Did we miss any guitarists that should have made it on to this list? Tell us in the comments below!

Wilko Johnson of Dr Feelgood didn't use any pedals. Famously when asked what pedals he used he replied, "I'm playing guitar not riding a bicycle."

Charlie Christian, Grant Green, Wes Montgomery, Tiny Grimes, T-Bone Walker, Kenny Burrell, Albert King, Freddie King, Magic Sam, Otis Rush, Buddy Guy, Hubert Sumlin, Willie Johnson, Albert Collins, Junior Barnard, Anson Funderburgh, Ronnie Earl, Dave Specter, Kid Ramos, Jr. Watson, Guitar Slim, Gatemouth Brown, Johnny Guitar Watson, Clarence Hollimon, Pat Hare, Luther Tucker, Robert Nighthawk, Johnny Shines, Muddy Waters, Jimmy Rodgers, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Lowell Fulson, Wayne Bennett, Ike Turner, Lonnie Johnson and probably a lot of guys buried in my CD collection that I'm blanking on at the moment. Albert Collins again, he's so incredibly unique... and Peter Green too.

Roy Buchanan. "Extreme Guitar Wizard" was on the ticket when he played Liberty Hall in Houston mid 70's. A man, a Telecaster, a Twin Reverb and a folding chair to set it on backwards. Jaw dropping stuff

Wes Montgomery. IMO best pure jazz tone. Listen to anything by him. Never used a pedal or pick for that matter.

wasn't BB King a big advocate of the boss Metal zone?

Robert Cray is one of the most underrated guitarists out there, IMHO. Saw him opening for Tina Turner in London, years ago, and he blew me away. Unique style, with an amazing soulful voice.

i think an important thing to consider is amp volume. today very often even at smaller gigs guitar amps are mic`ed up and the sound guy tells you to turn down. back in the days the amps often had to fill the whole venue, and if you can really turn up an amp the compression and drive starts to kick in. no (such) need for pedals. it`s better to crank a rather small amp than to put a twin reverb on "2" so it`s not only the hands, it´s also circumstance

I can't count the number of times I've seen BB King starting in around 1967 here in Seattle at the Paramount Theater. You're right, his rig consisted of two blackface twin reverbs and his Cherry Gibson at the time it was an ES-345. I'm a guitar player myself for 50 years so I paid attention to his Rigs and he did move to Silver panel twin reverbs and then ultimately to those Gibson amplifiers. But you know the one thing in common with all those amplifiers? BB King! He could have played One Note through a transistor radio and we all would have known who it was! Rest in Peace BB. 💜 Thanks for another great upload Mason! You're the best dude and I absolutely love your effects!

Hubert Sumberland, T-bone Walker, Wes Montgomery, Chuck Berry, Albert King, and George Benson to name a few.

What about Sister Rosetta Tharpe?

When I started playing the original production of Grease on Broadway, they didn't allow us to use any pedals, I guess in keeping with the era we were re-creating. The only effects they allowed were reverb and tremelo and we used Twin Reverbs. This led us to an ever evolving quest for more powerful pickups to drive the amps harder, and I went through several iterations until I found a '55 tele which has stock a really powerful bridge pickup. Playing like that was great for my technique and tone. These days of course I'm addicted to pedals.

Roy Buchanan, his '53 Tele into his '59 Tweed Bassman........'enuff said.

I think the trouble many of us have is we love these tones but we either can't afford those tube amps or we cannot turn our tube amps loud enough to get that tone. OR we actually need the clean headroom for clean songs and we want to be able to kick a footswitch on for a heavier song without having a crazy volume jump. So using pedals is really about practicality, but what we want is that tube amp distortion. And that actually does seem to be the initial intention behind the development of every single overdrive circuit.

............Hubert Sumlin........Albert Collins.........Johnny Graham.........Cornell Dupree........Johnny "Guitar "Watson.......

