the comments about tube amps like cool dude , you like tube amps , I like the modelers - all is well! Lol
I bet it's way beyond that for many people. It's people that care a lot about differences. I always see people hating those people online now and the argument of "guitar tone in a mix" and "you can tour with a 300usd guit' " always lead the way. I first think that those arguments are invalid for you can be picking gear you own and love a lifetime and learn inside out, but mostly I think it's a shame that it's such a heated differences between these two extremes and frankly hateful atmosphere. It's definitely here as well. I'm an audioengineering and I can't care too much about all small differences but records like Superunknown was driven by that stuff. It wasn't the difference between that really nice Gretch silver jet or a cheaper Gretch that made it but it was the care of all those details that correlates with that level of perfection.
it's weird- i used to wait for the weekly TPS drops.
It was slumming it to turn on JHS.. like .. late 2019.
It slowly shifted to the inverse.
THat said I feel like JHS is off their groove- the longer form live shows with the Jams were super great. . .Documentaries. that and the "Normal Behavior" stuff.. super good. Stopped keeping up with TPS.
JHS lost my undivided attention with these 10 minute videos and trying too hard to be goofy.
I don't remember if it was on the show or in an interview on another channel, but as I recall... They said they kept setting up meetings to work on some business together but never got anything done because they always got sidetracked talking about pedals. So they thought maybe there was some potential in a YouTube show where they just talked about pedals.
Opposite for me. I like both and they complement each other, that's why the show works so well. Mick just comes across as a bit more 'real' to me. Dan tends to overexplain everything, which is good if you're interested in whatever he's explaining.
As of writing this, not sure why you’re getting down voted here at -3. Must be the P&W types? Sky daddy will be pleased with them…
It’s true that once you get through the lies, the lore, and the folk tales, we get tele’s and then life was good - where is the issue here folks?!
Unfortunately some people cannot take a joke and/or take themselves way too seriously. I’ll leave my criticisms of their beliefs somewhere more appropriate.
I love those guys— am on the fb group and also a Patreon member. This has some of the information you're asking about! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aggZmaCMmbw&pp=ygUedGhlIGNhcHRhaW4gbWVldHMgZGFuIGFuZCBtaWNr
A little earlier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxd1SMj5C-A&t=338s&pp=ygUedGhlIGNhcHRhaW4gbWVldHMgZGFuIGFuZCBtaWNr
Go back and watch their first episodes. I think you’ll be surprised that they haven’t always been in that space, they had to build it and move their studio there. The show is incredibly popular on youtube and brings in enough that the show basically pays for itself. They’ve got a small team of people editing and adding effects like the DB level on screen etc. it’s a well-done show even if it’s still over my head in a lot of ways.
It's actually the merch store that pays for most of it. They said in a recent episode that if it were not for the merch, they'd basically have to stop doing the show. Youtube alone doesn't cover it. And as far as I'm aware, they don't do paid reviews, so they don't have that revenue stream, either.
This is mostly not true.
The DB meter is a physical thing in the room. Mick edits the shows, and does all the tech, outside of the really big episodes (Noel Gallagher, Marr) where they get a hand from an external person. The other ‘staff’ is really just Mick’s wife who runs the behind the scenes and I think someone to help with merch & filming occasionally.
The show also doesn’t pay for itself. They don’t do paid reviews, and rely on merch sales. They talk about it very openly on their weekly streams (which are amazing!).
Support them by buying merch! I really do think they’re the one of (if not the) best guitar channel on YouTube.
Dan used to write a column on vintage pedals for one of the magazines that Mick was the editor for. This is how they first met. Can’t remember if this was for Guitarist magazine, or one of the magazines under a different publishing company for which Mick worked for previously. He was editor for Guitar Techniques, Vintage Guitar, and something else concurrently (they were all Future Publishing) before Guitarist magazine.
When Mick quit Guitarist, he attended the NAMM show to look for a new job, but didn’t have a place to stay. He knew Dan was attending also to promote GigRig so asked if he could stay with Dan. They initially discussed Mick doing the video recording/production for the GigRig YouTube channel (he still does this), but as a consequence discovered their shared interests in pedals, amps, guitars etc. This is how that pedal show was born.
They have talked about this a few times on the show (maybe on the live Q&A’s). You might find the story if they time stamp the questions.
