Once upon a time, there was a guy who played a little bit of guitar. He had an amp, which actually wasn't his, it was borrowed. He didn't go in much for effects, because they had a lot of knobs and shit, and he didn't really want to worry about knobs. Really, there was a volume knob, and that was the main one he was interested in.
Then, one day, this guy started thinking, "Hey, man, I've been playing the guitar for like 30 some odd fuckin' years and maybe I should upgrade some of my shit". So he bought his own amp, since now he had a job and stuff, and he could sort of afford it, though not really.
Then he started worrying about his tone. And as if that wasn't bad enough, he got the idea that if he had a really, really cool phaser, life would be great. Unfortunately, the phaser is just a gateway drug to a world of dependence on stompboxes... a portal into another dimension where your guitar is a mere slave to its signal path. There is no returning from this dimension, which unfolds in myriad web pages advertising vintage rotovibe circuits, realistic tube overdrive, true bypass, gold cables, and isolated power supplies.
Before too long, the initiate into this hellish cult begins to wonder if the 38 knobs arrayed before his feet, all tuned to exact specifications, are really making all that much difference in his sound. Sure, *he* can tell -- right? But can the unwashed, untrained ears of his audience really discern the difference between a Keeley modded tube screamer and a stock one? Do they even *hear* his reverb unit at all, through the shrieking sonic mayhem of his fellow bandmates? Can the legions of hot blondes waiting to storm the stage for breast signings really make out the subtleties gained by placing the wah after the drive pedal instead of before it? Do they truly appreciate the erotic whoop of an attack triggered envelope filter, rather than the garden-variety LFO?
These doubts cloud his mind, but by then he has descended too far. Without the Japanese-manufactured MN3008 chip in his analog delay, he can not really be sure if he's doing everything he can in pursuit of the perfect tone. It must be obtained, at any price -- and of course, it is a damn shame to have such a great rig, only to befoul your signal path with a mere Boss DS-1 distortion pedal. No, boutique fuzzboxes with germanium circuits are the only answer. Preferably three or four of them, at a couple hundred a pop -- after all, he needs different tones for different situations, which is certainly reasonable.
This once competent guitar player cannot see what others can -- that he is a shadow of his former self; often seen absent-mindedly tapping his bass E string repeatedly with his left hand, while madly twiddling delay knobs with the right -- a right hand that has not held a guitar pick for hours, or even days. Soon enough, he suspects that he has completely forgotten to play guitar, but what does it matter? In his drooling final madness, he can be seen with both hands upon his pedalboard -- a man possessed by some force beyond himself, even as the swirling winds of sonic chaos sweep away his last shred of consciousness, such that he fails to even realize that his guitar is not plugged in at all ----
