That is the question!
My love-hate relationship with the famous green pedal…
It took me a while to appreciate it, but I finally got there. That’s normal—there are legions of fans and critics of the Tube Screamer, the iconic pedal created by Ibanez in 1979 and made famous by countless professionals and guitar stars. Like most guitar effects, its effectiveness depends (heavily) on the amplifier. A pedal like the Tube Screamer can sound amazing on some amps and terrible on others. And that can be misleading, making you think the pedal is the problem. Instead, it’s all about pairing. In fact, in my ignorance, I initially found myself among the detractors, but then something changed…
There’s a saying in Italy that goes almost like “If you miss the train, it’s gone”. Maybe the closest English variant is “Opportunity only knocks once”. Both mean that in life you basically only get one shot. Sometimes I find myself dwelling unnecessarily on certain choices I made in the past that influenced my geological career, and ten years after leaving the field, I still sometimes reflect on this. It’s pointless because you can’t change the past, and if things are the way they are today, there must be a reason for it, and there’s nothing you can do about it. At most, one can reflect on the choices made in order to provide guidance to our children and, why not, understand that perhaps there are no right or wrong choices, only different ones, choices that have led to different outcomes. We can play at imagining how things would have turned out, what results different choices would have led to. We can, but how useful is that? I’m not sure, but here I am, ten years after the “debacle,” reflecting on how, in the end, I can’t complain too much…
