This video of kids playing with pedals for the first time is the most adorable guitar moment of the year
Four children, 12 stompboxes, lots and lots of noise
We’ve always had a sneaking feeling that effect pedals are, in some respect, just grown-up toys.
Now, the good people over at Reverb have seemed to confirm our suspicions with a new video in which a group of children play through a table’s worth of stompboxes – including a Pro Co RAT, Ibanez TS808, Caroline Guitar Company Hawaiian Pizza Fuzz, Walrus Audio Julia Chorus/Vibrato, MXR Phase 90 and EarthQuaker Devices Spatial Delivery – for the first time.
Regarding the RAT?
- Great guitars for kids: top electrics and acoustics for children
"I'm just imagining, like, a giant colony of rats running around everywhere and taking over the space," says one child.
"And eating cheese," adds another.
As for the Julia Chorus/Vibrato?
“It kind of reminds me of Spongbob’s laugh,” says yet another.
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While there’s plenty to chuckle at throughout the 15-minute clip, there’s also knowledge to be gleaned about how and why effects work.
And if nothing else, the kids get to live out every guitar player’s dream, guilt-free: to crank the volume, turn on a bunch of pedals at once, and make a glorious, insanely noisy racket.
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Rich is the co-author of the best-selling Nöthin' But a Good Time: The Uncensored History of the '80s Hard Rock Explosion. He is also a recording and performing musician, and a former editor of Guitar World magazine and executive editor of Guitar Aficionado magazine. He has authored several additional books, among them Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, the companion to the documentary of the same name.