Pete Thorn

Pete Thorn is a Los Angeles based guitarist who works as a touring lead player, session musician, producer and YouTube demo host. Melissa Etheridge, Don Henley and Chris Cornell have all brought him out on tour as their lead guitarist¹, and Strymon has described him as "guitarist for Melissa Etheridge, Chris Cornell and Don Henley"². He released his solo album, the aptly titled Guitar Nerd, in 2011¹, and his channel has become a place where makers send pedals, preamps and rack units for him to demonstrate through his own amps and cabinets.

A Fractal Audio Axe-Fx II rig

Thorn's relationship with Fractal Audio goes back to the beginning of the platform. He picked up an Axe-Fx Ultra early, in 2008, and used it for effects in a wet/dry/wet live rig¹. On the last European tour with Melissa Etheridge he used an Axe-Fx through a power amp and guitar cabs on stage, and also ran a direct out to the PA¹. Fractal Audio counts him among its artists, with Matt Picone saying, "We're delighted to have an artist such as Pete place his trust in Fractal Audio and his focus into the Axe-Fx"¹. He shares artist status there with Steve Stevens and Andy Wood¹.

With the Axe-Fx II, a rack mountable preamp and effects processor¹², Thorn worked with IR captures, tone matching and presets¹. The first batch of presets he shared with the Fractal community were based on two of his favorite amps, a Suhr SL68 and a Friedman BE100¹. Among the amp models he favors on the unit are the Plexi Treble, Friedman BE, Shiver Lead, Division 13 and Class-A 15W TB¹. For live use he started with three sounds: a Deluxe Verb, a 30W-TB and a Brit 800, covering clean, edge-of-breakup and crunch rhythm¹.

For his preset captures he dialed in a tone using a Weber Legacy speaker housed in a Suhr 112 cabinet, using a blend he likes of an SM57 and an SE Electronics VR1 ribbon mic into an API preamp¹. Premier Guitar's reviewer tested the Axe-Fx II with a Gibson Les Paul Standard, a Fender Strat, an Ernie Ball Music Man Axis Sport and a Parker Fly Deluxe, along with a Mesa/Boogie 2:90 power amp and a QSC K8 powered PA speaker¹².

Demos of Strymon, Walrus Audio and other pedals

Thorn's channel is best known for pedal demos, and Strymon was an early stop. He made an El Capistan dTape Echo demo that Strymon highlighted on its own site², and in that video he described what drew him to it:

He said Strymon had sent him the pedal a couple of days before the demo and that he instantly got inspired and started writing riffs and music with it¹³. He also made a Flint Tremolo & Reverb demo that Strymon featured, where, in Strymon's words, "Mr. Thorn tastefully picks his notes and uses Strymon's FLINT to embellish them into real feeling!"¹⁴. His first demo for Walrus Audio came in 2019, a studio demo of the Monument Harmonic Tap Tremolo V2, and he has made a demo of the SolidGoldFX 76 MKII octave-up fuzz for Guitar World, where the magazine wrote that "Pete Thorn certainly makes a convincing case for its credentials as a vintage grit box in his demo above"¹⁵.

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The range of makers he has covered is wide. A partial list from his own videos:

• Pigtronix: the Aria Disnortion pedal, demoed in 2010¹⁰
• MXR: the EVH 5150 Overdrive, presented on behalf of Edward Van Halen, where he argued it does "an extremely good rendition" of the early Van Halen cranked-up tone⁶
• Orange: the Backstage distortion, a cousin of the Two Stroke, whose parametric EQ he found "really really cool and kind of unique"¹⁶, and whose pedals generally he says "always do something a little different"⁸
• Carl Martin: the Plexitone, the Headroom spring reverb, the Quattro multi-effect, the Plexi Ranger and more^1718194
• Mad Professor: the Big Tweedy Drive, the Simble pre-driver and others²⁰²¹
• KHDK: three pedals including the Ghoul Jr., which he called "a really full-featured overdrive"⁷
• Cornerstone: the Antique Classic Drive and the Gladio SC²²²³
• Vemuram: the Jan Ray, which he has used over the years⁹
• Eventide: one or two H9s, or an H90, on his pedalboard for over 10 years¹¹

