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My pedal board(s) keep changing and changing .... it is a seemingly never ending process. Many times what sounds good at home doest with the band or vice versa, or things turn out to be too big or too noisy or tone suckers or ...
Anyways, the present state of affairs is in the picture.
I recently got the hang of going direct into the PA. The present setup is super versatile in this respect. It is built around the AMT 11a tube preamp. It has a blackface'ish nice, bright clean channel. One can get beefy cleans by increasing the gain a bit. It is nevertheless rather rock voiced (but that is what I am using it for). I dislike the two distortion channels. They are way too much voiced for the metal crowd, they drown in the mix (even with kids up) or sound shrill. They are also noisy. I basically don't use them.
The signal chain is: Guitar -> Wah Wah -> buffer -> Tuner -> EP Booster (always on and no boost) ->SP compressor -> Spark booster -> MXR Fet driver -> Okko Diablo overdrive -> SL drive -> Corona Chorus -> Flashback delay -> HOF reverb -> AMT 11a -> Spark mini booster -> Red box.
Via the red box I can go directly to the PA and via the "thru" I can still feed a power amp (or effects loop return) at the same time, which is convenient. The red box sounds fine. The setup actually sounds pretty awesome through a Bose L1 - even when compared to playing through a 2x12 tube power amp.
The EP booster makes the tone fatter and adds higher mids in a way that I like. The SP compressor is used sparingly (mostly for Knopfler'ish clean tones or funky rhythm). The spark is mainly used as a light overdrive to add a bit of grit and sparkle. I like it for that. I also like the mid boost with bass and treble rolled back and gain increased - sounds like a tubescreamer this way and is awesome to stack with another overdrive. The FET driver sounds a bit like a fuzz pedal, but not quite as extreme as a little big muff. I still have to warm up to it though. It definitely gets these Pink Floyd type tones with single coils. The Okko is a transparent and very versatile, high quality overdrive with two gain stages. The SL drive sounds awesome and provides the sound of a roaring Marshall stack. It is the highest gain pedal on the board and it gives very meaty hard rock tones. The tone knob is very efficient to move the sound from dark to trebly.
The TC modulation pedals are all great. I use a very light chorus, except for some intros where I crank the blend. The Flashback is either used as a very subtle flashback to further thicken the clean tones, or (by flipping to tape or 2290) as a longer delay for the "big" solo sound. On the HOF I like a spring reverb tone print or (in particularly with the band), the plate reverb setting.
The spark mini is just used to get the level up to solo level without overdriving any other pedal. All other pedals are more or less set to unity gain in order to have all clean and distorted sounds at more or less the same volume. I am currently mostly playing a three pickup telecaster through it. For a Les Paul, I would set the pedals a bit differently.
I am not sure I am 100% satisfied with the AMT. It is fine pedal and I like the cleans, but I'll probably keep searching for a small footprint clean valve pedal. ... "pedalboard playing" is fun although it is definitely distracting ... lately I'm more into practicing my guitar rather than fiddling with sounds. At the end of the day that is more rewarding - as we all know - tone is in the fingers :-)
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10-20-2014 12:25 PM
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My current board is... Boss tuner.. One control blend loop mix pedal... Ehx soul food...ibanez ts9... Boss oc3...digitech chorus factory....tc hall of fame reverb...bbe sonic maximizer. I use the one control to dial in the overall efx sound with the clean sound of the guitar. My efx concept is to make it so you notice them when I turn them off. I am making the tone bigger wider deeper without being louder.
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Question to those who use a wah...
What type of guitar and strings do you use when you use a wah? Do any use a hollow body with flatwound strings and like how it sounds with a wah?
Reason I ask, is I tried my wah with my Eastman AR403 with flatwounds and it didn't sound great. But it does sound great with my semi hollow T386 with roundwound strings. My thinking is it's due to the increased bass response of the hollowbody AR403 and flatwounds.
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When you use a wah on full hollow bodies, if you have a tone control on it, don't roll it off, because you are cutting the range of frequencies wah pedals are using. And probably you may have to modify how you use your amp's EQ settings to compensate for the use of wah.