This video is the Edge’s nightmare!!! 😎😂

Charlie Christian, Wes Montgomery, Kenny Burrell

This list is pretty focused on classic rock and blues musicians. To add some other flavors I'd include Richard Lloyd and Tom Verlaine from Television, John Reis from Hot Snakes, Rocket from the Crypt, and Drive Like Jehu, Ian Makaye and Guy Picciotto from Fugazi, and D Boon from the Minutemen.

Ritchie Blackmore. Sometimes with his Aiwa Tape Echo or Univibe. I think all these players have one thing in common: Loud amps. Cool video. Thanks ✌🏼

Paul Kossof was unmatchable

The one that I think of is Leslie West. Les Paul Jr into an old p.a. using volume and control knobs. Mountain doesn’t get the credit they deserve. Leslie West was amazing.

The big exception for Keith was “Satisfaction”. He used a Maestro Fuzz for the main riff

Louisiana blues legend Tab Benoit tops the list for current players. Just the pickup switch and volume knob on a Thinline Tele with fat Fender dual coils. Rich, blues goodness.

I have nothing against pedals, I used to use delay, overdrive, wah, compression and a noise gate. Now I use literally no pedals, I don't even own one. My tone is the best I've ever had. I play a lot of blues and rock. This is what I do: 1-Set up guitar to have good tension on action, plenty of sound. 2-Have great pickups 3-Have a tube amp with good speaker (mine has good overdrive built in and reverb, most good ones do) 4-Get your levels right on your guitar and your equalisation on your amp. That makes a big difference. It's not for everyone, but for those who like to hear a more pure guitar sound it's the way to go. A good tip is that if your guitar sounds good before you plug it in then it will sound amazing plugged in. My reason for dropping all pedals was because I wanted a more real guitar sound, more tactile and responsive. It makes me feel more connected to each note. Not for everyone, but it is for me. It also makes you a better player because there's nothing to hide behind. Interestingly BB King is probably the greatest blues player of all time, and Angus Young is probably the greatest rock player and they both play straight through the amp, nuff said.

One of my favorites who never used effects was Paul Kossoff.

Kieth Richard used one of the first "Fuzz" box's on "Satisfaction." The recordings used a lot of effects. "Shattered" with the phase shifters comes to mind. Pedals do help to avoid monotony of straight guitar into an amp. Players need to use discretion to make sure they don't use them too much. Alot of times player search for the perfect amp, and a pedal might have got them there much quicker. It is nice to have an amp like that, but most can't afford an old "Plexi" or a Dumble.

I always hear Keith say that he doesn't use effects and I call BS on that one. Love Keith !! please don't get me wrong, but he's using phasers flangers and all natures of swooshy effects on several tracks on albums from Goats Head up until ending with Heaven from Tattoo You. Great episode btw

The one and only Roy Buchanan those volume swills all done with no pedals just done with the knobs on his tele.

Carlos Santana played Woodstock with a SG/P90's directly into a 800 watt Gallien-Krueger SS amp. Unforgettable.

You forgot the late great Roy Buchanan.

I play either a Les Paul or a Strat directly into a tweed Champ or a tweed 5e3 deluxe. Crank it up, use the volume knob. Need reverb? Let the strings ring a little between the notes. From the time I ditched all of my pedal, I've never been happier with my tone or my playing.

Ian Mckaye of Fugazi (and Minor Threat) 😉 Gibson SG and JCM800

Paul Kossoff - Roy Buchanan - Mike Bloomfield- Ted Nugent

First time I saw Derek it was in a tiny club, and I could have just stuck out my hand and given him a fist bump or, turned the knobs on his super reverb amps. He had at least one of them just cooking and there was nothing on the floor. It was pretty moving, and I have seen Robert and bb but also seen guys with huge amounts of effects and there’s no wrong way. If the player can really grab you and hold the audience that’s what is memorable.

Great video! I provided backline for a lot of events with a Fender Stage 100 solid state head going into a 2X12 Celestion cab. I had a lot of blues and jazz guys show up and plug straight into the amp, dial it in a bit and rip all night. Tone is in the fingers.

How can you miss Peter green?

