Billy Duffy

Billy Duffy is the guitarist of hard rock band the Cult, where, as Jim Dunlop's artist page puts it, he "employed memorable riffs and masterful songwriting to filter old school hard rock through innovative, unorthodox energy of post-punk"¹. As the band's sole guitar player, he has mixed droning chords and lyrical single-note runs with effects to fill out the sonic space, giving his parts rich, melodic texture¹. His best known piece of gear is a signature wah pedal, the Dunlop BD95 Billy Duffy Signature Cry Baby, and his board also carries several BOSS boxes, including a Dimension chorus and two delays.

The signature wah: Dunlop BD95 Billy Duffy Cry Baby

In 2016 Jim Dunlop released the BD95, a limited edition signature wah built around Duffy's classic guitar tones from The Cult's back catalog². MusicRadar described the concept plainly: Duffy "made his mark on the legendary pedal by cramming two wahs in one enclosure"³.

The two voices are a modern wah and a Vintage mode, which brings in a warm, low-Q inductor based on Duffy's favorite vintage Cry Baby pedals³. You switch between them with a small red side switch near the rear of the pedal, and an LED shows which mode is active³². Inside, there are internal controls for adjusting the bypass delay and the toe-down frequency of both wah modes, and the pedal uses auto-return switching: take your foot off and the wah switches off³.

The look matches his guitars. The BD95 is finished in the same colors as his signature Gretsch, a white finish with a chrome foot pedal and matching knobs, with Duffy's silhouette on the main foot pedal and his silhouetted logo on the rubber tread²³. Gearnews' reviewer thought the styling worked: "The white finish looks clean and the chrome foot pedal and matching knobs add to the vibe."² In the UK it carried an RRP of £209 at launch².

Duffy himself has been enthusiastic about the pedal, sending a mail shot to fans on his mailing list while it was still in development², and he plays it as part of his setup¹.

BOSS pedals on his board

A 2024 BOSS interview with producer Tom Dalgety, who worked with The Cult on Under the Midnight Sun, reports that Duffy still uses a lot of BOSS pedals: the DD-3 Digital Delay, the JB-2 Angry Driver, the DM-2W Delay, and the DC-2W Dimension C⁴. The two delays cover both flavors of delay pedal, the digital DD-3 and the Waza Craft analog DM-2W, while the JB-2 Angry Driver, a BOSS and JHS collaboration, handles overdrive and distortion duties.

The DC-2W is the current version of the Dimension C, a chorus pedal BOSS first released in 1985 as a pedal version of Roland's Dimension D rack unit⁵. BOSS says the DC-2W offers "not just a perfect sonic recreation of the original DC-2 Dimension C pedal, but also the legendary SDD-320 Dimension D studio rack effect it was based on."⁶ Its versatile I/O blends with any mono or stereo rig, from regular guitar setups to audio interfaces and studio mixing consoles⁷, and Guitar.com's buying guide notes the added stereo out and BOSS's metal enclosure⁸.

Duffy's connection to that chorus sound goes back a long way. Speaking to GuitarPlayer's Dave Hunter, he said of his Roland amp:

The pick: Herco Flex 50

Dunlop calls the Herco Flex 50 pick "one of the most important tools in Billy's arsenal"¹. The story behind it dates to a punk show in Manchester in 1977, where Johnny Thunders reached into his pocket, pulled out a gold Herco pick, handed it to Duffy, and gave him a thumbs up¹. Duffy has used Herco picks ever since¹.

Questions