The Butter Machine is Landau's own pedal, built with Vemuram from the SD9 to lose its shrillness. With the Jan Ray ahead of it you already own the tone. So this is a subtraction problem, not a chase — six drives in series is the enemy of that sound, and every state below is defined as much by what's switched off.
Two pedals and an amp. This is where the Lou Reed material and the jam-pack vamps live, and it's where you should spend most of your practice time. If a chord sounds muddy here, the problem is the change, not the gear.
The gain-to-volume ratio on the Jan Ray is the entire principle of this sheet. Low gain, high level, everywhere. Sustain and midrange come from the amp being pushed hard by a loud clean signal, not from a pedal being pushed hard by a quiet one.
The Sparkle trimmer is the whole argument. It's a peaking boost centred around 6k, put there so Landau's leads cut through a dense Los Angeles mix. You're playing in a room on your own in Norfolk. Turn it down, bring the Low-Mid up, and the pedal stops being his and starts being yours — darker, weightier, less glassy. The test: hit one note high on the neck and let go. It should swell rather than decay. Fizz means too much gain and not enough volume.
The Venus bias knob is the mood control for the entire rig. Clockwise is smooth and singing — that's this state. Counter-clockwise goes gnarly and gated, and that's where the Hendrix and the Reed material live once you patch the wah, the Thornicus and the Drybel in ahead of everything. Two completely different rigs, one knob.
Landau goes guitar into pedals into amp. You've built a desk channel with a guitar in it — a Neve-flavoured germanium preamp at the front, a 610-flavoured tube preamp at the back, drives in between. Nobody else's chain looks like that, and it's the single most identifiable thing about your rig.
So lean on it. Broadcast on in every state, low gain, never as an effect. It's the through-line, and it's why none of this will ever sound like dry Los Angeles no matter how faithfully you set the Vemurams.
His delays are short and quiet, mixed to sit under a band. You've spent a fortnight on open strings left to ring with nobody else in the room. Run the BigSky longer and higher than the tone police permit and let the Mesa carry the decay while the Badger stays tight and dry. The wet/dry split exists precisely so you can be excessive on one side without losing definition on the other.
Four states, and the AC+ is off in all of them. That isn't an oversight. You have six drive pedals and the tone you want needs two at a time, sometimes one. Every extra stage in series costs you dynamics and picking response, which are the two things this sound is actually made of.
If a state sounds wrong, the first move is always to switch something off, not to add the next pedal along.