“I walked up to Tony Iommi and said, ‘Why don’t you just use my amp?’ He saw it was solid-state and said, ‘No, I’m not going to use that!’” Frank Marino on why solid-state amps make the best pedal platforms and starting his own stompbox company

Frank Marino.

As one of the fiercest guitarists of the immediate post-Hendrix generation, Canadian Frank Marino blazed a trail as a shredding soloist, master of riffage, and one of the game’s earliest hot-rodders. If you listened to any of his output with Mahogany Rush, you’re very aware of his prowess.

But to see Marino live was to see him in his true element: backed by any number of solid-state amps and a six-foot-long pedalboard at his feet, filled with stompboxes of his own creation – in an era when oodles of pedals weren’t a thing.