Alvin Lee! Start with Goin' Home from Woodstock then dive into the extensive library of Ten Years After and his solo career. Tone for days ,Chunky Brown sounds from his Frankenized ES 335 . With shredding techniques and abilities.

Chuck Berry!!!

Thanks. This commentary was very much needed. Don't get me wrong, I'm very much a "pedal" guy due to the cover music I'm hired to do. Personally, I only us them when necessary. But trust me. It's hard to play or convince your audience it's the "Theme to Shaft" without a wah pedal.

I did a multi band show this weekend. There were several guitar players onstage with me. I wanted my rig to be basic so I went with a small Vox amp and my Rick 620 6 string and left the pedals home. I love the sound of a single coil guitar straight into a low wattage amp running hot. But I have no issue with anyone using pedals. What gets you YOUR ideal sound is what's really important. Take Edge for example, he uses a lot of pedals and he gets beautiful tones. So to each their own. I normally use a pedal board but it has a volume pedal, wah wah, tuner, and and an Ibanez Tube Screamer Mini that I only use to make sure I have a boost for solos. All followed by a splitter to my two small Vox amps. Pedals do give you versatility though. So for bands that cover lots of styles in one show they are great. My main guitar is a Tele into a 4 Watt Vox tube amp so I'm a pretty basic guy when comes to setup. I honestly don't know how you guys keep all those pedals under control. But I image you get used to it.

Roy Buchanan.

Had to chime in on the Lab Series comments...BB King regularly used an L5 2x12 100 watt combo. He was my hero along with many others. I had an L7 4x10 version of the amp in high school. The 100 watt L series amps were master volume with an analog pre-gain circuit and master volume. It had a built in compressor and a Bob Moog designed EQ that had so much range that it could make an electric guitar sound like a balalaika if you wanted....very unnatural. With the gain full up it sounded like Neil Youngs fully dimed tweed. Also, the speakers were thin and inefficient with lots of damping. They broke up as well at higher volumes. None of the tones I had were what I would call "sterile"...not like a JC120 at all. I'd call them warm clean. You could set it right at the edge of breakup at all volumes and with big iron it would knock the fillings out of your teeth when cranked. Full up single notes hit like a ball peen hammer to the chest and it would shake the panes of glass in the frames of my old house. Good times.

Lots of old guys, including me. Pedalboard went down two shows in a row and I got more compliments both nights after plugging straight into my Marshall. Sold everything but the tuner that’s taped to top of amp.

Loud amps, dynamics in attack and use those volume and tone controls, I use a Vox AC30 cranked that way when I can, which is very rare in performance nowadays, mostly at home when no one is around. My Drive pedals are to get to that when I can't use that set up and volume level. I think this discussion is more to drive pedals than modulation, reverbs and delays, that is a whole different thing.

Hank Marvin comes to mind, Fender Strat, Vox AC 15 and AC30, great match and that magical tone without pedals.

Nile Rodgers man, he didn’t even use an amp sometimes. I think he could plug any guitar into any amp and it would would sound like Nile. He does have a very modest pedalboard now that I think he uses mainly to get the tones that were on some specific records but it’s mostly Strat to Deville when he’s live.

Keith Richards (& I’m his biggest fan) really used far more effects than he wants to admit (TS9 or 10, Phase 100, & many studio effects).

Ace Frehley once said that he got all the effects he wanted from his Les Paul and Marshall stack

Redd Volkaert calls pedals tone reducers and he is not too wrong :D

Nelson Faria is a incredible Brazilian jazz guitar player who plays without any effects. Great video. Cheers from Brazil!

Richard Loyd and Tom Verlaine from Television. The album "Marquee Moon" is Fender Jazzmasters into Twins (if I remember correctly). Amazing guitar record.

Great you mention Jimmie Vaughan, true master of pure tone

No one comes close to Roy Buchanan. I played with Roy in the early 1960's and the only thing he did was cut a slit in his speaker and turn the amp around. His tone was perfection.

