boner 4ever
Near where Germantown Avenue crosses Broad Street in North Philadelphia stands the Beury Building, better known as the Boner 4ever Building due to its iconic graffiti. It was built to house a bank in 1926—three years before the stock market crash that would start the Great Depression. The bank folded and the building was repurposed as general office space, but has been vacant for the last 40-ish years. Over the last decade, there have been several investors and developers who claim that they’re going to buy it and do something with it. Someone supposedly wanted to turn it into a hotel, which would be hilarious at that location. I feel like instead of concierge service, they’d need to provide counseling; statistically speaking, most people are inadequately prepared for a visit to North Philly. When/if it gets bought, the graffiti will probably be removed. That will be a huge loss, since that graffiti has more character in the number “4” alone than any chain hotel has in its entire corporate structure, although it’s already lasted much longer than the bank and its owners’ flawed ideas about perpetual financial growth did. The BONER 4EVER pedal attempts to capture a similar grit.
Details
BONER 4EVER is based on a famous, ridiculously expensive pedal. If this is not enough information, go listen to The Velvet Underground’s Femme Fatale and pay attention to the insane way that Nico pronounces the word “clown.” I’ve never heard a real one, and this isn’t trying to be an obsessively exact replica, but it is certainly among my favorite pedals. It takes a normal 9v power supply, but runs at 18v internally thanks to a charge pump and can be insanely loud. Like the original, it has a ganged potentiometer that turns the clean signal up as the gain goes down and vice versa, so it will do a clean boost thing with the gain knob set low or a hard-clipping overdrive thing when the Jawn is up. I know everyone uses these as a clean boost, but I mostly use it as overdrive to get those germanium diodes working. It’s built from a BYOC Silver Pony kit.
Vital Stats
Sound
This sample starts with the Coronacaster into BONER 4EVER set as a boost that is sending the Fender Deluxe into overdrive, and is overdubbed with a lead sound from the same guitar with the Jawn knob cranked to engage the diode clipping in the pedal.