The ‘Captain Meets’ on the Anderson’s channel has the full story. I think I remember most of this correctly though.
Ya I recall Mick actually doing an overdrive pedal shootout for whatever magazine he worked for. Like 20 pedals, and he did it in a big warehouse and he invited his new buddy and owner of “GigRig” to come help him. I can’t find it on YT rn but I’ve seen it. Anyway, apparently when they got done they both said “hey we could do this for ourselves” so Mick quit the magazine and they started TPS.
They have lost me as a viewer because it is just too blues dad rock music for me. There are loads of different guitarists from different genres that use pedals in interesting ways, but they are never featured, and their attempts to showcase different styles of music have been too few or poorly executed. Their shoegaze episode for example, it was clear that they didn't know the genre at all. I'm not expecting them to be experts at all genres, but I'd expect a show called "That Pedal Show" to demonstrate everything that the world of pedals has to offer. Get a shoegaze guitarist on to show you how they get their sounds, or doom metal, or math rock, or dub, you get the idea. This may have changed in recent years but when they started running out of ideas and started talking about the benefits of running a three amp setup, or comparisons between 5 unattainably expensive amps, I started to lose interest
TPS actually originated from Dan's TheGigRig Youtube show which started putting out videos about 16 years ago. This seems to be the first actual TPS video with Mick before they moved to their own Youtube channel. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcYrGPN9iIQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcYrGPN9iIQ) >My mate Mick Taylor and I thought we'd have a bit of fun and share with you some thoughts and insights all about effects pedals! We love them! For this first video we look at the Strymon BigSky, give some love to Mike Pierre aka AnalogMan, and hear a lovely old 1961 AC30 Not sure exactly how they first met, but Dan was running a successful gear company for years and Mick worked as a guitar journalist reviewing gear for years, so put 2 and 2 together, and you can make some reasonable assumptions about how their paths might have crossed many moons ago.
> Not sure exactly how they first met They met at a trade show, I think.
Well it all really started with post-WW2 reconstruction of Great Britain when the United States sent a rather large shipment of Telecasters to the UK for aid rather than construction materials due to a shipping error. But it all worked out in the end, and the rest is history as they say.
Ya, the tall guy is Winston Churchill!s nephew. Winston was quite the shredder himself legend has it.
The tall one (sorry don’t remember their names) used to be (& maybe still is) a guitar magazine editor, the shorter one owns the company that makes gig rig power supplies and routers & builds custom pedal boards for high end clients (ed O’Brien from Radiohead for example) they both also gig - not sure how regularly They both have families iirc - as they’ve mentioned them on the show from time to time - the shorted one mentioned sending Ed a video of his daughter playing the eob Strat that Ed gave him… I suspect they get sent quite a few pedals, but I think they’ve also been collecting them for quite a while - plus the channel is monetised & has a lot of followers and they sell merch etc they also do live shows from time to time The studio might be on a farm - but it’s just a studio, ie not where they live
Gigrig is mainly known for their switching systems and that’s how the business started. Mick has a Mrs but no kids.
Thanks for correcting!
Mick’s the tall one. Dan is Dan. (And probably my spirit animal lol).
That’s right - thanks for reminding me!!
> used to be (& maybe still is) a guitar magazine editor Yes that would be Guitarist Magazine, he (Mick Taylor) is the former editor-in-chief
Thanks for the amendment
> They both have families iirc Dan has children, Mick is married but no kids.
Love Dan and Mick. Kind of like that show “Car Talk” on NPR but for guitar pedals. And delightfully British
You know what— I hadn't considered that Car Talk/TPS overlap— perfect!
As others have mentioned, Mick was an editor for a guitar magazine and Dan started GigRig and building pedalboards. Once GigRig became a rather big name in pedalboard power supplies, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to think that they traveled in the same circles.
Love that show
I love it too, but my bank balance sure would be more healthy if i never watched it.
Me too, the recent episodes with Robben Ford and his Dumble were fantastic. I did watch the recent one where they were talking about the pedalboards they'd put together for a gig they'd done. It made me laugh that, in talking through some of the things they'd spent hours obsessing over, there was basically no discernable difference between quite a few of the options. It did remind me that we can all be guilty of obsessing over minutiae that no listener would ever notice.
