Today,The Smile shared a rehearsal video of the song Thin Thing on their Instagram page. Jonny’s guitar setup is largely the same as for the Glastonbury and Instagram live streams, but there are some notable differences. Jonny is using a BOSS DD-200 delay for the first time, replacing the Strymon Timeline that briefly floated to the right of his board during the Instagram streams. He also stopped using a Electro-Harmonix POG Nano — presumably, he doesn’t need any harmonies for the upcoming shows. In its place, he has his old Demeter The Tremulator, identifiable by the yellow piece of tape on its face.
Jonny is also back to using a single overdrive: his old BOSS SD-1. It replaces his BOSS OD-3 and Ibanez TS-808. The SD-1 is identifiable by the paler yellow color (compared to the OD-3) and the silver knob caps (the OD-3 has gold caps). The SD-1 and TS-808 have very similar circuits and a very similar mid-focused sound. Both use diode soft-clipping, but SD-1′s asymmetrical clipping has a more dynamic sound than the woolly symmetrical clipping of the TS-808. Perhaps Jonny wanted the mids of the TS-808 with crunchier clipping. Or perhaps he just wanted to avoid playing shows with the vintage TS-808, and the SD-1 sounded close enough. While he hasn’t used the SD-1 for a Radiohead-related project since the mid-2000s, he did continue to use it on occasion for solo shows with the London Contemporary Orchestra and with Shye Ben Tzur.
Here’s a list of his current guitar pedalboard. Pedal sequence is suggested based on his past setups, but may not be accurate:
- Gibson Les Paul Standard Natural Finish ->
- BOSS TU-2/3 tuner
- Electro-Harmonix Freeze
- Electro-Harmonix Small Stone V4 phaser (big box)
- BOSS SD-1 overdrive
- BOSS RE-20 Space Echo
- Akai Headrush E2 looper
- Demeter The Tremulator tremolo
- BOSS DD-200 delay
- Voodoo Lab Pedal Power 2 Plus power supply
- -> Fender Super Reverb amplifier
To the left of his pedalboard, we can see a BOSS TU2/3 and an Akai Headrush E2 delay/looper, both used with his Fender Precision bass. The bits of white tape on the Headrush mark settings for a delay, most likely used when Jonny bows his bass guitar during jammier moments.
In the video, we can also see two MIDI pedalboards in Jonny’s setup: a Studiologic MP-117 MIDI to the right of his pedal and a Roland FC-200 MIDI by his laptop rack. The Studiologic is connected to a Oberheim SEM mono-synth and used for bass. Thom and Jonny have previously used the Roland to control Jonny’s Max patches — most notably the drum machine on 15 Step and the multi-channel looper on Give Up The Ghost.