I wouldn't say Keith Richards NEVER used pedals. In the song Satisfaction, one of his most iconic riffs had fuzz, which is actually one the first recordings with that effect.

Marty Stuart and his side man Kenny Vaughn go straight into a Deluxe and Princeton respectively... It makes me wonder how many other iconic Country players went straight in. I'm on all kinds of guitar forums and am amazed at how many ignore the great country players. When I had a Blues band, i played a Harmony Rocket, straight into a battery powered 'Lectronics Mouse with a 57 on it to the PA, which provided the reverb. We were a local sensation for a few years. Big fun. It took me a long time to begin using pedals. I eventually had a well populated board. Recently, i have cut way back. All I have now is a compressor, Vertex Clean Drive, and a reverb pedal, that sounds better than the 'verb in the Deluxe amp. These pedals are always on, set and forget, easy.

Keith Richards , BB King & all these Guitar Greats are inspirational to me . Thanks for an enjoyable video .

Waddy Wachtel, one of the greats of 70s rock (for example with Linda Ronstadt). I read an interview with him in which he said he felt that pedals removed the tone of a good amp.

i think another good idea is guitarists who use maybe 1-3 effects. you’ve got jimmy page, SRV, hendrix, kurt cobain, tony iommi, and a bunch of other great artists.

When I first started practicing with a band in Denver, we went to a show after practice one night. A dive bar on Colfax. The guitarist had some technical difficulties. He had to stop their set for 20 minutes while he was troubleshooting his pedal board. That's all I needed to see. I now buy amps based on their tone and effects.

Johny winter. Was Notorious for not using effects and would always turn down the mid-range tp zero on every amp he played or borrowed. Used a little bit of chorus later in his career not long before he died but for the most part clean and awesome.

Two you forgot: Michael Bloomfield Les Paul or a Tele into a Fender Ronnie Earl Strat into a Fender Also Jimmy Vaughn might not have in his early days but these days he's using a Strymon Flint Trem/Reverb

Ritchie Blackmore has been around for a long time , he used a wah pedal in the early Deep Purple albums and maybe a treble booster here and there in the 70’s , but in some live footage from the Machine head to Burn years you don’t see any guitar pedals on the stage floor what he used was a reel to reel Aiwa tape recorder

Derek Trucks actually uses an MXR echoplex delay on top of his amp, it’s used rarely but still in his rig

Marty Stuart and Kenny Vaughn. Teles and Fenders.

Love your videos and respect. I do want to say respectfully: while Robert Cray doesn't have a jumbo jets worth of gear he does use pedals. Check out his live rendition of "Poor Johnny" at The Crossroads Festival where he's using a long delay and working it into his solo. I've also been blessed to see him live and while most of the the set was his "straight away" sound, I remember at one point he grabbed a silver stratocaster and had this insanely saturated tone and I wasn't able to make sense of if he had a pedal or just high output pickups. The stage at The Gillioz is elevated and I could not make out what he was using... though he rocked and with a great variety of tones.

junior brown flat out killer

I'm not famous but I've made a living for almost 50 years as a guitarist (and upright and electric bassist) and although I have a bunch of pedals, I rarely use them. I've gone through phases but I always come back to just guitar and amp. It seems like that's the best sound (for the styles I play)

Ironic as Keith Richards helped popularize the fuzz pedal😳! (Songs like I Can’t Get No Satisfaction, Mercy Mercy and She Said Yeah). He also used a lot of phasers on Some Girls (1978) and Emotional Rescue (1980).

Marty Stuart and Kenny Vaughan also go straight in, telecaster into a Fender Deluxe Reverb or a Princeton.

One thing is for sure: all these shown artists cranked up their amps up to ultimate loudness, that means 10 - the only way to get dynamics and never to miss the amps defined sweet spot. Try that nowadays in either a rehearsal room or even a small clubs live gig, you won´t find many friends after the gig or by the stage sound mixing crew. When I come up on stage with my VOX AC30 and turn it up to 9 o´clock, I see the eyes rolling in disaprovement - and that´s far below the "sweet spot".... so, for that reason pedals might help to achieve a great sound by less deafness as result.

skynyrd..straight in to Peavey's when i saw em back in the day..they sounded bloody wonderful

peter green

Mike Bloomfield!