Originally Posted by hallpass
I use Suhr Modern Satin, Fender Telecaster (solid body) with 0.010 round wounds but I also use an Ephiphone Dot Studio (semi-hollow body) with 0.011 round wounds and Ibanez AF-75(fixed pickups), AF-71F(floating pickup) Full hollow bodies with 0.013 flat wounds on it.
I use a Dunlop 95Q wah pedal, and I have no problems in using it to thick flat wound strung hollow bodies, but I have to adjust the Q-control knob to suit what kind of guitar I'm using--either solid body, semi-hollow, or full hollow body--at the moment. "Q" Control varies the intensity of the wah--according to manufacturer description, but basically its the same thing as a bandpass Q shape control in parametric EQ. In which you can select how wide or how narrow your wah is going to be.
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My pedal box................
The box cost around 11euros from a craft shop - trimmed the front edge to allow access; spray painted the interior and have the plug box & pedals on held down with cable ties on a non-slip mat.
Plan is to get a Ditto Looper and auto-wah & replace the plug board with a dedicated pedal power supply when funds allow.
The box fits into a messanger bag - making everything neat and easy to set-up...............
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My journey over the last 25 years with pedals, like many has been an evolving one. I have accumulated a variety of clean boosts, overdrives, choruses, reverbs and delays. I have an embarrassingly large drawer of boutique pedals, today of which mostly sit idle. My playing style, amp choices and my tastes have simply changed. Today, I am more interested in hearing my archtop and go for a less dark sound.
Today for playing jazz, I use a touch of onboard reverbs on my AI And Evans amps both of which sound adequate to me. My Redplate tube amp has no built in reverb, so I do run a Wet Reverb pedal in the effects loop To add a small amount of ambience. For playing blues, I will sometimes choose to use a boost pedal like RC Booster or one of my many OD pedals in front of my Redplate amp to flavor the EQ or character of the OD when switching between single coil and HB guitars.
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My pedal board, so far:
- many of my amps do not have gain controls or master volumes, so the Blackstone comes in handy once in a while. Or, "How to turn an Ampeg Reverbrocket into a Marshall Stack"
- the Destination Rotation is an old analogue Leslie simulator. which allows me to make the guitar sound as if it's being played through a big Leslie cabinet.
For those of us who have had the pleasure of lugging an 4x12x2 Marshall stack or Leslie 122, the portability is a benefit.Last edited by Hammertone; 02-21-2015 at 11:34 AM.
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My current board :
--> Strat 56 like, Strat John mayer like, and tele blackguard style (all partcasters) with kleins pickups.
1. Tuner (tc electronic nano)
2. Wah-wah
3. Rockett blue note (true transparent OD and very, very dynamic ! no compression at all. Great to use it alone to reach the sweep spot of the amp). Sometimes I use it to boost the Jan Ray for a more tweed-like tone.
4. Jan Ray overdrive clone (A larger gain overdrive pedal that doesn't change the characteristic of the chain. I use it most of time stacked with other overdrives for a boost of volume (and slight gain) to my solo. This pedal has a great reserve of volume.
5. JHS moonshine (my TS-Like). A TS-like with less cut in the bass and a lot of headroom ! Very colorful OD i feel like a secret weapon. Every setting seems to match my deluxe reverb perfectly, like a perfect pair ! I use it like a clean boost that adds a dynamic, warm breakup of the amp. And I use it stacked with the Jan Ray for thick blues tone in a John Mayer vibe. I use it with a volume knob at 3/4 and gain knob at 1/4 max.
You can switch the toggle down and have more gain/violon-like, more compression and sustain some would think a somewhat dumble thing (I can't confirm obviously). But I'm liking so much the headroom that offer this pedal with toggle switch up, that I'm almost always in up-position.
6. Deluxe Memory Man, analogic delay.
--> In a deluxe reverb 65 reissue, channel vibrato.
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Here's my pedal board. I also have an old Vox wah that comes out occasionally and a NUX Modcore for the rare occasion I need some modulation.
A lot of the music I write is quite heavy on reverb and delay so the combination of Strymon Timeline and TC Trinity T2 is perfect. Also with the toneprint feature on the TC I can get a really nice subtle reverb sound.
