John Fogerty confesses he's more of an amp aficionado than a pedal enthusiast. “It was probably the best-sounding solid-state amp ever made,” he waxed lyrical in a 2023 Guitar World interview, when talking about the Kustom amps he used during his Creedence Clearwater Revival era.
“I was playing a Kustom K200A[-4], which was an amazing rig. It was roughly 100 watts and was solid-state. It didn’t sound hard and cold and sterile the way so many other solid-state amps of that era sounded. And I’m just talking about when I used it clean. That amp had four effects built in; one was reverb, which I never used…”
And, speaking of effects, in a recent interview with Rick Beato, the lauded songwriter and guitarist reveals that, back in the ’60s, he “didn't know anything about pedals.
“It's one of those weird things in life,” he confesses. “You notice – especially culturally or politically – people will change their mind about some subject. I was kind of that way about pedals. ‘Why do I need a pedal?’ It seemed like some communist idea or something.”
As for why he opted for Kustom amps, Fogerty says that “they had created this amp in such a way that it's [a] natural sound. If you turned it up pretty loud, [it] didn't have that horrible, tight, too clean sound that so many of the solid state amps were into.
“And I always felt that a Blackface or the Silverface Fender – the Twin Reverb, the big amp, I thought was too harsh for me. I still do. The Kustom amp kind of had some hair on the notes – and it was perfect for strumming an electric guitar, especially a Rickenbacker. The toaster pickups on that guitar weren't real, real loud, so that the amp had some finesse to it.
“That combination was perfect, the Rick with the Kustom amp,” he concludes.
Elsewhere in the Beato interview, Fogerty recalls the moment he wrote one of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s most iconic tracks.
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