Steve Stevens' Rebel Yell and Top Gun Pedalboard

Guitarists are often accused of using guitar effects pedals to conceal their technical shortcomings. The same can't be said about Steve Stevens, Billy Idol's guitarist of choice and the man behind the Top Gun movie theme. If you were alive in the 1980s, you probably owned a copy of the self-titled Billy Idol and Rebel Yell albums. While both albums feature effects laden rhythms and solos, most notably on the tracks "White Wedding", "Rebel Yell" and "Eyes Without A Face", Steve Stevens has demonstrated that he can faithfully play these songs on an acoustic guitar, sans effects pedals (check out Steve Steven's acoustic performance of "Rebel Yell" on You Tube). Reviewing effects-less acoustic guitar performances is not the aim of Pedal Nuts (Editor's Note: Nirvana Unplugged being the only exception), so the following is a summary of the guitar synthesizer, pedalboard and rack-mounted effects used by Steve Stevens' on the Billy Idol and Rebel Yell albums:

Guitar Synthesizer - Roland GR 700 Guitar Synthesizer - an analog guitar synth from 1984 that consists of eight programmable pedals for outputting a variety of synth-voices. Steve Stevens' preferred to use the Roland GR 700 in conjunction with a Roland G-707 guitar. However, many users of the GR 700 insist that Ibanez's X-ING IMG2010 guitar is a more suitable controller (read this website for a full review and pictures of the Roland GR 700);

Pedalboard: The cable output from the Roland GR 700 is then inputted into a pedalboard stocked with the following successive effects pedals:

• a Boss CS-2 Compression pedal;
• a Boss OC-2 Octave pedal;
• a Boss EC-2 Chorus pedal;
• two Boss A/B switch pedals - the first switch pedal establishing a full loop for the pedalboard, and the second switch pedal used to activate and deactivate the rack-mounted Lexicon PCM-41s;
• a Dunlop Cry Baby Wah pedal;
• a ProRat Distortion pedal;
• a Boss RV-1 magnetic volume pedal;
• a Boss GE-7 Equalizer pedal;

Rack-mounted Effects: Steve Stevens controls the following rack-mounted effects using a simple pre-Bradshaw switching system:

• two Lexicon PCM-41 Digital Delays - the first PCM-41 is used by Stevens to create the "machine gun sound" on "Rebel Yell". The second is used as a split-stereo feed to Stevens' Marshall JCM 800 heads;
• a Roland SDE-3000 Digital Delay - an amazing rack-mounted digital delay having delay, phase, filter, modulation and feedback modulation capabilities;
• a Roland SRE-555 Tape Echo - an extremely reliable tape echo device;
• a Roland Dimension D Stereo Chorus; and
  
• an Eventide H999 Harmonizer Effects Processor - the H999 models are much more difficult to locate these days on Ebay.com, but tend to be cheaper then the 3500/3000SE models.

Hope this helps! Comments and corrections always welcome.