“The Lucky One,” my 21st century rock harmonica record, will be released this month. Once it’s released, I’m going to do a series of posts in which I describe the harmonicas and FX used on the record, track-by-track. In case you were wondering, EVERY harmonica track on this record was recorded with an Audix Fireball V mic through a Digitech RP500 running a customized version of my patch set for Digitech RP500, and straight to the board or computer from the RP500 via the XLR outputs (in the studio with the band) or a USB connection (in my home studio during overdubs). If you own a license for our patch set for Digitech RP500, you’ll get a copy of the patches I used for those tracks, and you’ll be able to try those sounds for yourself. (If not, go get yourself an RP500 and a copy of our patch set.)


In general, the sounds I used on this record break down into a few basic categories:

  • natural, with no FX beyond a little reverb or delay

  • amped-up blues
  • wah and auto-wah
  • wobble (vibrato, rotating speaker, vibro-pan–you know, wobble)
  • pitch shifted (usually down, sometimes up)
  • time-based modulation (chorus, flanging, and so on)


    • I used a number of variations on these basic sound groups to keep everything fresh, but when you get right down to it those are the FX that count, and combining them in various ways produces a lot of different colors.


    Stay tuned to get the full details on how it’s done.