Andy Summers Effects

## With The Police

From Andy's recollection, in the early days of The Police he started off with the Telecaster, Fender Twin Reverb and an MXR Phase 90. As The Police got more money, Andy had commissioned a custom-built effects pedalboard by Pete Cornish, which was assembled in early 1979 and had mostly MXR effects with an Electro-Harmonix Electric Mistress and Musitronics Mu-Tron III envelope follower. In addition to the pedalboard he had a vintage 1960s Maestro Echoplex EP-2 for delay effects.

Volume pedals were DeArmond 610 Volume Tone pedal and Roland FV-2 volume pedal, plus a Schaller F 121 Fusschweller Foot Volume Controller pedal.

Andy himself later got a Roland SDD-320 Dimension D chorus and a Roland RE-301 Chorus Echo, plus other units from the Roland rack in addition to the pedalboard.

Note: in recent years there seems to be some confusion Andy made between the Electro-harmonix and the Boss chorus. It was more than likely he did not have the Boss chorus yet at that point.

## "Walking On The Moon" guitar tone and Andy’s use of the Chorus

There's been some confusion over what was used to create the distinctive, signature guitar effect on "Walking On The Moon".

From Andy's memory it was a '63 (or '61) Fender Telecaster custom though a chorus pedal and a Fender Twin, with maybe a little but of compression.

However, this recollection doesn't seem to be particularly reliable as reports from the time detail that he didn't specifically have a chorus pedal at the time - it was merely the Electro-Harmonix Electric Mistress Flanger he was referring to, probably dialled to a chorus-like effect. He even suggested he had either that or a Boss chorus in The Police's early days, but there's no evidence of a Boss Chorus being used at the time.

Apparently, assistant engineer Chris Gray seems to remember it was a **Audio & Design Recording SCAMP S24 ADT** rack delay/flanger unit that produced the signature sound. While Andy had his effects pedalboard, Chris claimed that "no flange pedal ever gave the same glass-effect of the SCAMP" - either Andy had directly recorded with the unit or it was perhaps added in during the mix to further embellish the sound.

However, in a 1979 interview with *Sounds* magazine, Andy mentioned being rather impressed with using expensive AMS equipment in the studio including the flanger - probably referring to an AMS DMX 15-80 digital delay, which had harmonising and flanging capabilities, and belonged to Surrey Sound studios. It's possible that was used on the song.

For "Walking On The Moon", the chorus sound was mainly reproduced live with the Electro-harmonix.

It was from ***Zenyatta Mondatta*** onwards that Andy used Roland JC-120 and Roland JC-60 combo amps with built-in chorus - mainly as a studio amp. Live he replicated the chorus effects using the Roland SDD-320 Dimension D rack-mounted chorus unit, since he stuck to the Marshalls live.

## 1987

Pedals:

* Boss CE-3 Chorus
* Boss DD-2 delay
* Boss HM-2 Heavy Metal
* Boss OC-2 Octave
* Musitronics Mu-Tron III
* MXR Dyna Comp
* MXR chorus

Racks/other:

* Boss CE-300 Super Chorus
* Dynamite Stereo Compressor
* Korg SDD-3000 digital delay
* Maestro Echoplex EP-2