Month: March 2023

Lee Harris, guitarist and originator of the idea of Nick Mason’s Saucerful Of Secrets, recently did a guest appearance at a guitar show, to explain how he has worked on his guitar sound for the project. In particular, how he has tried to get close to Syd Barrett’s guitar sound. Our friend and contributor Kevan Porter was there to shoot the videos of Lee in action, and explain about the event, and Lee’s appearance there… The ‘Guitar Show 2023’ was held in Birmingham at The Cranmore Conference Centre over the weekend of 25th and 26th February. This annual event hosted 133 companies exhibiting everything from electric and acoustic guitars to amps, effects and accessories. Amongst those was Thorpy FX, a British effects pedal company who build professional effects pedals, including the ‘Scarlet Tunic Analogue Amp Emulator’ as used by none other than Lee Harris of Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets. Lee visited the Thorpy FX booth on Sunday to give a brief explanation and demonstration of the Scarlet Tunic pedal. Playing a lot of Syd Barrett’s tunes with The Saucers, including Interstellar Overdrive, Lee said he’d previously been unhappy with the “stock 60s sound” pedals around at the time and contacted Adrian at Thorpy FX to see if he could come up with a pedal that replicated the sound of a Selmer Treble and Bass amp as originally used by Syd. Fortunately, Adrian and his business partner, Dan, have been very successful and Lee now has a pedal that really adds authenticity to the sound of such Floyd tracks as Interstellar Overdrive as can be heard in the video below. You can also hear Lee’s explanation in the second video. Our thanks to Kevan for the above – much appreciated!