Marty Stewart and his FABULOUS SUPERLATIVES, Roy Buchanan, and Buck Owens and Don Rich!!!

Most of the time, Roy Buchanan and Danny Gatton. Tele to amp, that's all! Doesn't get much better than these guys. Also, Robbie Robertson, another tele cat!

Vinny Martell of Vanilla Fudge. I saw him live a dozen times, Gibson 335 straight into a pair of dimed Black Face Twins. All the variation in tone came from the controls on the guitar.

I know It's kind of dumb but didn't Hendrix use a fuzz box and a wah wah and some times he didn't use anything.

Peter Green, Paul Kossoff and Albert Collins.

Liked the twist on this topic, really good examples!

Awesome video. I do not use a pedal because it makes me appreciate the tone of my guitar more.

Johnny " Guitar " Watson had a won derful sound - amp & 335 + picked with his fingers .

Glenn Campbell. Roy Clark.

Ray Flacke. Most of his career he used a tele and a Gibson Lab series. Check him out. Amazing guitar player.

I’m not sure if he used any pedals but Robby Krieger had a amazing tone.

Roy Buchanan!!! Best tone

Some gigs - I don't bring pedals. I get to work with some older legendary players. If they don't use a pedal anywhere... neither do I. It's harder but I do get better. I have to be louder and they know it. That's fun. I have hidden pedals in the back of my vintage amp before... slap back delay, very slight in the mix. But usually, I don't want to offend the masters who hire me.

Chris Cain, he is awesome. Just plugs in. Excellent tone. My mood is on KZfaq I think.

Peter Green didn't use pedals. Good call with Jimmie Vaughan - one of my fav players.

Mick Green

Derek Trucks' amp heads are $12k each. For $12k for a head, I'd better not need a pedal

Cray uses a hard tail strat into two matchless Clubman amps. Hardcore advocate. BB loved his Lab Series amp. It has a built in Compressor! BB Came from an era were the amp was tuned up high and volume and tone controls became the operating system. Think about it. Amps from the early 50s had a volume and tone control. The guitar had more controls than the amp when you consider multiple pickups …

Tocak - (ex Yugoslavia) - just Fender without any pedals and picks . Listen instrumentals - " Zajdi Zajdi " . " Maht Pustinja " , " Ulazak u Harem " or songs with his band " Crna Dama " , " Sumadijski Blues " . You will not regret .

Irish blues-rocker Rory Gallagher famously used no pedals, just amp overdrive. Check out the Irish Tour ‘74 album for an hour of classic rock tone.

Derek Trucks' sound in "Midnight In Harlem, Live At The Crossroads" must be of the most beautiful guitar sounds ever created with guitar.

Derek was the first guy for me, seeing him with his DTB days in small bar in Asheville NC , I believe it was 1997. I could not believe what I was hearing from him and followed his guitar cable and it was directly to the super reverb, matter of fact his tuner was on top of his amp, he would unplugged from the amp to tune his guitar. To this day I get goose bumps hearing those sounds he made that night without any pedal just so good it was impossible to me

Most of the early rock and roll artists like Scotty Moore. I think too many players use to many effects pedals all the time and you loose much of the actual sound of the guitar itself

Pedals...I have eight of them. They are a tool to enhance a particular song. If a particular song does not need it then thats cool too. I cannot imagine listening to Brian May or The Edge without a delay pedal of some kind in thier songs. At the same time they also have songs that sound great when they do not use them. It is all about the song and what the musician is trying to express.

I think Larry Carlton used no pedals on the Steely Dan stuff.

didn't see his name in a quick look... Leslie West - Les Paul Jr w/ P90s

For me I love Kenny Burrell's tone and Tab Benoit. Neither one of them uses pedals. Keb Mo' also has a nice tone with no pedals.