Reeves Gabrels

Reeves Gabrels is the guitarist known for his long run with David Bowie's bands from the late 1980s through the 2000s, and for joining The Cure. His rig, as his tech Al Robinson describes it in a BOSS "Behind the Board" feature, is built overwhelmingly around BOSS compact pedals, including a CS-3 Compression Sustainer as a regular sight at the compression stage, and Bowie-era units like the DD-5 Digital Delay, SD-2 Dual Overdrive, PH-2 Super Phaser, and PS-5 Super Shifter, all in his own custom paint jobs¹.

The pedal at the center of his sound is an '80s vintage BOSS DC-2 Dimension C, set to Mode 3, pretty much always on. His tech, Al Robinson, describes it as "integral to Reeves' signature sound"¹.

The BOSS DC-2 behind his sound

The DC-2 Dimension C is a four-button chorus pedal. BOSS says it was born by adapting the rack-based Roland SDD-320 Dimension D into a compact pedal for guitars and other mono instruments². Unlike the rack unit, the DC-2 was specifically created for mono sources like guitar, with a modified circuit that produces a Dimension effect with a slightly different tonal flavor³.

Gabrels' attachment to the pedal goes beyond one unit. As Robinson puts it:

The DC-2 also appears on the pedalboards Gabrels builds for his own projects, alongside a TU-3 tuner and often an LS-2 Line Selector for switching¹.

His pedalboard with The Cure

Gabrels' main board with The Cure is, in Robinson's words, "huge and is a two-person lift," and it runs stereo into two custom-built Audio Kitchen heads¹. Those heads are hooked up to two Mesa Boogie 2x12 cabinets via Palmer speaker simulator boxes, connected with custom speaker cables hand-built by Gil Divine at Divine Noise Cables¹.

A second, smaller board handles his Fender Bass VI parts. It sits at a right angle to the main board and runs mono into a Hiwatt Custom 100 head and another Mesa Boogie 2x12, again via a Palmer speaker simulator¹.

At the top of the main board's chain sits a BOSS TU-3 Chromatic Tuner¹. The Bass VI board was rebuilt during the lockdown, and there Gabrels went with the Waza Craft TU-3W Chromatic Tuner¹.

Beyond the DC-2, his Cure-era gear includes an Analog Man Bi-Chorus, which he got in 2023 to use with The Cure alongside his King Of Tone, according to Analog Man's Mike Piera⁴. In 2016 he was also exclusively using The Fizzy, a fuzz pedal, and praising it publicly on his Facebook page that week, as reported by Gearnews⁵.

Boosts and studio gear

On the pedalboards for his own projects, a CS-3 Compression Sustainer is a regular sight at the compression stage¹, and a couple of modded GE-7 Equalizers serve as boosts on a lot of projects¹. Robinson says Gabrels calls the GE-7 one of his favorite go-to pedals¹.

His home studio holds a deep collection of BOSS compact pedals:

• A couple of BF-2 Flangers, multiple NS-2 Noise Suppressors, and a PS-6 Harmonist¹
• A couple each of the CE-1 Chorus Ensemble and the DB-5 Driver¹
• An HM-2 Heavy Metal, an SD-1 Super Overdrive, and a DF-2 Super Feedbacker & Distortion¹
• At least one of each of the Digital Delay compact pedal series¹
• A BOSS DR-202 Dr. Groove drum machine he used for demoing songs back in the day¹

He also rediscovered a batch of gear from his Bowie days that he hadn't used in years: a DD-5 Digital Delay, SD-2 Dual Overdrive, PH-2 Super Phaser, and PS-5 Super Shifter, all covered in his own custom paint jobs¹.

For pitch shifting with Bowie, Gabrels used four '80s RPS-10 Digital Pitch Shifter/Delay units from the BOSS Micro Rack Series. Robinson says they were used all the time with Bowie, and Gabrels still uses them in the studio¹.

His reasons for sticking with BOSS gear come down to more than tone:

Questions