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Why does every pedal has it's own power supply? Are they all different voltages? If not, wouldn't it be much easier and a lot less weighty to use one power supply and a daisy chain? (That's what I do) Originally Posted by rkwestcoast
My pedal box................
The box cost around 11euros from a craft shop - trimmed the front edge to allow access; spray painted the interior and have the plug box & pedals on held down with cable ties on a non-slip mat.
Plan is to get a Ditto Looper and auto-wah & replace the plug board with a dedicated pedal power supply when funds allow.
The box fits into a messanger bag - making everything neat and easy to set-up...............
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I realized I did not elaborate about how I use my board. I don't use it when I sit in in jazz jam, jazz quartet, trio or the like, then I just use my ES-333 guitar directly into an amp. This board is set up for my jazz/soul/funk/boogaloo quartet, where I use a broader variety of sounds Originally Posted by Little Jay
Here's mine init's current state (why do pedal boards seem to grow always?)
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I mostly use the delay in combination with the volume pedal to do long sustained swell-chords (since my quartet has no keyboard/piano/organ player that works very nice).
For overdriven sounds I use the TS7 Tubesscreamer and the Distortion+ in addition to each other: the TS7 is set for a very slight break up, when I add the Dist+ it screams a little more. The MXR Dyna Comp adds sustain and smooths it out. So I have 3 different OD-tones.
The Small Stone and the Vox Wah are for the funk tunes. The Small Stone is an old one and is very organic (I had to replace the small electrolyte caps inside, since they gave up after 30 years).
The MXR EQ is set up to compensate for the Twin Reverbs mid-scoop, and I switch it on sometimes for clean (jazzy) solos, especially in noisy environments (large stages, noisy bars) to get thru the mix better.
The MXR Chorus is a very nice one. I tried a lot (EH, Boss, Ibanez) but only the MXR adds that rich thick texture that makes a chorus sound good to my ears; the others were too thin or didn't go 'fast' enough with the maximum rate (I use that sound for a Scofield-like fast-rotating speaker sound).
The board is a DIY-plank and I trimmed the edges with an alu L-profile for sturdyness. I cut of the corners because I transport it in a carrying bag from Thomann.de and this prevents the sharp corners to penetrate the bag. Works well!
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Funds don't allow for that at present - but that is part of the plan - it will free up space and drop weight - what daisy chain / power supply do you use? Originally Posted by Little Jay
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No need for a fancy expensive power supply! Just take one of those adapters and a $7.50 daisy-chain and you're done! Three pedals are not going to take more mA than one adapter can deliver. So just loose the other two :-)
I use a Boss adapter for the 9V pedals and sadly the MXR EQ is 18V so I use the adapter that came with the pedal for that.
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I dont have a pedal board but if I did,
Fantasy Pedal Board league:
Everything by Eventide
Boomerang Looper
Mad professor Sweet Honey Overdrive.
Right now though I don't even have an amp :-(
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Thanks Little Jay - will check that out Originally Posted by Little Jay
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I designed and built this last year, it's now in a nice box (enclosure). This was my final design after many months of proto types designs. Smooth boost, fatter tone, with an extremely slight hint of overdrive.
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Can anyone recommend a multi-effects unit for (mostly) acoustic guitar? I'm using a nylon string acoustic electric. I see that most people are using single stomp boxes. Are these multi-effects units that bad?
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T Rex Soulmate Acoustic.
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I used a Boss ME50, then ME70 and now ME80.
The ME80 is a significant improvement because they figured out a way to get twice as many footswitches on it.
It has lots of effects, EQ and amp sims. But, most important, you can save patches.
In "memory mode" each of 4 footswitches picks a different patch.
So I have one clean tone and three processed sounds. Those are my sounds. The effects I use are reverb, harmonizer, solo boost, an amp sim, and a little delay. Not all on the same patch.
Just about everything is controlled with a knob. There is no drilling down into layers of menus. If you need to adjust something on the fly, you can -- hit edit and twirl knobs.
I doubt that it would sound as good as individually selected pedals, but I can get my sounds and it's simple.
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