and beat duties, lends his punchy production to her
songs resulting in an arresting listening experience.
That goes double for Wheeler’s lyricism, wherein she
earnestly tackles the topics of reckoning with love
and sexuality, struggling with depression and suicidal
thoughts, fear of the unknown, musical integrity and
finding the strength to confront a world that’s often
hostile to her personhood as a woman, an immigrant
and a member of the LGBTQIA+ community.
Vanessa’s snappy signature tone is no accident:
she employs compact amps, usually some blend of
tube and solid-state elements with treble-forward
equalisation and emphasis on percussive frequencies.
Her tone is driving, but not overdriven; robust, but
not overbearing; clear, but not clean. “I favour smaller
amps because I’m hard of hearing and very sensitive
to loud sounds,” she says. “Plus I don’t have the luxury
of a studio – I play in my house – so I want to be able
to get a little grime without blowing my head off.”
Her amp rig most often consists of a Benson Dizzy
Bird tube reverb unit and one-watt amp paired with
a Quilter 101 Mini which she uses as a preamp via
the Benson’s direct input. This gives her the ability to
drastically alter the basic tone of the Dizzy Bird at a
“satisfying bedroom level”.
Recently, Vanessa’s been experimenting with the
ZT Jazz Club, a solid-state 12-inch combo which
packs a lot of sound into a small enclosure. She says
she’s surprised by the response and room-filling
sound of the ZT, remarking: “It’s the first solid-state
amp I’ve played that does the thing that I like...
there’s a sizzle to it, still hairy but responds like
a clean amp.”ECHO CHAMBER
Dressing up her paradoxically icy and thumping tone
are a host of outboard delay and reverb units that
function as a welcome part of her writing regimen.
“Delay is a rhythmic partner and having grown up
playing by myself, it tends to keep me from rushing.”
Among her favourites are the pedals of Strymon
Engineering: the Deco for saturated tape slapback
and the Volante, a multi-head delay modelled after
the Binson Echorec that’s much adored by Wheeler
for its tactile feel and MIDI-friendly versatility. For
reverb, it’s the Strymon blueSky and the Datachoir
x Old Blood Noise Endeavors Rêver, which she calls
out as “a fantastic 80s reverse reverb that’s really
great for atmospheric sounds”. Vanessa’s guitars are
just as thoughtfully constructed as her signal chain: aTHIS SPREAD ‘Cake’
is a custom Creston Lea
creation. The cake motif was
handpainted by artist Sarah
Ryan and the guitar’s 26.75-
inch scale neck is tuned B to BCOLLECTIONGUITAR MAGAZINE 75