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His Carl Martin connection runs deeper than demos. He is a big fan of the Plexitone pedals and considers them great⁵, and he actually had a hand in voicing the second version: the company sent him prototypes and he offered suggestions⁴. When the original large-format Plexitone blew him away in 2010, he took his pedalboard, built by Dave Friedman at Rack Systems, straight to Dave and had the pedal added¹⁷. Carl Martin also names him as a user of the Tone Tweaker and the Ampster²⁴²⁵.

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His demo method is consistent across videos: he records a track using the pedal, then solos the guitar parts, turns the knobs and hits the switches so viewers hear each setting. With the Source Audio EQ2 he used an expression pedal to simulate a wah, and ran the EQ both in front of his amplifier and in its effect loop, boosting mids into the front end and scooping mids in the loop for heavy baritone rhythm parts²⁶. With the Cornerstone Gladio SC he played humbuckers and the single coils of his old Strats through a TC Ditto looper²³, and with the Antique he used a Telecaster and the same looper²².

His demo rig: amps, cabinets and speakers

The amps behind his demos are his own. In a 2011 video the amp was a 66 Fender Bassman head running into a 1x12 with a Scumback M75 speaker, with the volume on about four, treble on eight and bass on five, giving a basic clean tone that crunched up a bit on the bridge humbucker¹⁹. For the Mad Professor Big Tweedy Drive demo he played through the clean channel of his PT100 Suhr amplifier into an open back 2x12 cabinet, miking a Celestion A-Type for the clips²⁰.

Other videos show the rest of the amp family. He demoed the Lunastone TrueOverdrive 1 on his old Strat through his SL68 set on the edge of breakup, volume high and gain low, and then played a Gibson into the gain channel of his PT-100 signature amplifier with the gain up for a singing solo²⁷. For the Victory Kraken demo he used his PT15 amp with a TC Ditto Looper²⁸, noting that the Kraken and its siblings are full-on tube preamps in pedal format rather than ordinary pedals²⁸.

Guitar Nerd and his production work

Thorn released his solo album Guitar Nerd in 2011¹, and promoted it directly in his demo videos that year, telling viewers, "My CD GUITAR NERD is out now!" and pointing to CD Baby¹⁹¹⁸. In one video he played a song from the album through the Carl Martin Headroom spring reverb pedal, whose two independent sets of level and tone knobs let him toggle between two completely different reverb settings, a feature he called totally unique in an analog or spring reverb unit¹⁸.

Alongside his own music he works as a producer. He has been producing a new record for Trisha Lurie and a new album by Andy Wood, with a Guitar Nerd follow-up he hoped to finish for an early 2014 release¹. Andy Wood's own gear story runs parallel: his album Junktown was recorded with a prototype of what is now the Wampler Gearbox Andy Wood Signature Overdrive pedal²⁹³⁰, and he also has a signature compressor with Suhr, the Andy Wood Signature Woodshed Compressor, built with Kevin Suhr³¹²⁹. MusicRadar covered the Gearbox unveiling in 2021³².

Thorn's touring life has continued to shape his playing. He toured with Steve Vai, playing a seven string live for the first time, and harmonizing a solo with him³. From that experience he took a lesson in stage mindset:

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He also owns an original Line 6 Helix and has said he would like to get the newer one to try further³, and gearnews names him, alongside Ed O'Brien of Radiohead, as a first association with harmonizer pedals³³. Whether the gear is a rack unit like the Axe-Fx II or a single overdrive, delay, reverb or tremolo pedal, his approach on the channel is the same: play a track with it, then take it apart knob by knob.