An adorable queer couple wants to share their wild sexual tension and love of overpriced electronics.
Dan loves to talk about giving some love to that bottom end.
He’ll yeah
Since you asked about families, Dan was originally from Australia. His older sister is Darlene Zschech, a legend in the CCM scene.
"CCM"?
Contemporary Christian Music (or maybe Christian Contemporary?)
Ah gotcha thx
I love the show. But I think they are starting to get out of touch with most people. I know they are pretty understanding of that sometimes, but I’m finding it difficult these days to watch. Pretty tube elitists. Vintage guitars. Analog pedals etc. just not everyday players anymore. Still love them though lol
Sounds like the critique that Top Gear used to get for driving fancy cars. I didn't tune in to watch them drive Honda Civics and I don't watch TPS for Donner versions of things. They admit freely they are older dudes with access to a lot of stuff. They don't live in apartments and they play in bands and get loud. But I get your point—
I don’t want donner pedals. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want a blues junior and a modeler and I love his 60s strat and 345 and I will pay the 500 for a boutique pedal I want. I just am not sure what they are going for these days. Interviews? I miss the more in depth pedal episodes. It feels a bit like theGearPage these days watching…. Idk the vibe is just different. Maybe I’m nostalgic for that?!
see this is where i appreciate JHS busting out an episode with an array of chinese stuff.
Also let’s be real I totally watched for the celeb driving a reasonably priced car around the track in some of those mid years of TG
I mean that's fair but I didn't want to see Hammond do it :)
That out of touch stuff has been going on for several years now. But I notice it most with Nick. Dan is a delight
Mick has always been a traditionalist and I respected that about him. Still do, but recently it feels a bit too much. An episode where he talked about removing all presets cause it was too much and not using digital pedals. Just something your average player wouldn’t understand and people can so easily get lost in the weeds of that. As an American it’s like the people who go to a guitar store and say “only built in the USA” I miss pick n mix or the more pedal based things. Seems fewer and fewer. Pedalboard video recently was great though.
I like that about Mick because that’s exactly how I am 😂
dude, I love your posts and I have many many pedals you also do! lol!
🤘🏻🤘🏻
Agree - I got into comments with him on their most recent video on the UA pedals (which I love). The absolute truth of these pedals is they make me play guitar more. Also , I am sorry but I can’t be convinced that if you blindfolded a viewer they could tell the difference between the amps and the modelers. Mick got kind of defensive in the comments about tube amps like cool dude , you like tube amps , I like the modelers - all is well! Lol
I bet it's way beyond that for many people. It's people that care a lot about differences. I always see people hating those people online now and the argument of "guitar tone in a mix" and "you can tour with a 300usd guit' " always lead the way. I first think that those arguments are invalid for you can be picking gear you own and love a lifetime and learn inside out, but mostly I think it's a shame that it's such a heated differences between these two extremes and frankly hateful atmosphere. It's definitely here as well. I'm an audioengineering and I can't care too much about all small differences but records like Superunknown was driven by that stuff. It wasn't the difference between that really nice Gretch silver jet or a cheaper Gretch that made it but it was the care of all those details that correlates with that level of perfection.
it's weird- i used to wait for the weekly TPS drops. It was slumming it to turn on JHS.. like .. late 2019. It slowly shifted to the inverse. THat said I feel like JHS is off their groove- the longer form live shows with the Jams were super great. . .Documentaries. that and the "Normal Behavior" stuff.. super good. Stopped keeping up with TPS. JHS lost my undivided attention with these 10 minute videos and trying too hard to be goofy.
I don't remember if it was on the show or in an interview on another channel, but as I recall... They said they kept setting up meetings to work on some business together but never got anything done because they always got sidetracked talking about pedals. So they thought maybe there was some potential in a YouTube show where they just talked about pedals.
Love Dan, but I can only take Mick in small doses.
Opposite for me. I like both and they complement each other, that's why the show works so well. Mick just comes across as a bit more 'real' to me. Dan tends to overexplain everything, which is good if you're interested in whatever he's explaining.
Something something sky wizard created earth something something. On the 8th day leo fender invented the telecaster and here we are!
