Pete Loeffler (Chevelle)

Pete Loeffler is guitarist/vocalist for Chevelle, a band known for it’s Helmet inspired riffing as well as Tool-esque vocal stylings. He’s rig has always been a fairly straight forward, based on the principle of good guitar into good amp equals good tone.

Loeffler is more often than not seen playing a variety of PRS Custom 24 guitars, down tuned to various levels. As a general rule, he has tuned down lower with the release of each album, from Drop D, D standard, C# standard, Drop B and Drop A#. More recently he has begun using baritone model guitars

In an artist profile of Loeffler’s rig in the April 2003 addition of Guitar One, Loeffler’s live rig was listed as including four PRS Custom 24’s and one PRS Custom 22, strung with DR strings. From there, the signal goes via a Shure wireless, into a Boss TU-2 Tuner, Tech 21 SansAmp GT-2, Boss BF-3 Flanger with an Axxess electronics midi board used for channel switching. From there the signal went into two Mesa/Boogie Mark IV heads into Mesa/Boogie 4×12 speaker cabinets.

In an interview with Guitar.com, Loeffler is quoted as saying that PRS were making him some baritone models, and he’d borrowed a PRS baritone which was used all over the ‘This Kind of Thinking Could Do Us In’ album. This guitar was tuned to A# with .072 low E string.

In the same interview he says that the SansAmp GT-2 was used primarily on tracks from the ‘Wonder What’s Next’ album.

“I use it “Forfeit” and “Wonder What’s Next,” from the first record. I use it for overdrive and feedback, when I really need to get a lot of feedback going.”

Guitar World also profiled his rig in the Vulgar Displays of Power column as seen below.

His rig at this point in time was very similar to the one featured in Guitar One, besides the addition of the Boss PH-3 Phase Shifter.

Loeffler was asked about the equipment used on Vena Sera in an interview with Ultimate-Guitar.com (no longer available online):

I used a bunch of guitars. I used Gibson Baritones. I used Fender Baritones. I used Paul Reed Smith Baritones. These are primarily the guitars that I use. I use really old or really new, really hard-to-find guitars called Baritone, which is a longer scale. We tune down to drop A# for most of these songs. That’s really hard to do on a standard scale, so I have a guitar that’s being made specific.

As far as amps go, I use Mesa Boogie. I use Ampeg B4 heads. I use the old Marshalls. I use pretty much everything you can think of! I use a really cheap pedal as well. That one is called SansAmp. It’s a distortion pedal that I use, only it’s very hard to control. It’s very low-endy. But if you can harness it, you can get an interesting sound from it.

More recently, his pedal board has grown a little more, perhaps coinciding with the retirement to the ‘tool box’. As well as the Boss BF-3 Flanger, Boss PH-3 Phase Shifter and a Boss TU-2 tuner, he has also added a Boss TR-2 Tremolo, Boss DD-3 Digital Delay, and a Boss OC-3 Octave. It’s rumoured that the DD-3 is used more as a splitter than for it’s delay effect.