It was 25 years ago when Billie Joe Armstrong first made his guitar sound like “dookie.” Now, he’s ready to (excuse the pun) dump his formula for the perfect gut-busting sound all over guitarists worldwide. Armstrong teamed up with effects company Jim Dunlop on a new guitar pedal for its MXR brand that sports the cover art to Green Day’s 1994 breakthrough LP, Dookie, on its face. Armstrong teased the announcement in an Instagram post that asked if any of his fans were going to NAMM, a semiannual confab for musical instrument merchandizers.
The stompbox will likely be an overdrive pedal, according to Guitar World, since it sports a “gain” setting in addition to knobs for “output,” “tone” and “blend” along with a button for “scoop” (a function that usually drops a signal’s midrange). The guitar magazine notes, though, that Armstrong’s tone on the album mostly came from a hot-rodded amplifier Amstrong calls “Pete” (it’s a Marshall Plexi 1959SLP reissue to be exact) and did not cite any further gear, suggesting he plugged straight into the amp.
Dookie, the trio’s third studio LP and major-label debut, came out on February 1st, 1994, and became a runaway hit thanks to the singles “Longview,” “Basket Case,” “Welcome to Paradise” and “When I Come Around.” It paved the way for pop punk to become a major commercial force in the mid to late Nineties. It’s since been certified diamond by the Record Industry Association of America, meaning it sold more than 10 million copies in the U.S.
The NAMM conference will take place from January 24th to the 27th in Anaheim, California.