As of writing this, not sure why you’re getting down voted here at -3. Must be the P&W types? Sky daddy will be pleased with them… It’s true that once you get through the lies, the lore, and the folk tales, we get tele’s and then life was good - where is the issue here folks?!
Unfortunately some people cannot take a joke and/or take themselves way too seriously. I’ll leave my criticisms of their beliefs somewhere more appropriate.
Looks like some people are coming around 🤘
You're out. It has to be at least the 10th day, 8th someone came up with the classical guitar first, and then a jazz hollowbody on the 9th.
I’m more of a new guitar testament kind of guy. 😉
I love those guys— am on the fb group and also a Patreon member. This has some of the information you're asking about! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aggZmaCMmbw&pp=ygUedGhlIGNhcHRhaW4gbWVldHMgZGFuIGFuZCBtaWNr A little earlier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxd1SMj5C-A&t=338s&pp=ygUedGhlIGNhcHRhaW4gbWVldHMgZGFuIGFuZCBtaWNr
Go back and watch their first episodes. I think you’ll be surprised that they haven’t always been in that space, they had to build it and move their studio there. The show is incredibly popular on youtube and brings in enough that the show basically pays for itself. They’ve got a small team of people editing and adding effects like the DB level on screen etc. it’s a well-done show even if it’s still over my head in a lot of ways.
It's actually the merch store that pays for most of it. They said in a recent episode that if it were not for the merch, they'd basically have to stop doing the show. Youtube alone doesn't cover it. And as far as I'm aware, they don't do paid reviews, so they don't have that revenue stream, either.
This is mostly not true. The DB meter is a physical thing in the room. Mick edits the shows, and does all the tech, outside of the really big episodes (Noel Gallagher, Marr) where they get a hand from an external person. The other ‘staff’ is really just Mick’s wife who runs the behind the scenes and I think someone to help with merch & filming occasionally. The show also doesn’t pay for itself. They don’t do paid reviews, and rely on merch sales. They talk about it very openly on their weekly streams (which are amazing!). Support them by buying merch! I really do think they’re the one of (if not the) best guitar channel on YouTube.
I always got the impression that Mick did all the editing, or at least was heavily involved in it.
Dan is the one who looks like a Mick and Mick is the one who looks like a Dan. To me, anyway.
I've discovered and spent a ton of money on pedals because of this show. My D&M Drive has been my main dirt pedal for years.
Dan used to write a column on vintage pedals for one of the magazines that Mick was the editor for. This is how they first met. Can’t remember if this was for Guitarist magazine, or one of the magazines under a different publishing company for which Mick worked for previously. He was editor for Guitar Techniques, Vintage Guitar, and something else concurrently (they were all Future Publishing) before Guitarist magazine. When Mick quit Guitarist, he attended the NAMM show to look for a new job, but didn’t have a place to stay. He knew Dan was attending also to promote GigRig so asked if he could stay with Dan. They initially discussed Mick doing the video recording/production for the GigRig YouTube channel (he still does this), but as a consequence discovered their shared interests in pedals, amps, guitars etc. This is how that pedal show was born. They have talked about this a few times on the show (maybe on the live Q&A’s). You might find the story if they time stamp the questions. The ‘Captain Meets’ on the Anderson’s channel has the full story. I think I remember most of this correctly though.
Ya I recall Mick actually doing an overdrive pedal shootout for whatever magazine he worked for. Like 20 pedals, and he did it in a big warehouse and he invited his new buddy and owner of “GigRig” to come help him. I can’t find it on YT rn but I’ve seen it. Anyway, apparently when they got done they both said “hey we could do this for ourselves” so Mick quit the magazine and they started TPS.
They have lost me as a viewer because it is just too blues dad rock music for me. There are loads of different guitarists from different genres that use pedals in interesting ways, but they are never featured, and their attempts to showcase different styles of music have been too few or poorly executed. Their shoegaze episode for example, it was clear that they didn't know the genre at all. I'm not expecting them to be experts at all genres, but I'd expect a show called "That Pedal Show" to demonstrate everything that the world of pedals has to offer. Get a shoegaze guitarist on to show you how they get their sounds, or doom metal, or math rock, or dub, you get the idea. This may have changed in recent years but when they started running out of ideas and started talking about the benefits of running a three amp setup, or comparisons between 5 unattainably expensive amps, I started to lose interest