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I’ve always been a plug and play kind of person. I tried to get technology like the AxeFX 2 and 3, but it was all way too much. Got rid of it.
In the course of several years, I have accumulated a bunch of pedals (I’ll make a list later on and add to this post), either incidentally or buying out someone’s gear for a cheap price. For example, I basically have a Hendrix pedal chain which I have never used.
What’s a good recourse on pedalboard 101? How to set up, how to use, types of chains how to configure. How each pedal relates to others, etc.
Thanks Basically a PEDAL BOARD for Dummies.
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06-16-2023 12:23 PM
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There are a bunch of things out there on the web about configuring pedalboards. Of course with jazz guitar, which is generally ‘clean’ (vs, say, the distortion so present in rock music), it will be different than in other areas. Ultimately there is only one universal guide on this:
Experiment. Let your ears guide you.
Here’s why. There are many instances where compression sounds better at the beginning of the signal chain. But if you have a pedal (say, an envelope filter) that is activated by touch, a compressor before it might make it useless! But you might want the touch wah to put the wah on your phased output, which as a modulation pedal would usually be found after the compressors and distortions.
It could change on a song-by-song basis. It could change within a song! Who knows? Only your ears (or those of your bandmates, producer, audience) will know.
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Here’s a pic of all my pedals
Empress Para EQ
Plus pedal
full tone wah
fulltone deja vibe
fulltine AbY HT
tube MP preamp
Venue DI
Beringer Shark FBQ 100
fulltomr 70 fuzz
Cusack More Louder
MXR Duke of tone
B9 organ machine
Lehle amp switcher
empress phaser
Fishman aura spectrum
Nova reverb
Roxi Grace preamp
Ventris reverb
nemesis delay
I have to figure out what to do with us, and how to do it lol
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That’s quite a collection for someone who is not a pedal guy
As a rule of thumb, the wah goes before the overdrive, then modulation, then delay, then reverb. A preamp and EQ may go before or after the drive.
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Agree, that is it. Unless recording or unique live situations, you can probably get by without noise gates, buffers and loops and AB boxes.
Originally Posted by docsteve
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1"x8" pine boards cut to a preferred length and some quality velcro or dual lock would allow for plenty experimentation for relatively cheap for home playing. Maybe not the way if you need a gig rig unless you keep it cut down to a few pedals and can protect them in transport.
Having owned some of the pedals on your list and having owned similar stuff to others on your list I personally found the more I subtracted pedals the better my tone got leaving me nowhere to go but up my guitar chops game. I been lately using one real good OD pedal as a boost and that's it. I velcroed it to the top of my amp, lol. I tend to favor simple rigs for repeated gigs. Any decent OD could get it done to be honest. I would rather socialize than play with toys but that's me.
If you were thinking of wiring a board complete with everything you have all at once that will be pricey and anytime one of your short cables is crapping out it won't be fun finding the problem especially if money is the on line. I would build a few smaller boards with a complimentary selection of your pedals on each one. You have some real nice boxes there that you could def do that with.
You could go all out and start running stuff in stereo, I have done that on smaller 5-6 pedal boards but didn't find even going stereo into a dual amp setup all that amazing unless you run effects that create panning effects and the like. it just sounded like two Twin reverbs to me mostly.
Hopefully this was helpful. Regardless of what you do have fun with it.
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Thanks for the responses! I forgot one very important preamp pedal. The AudioSprockets ToneDexter
NOT pictured: the James May AudioSprockets ToneDexter
Actually the ToneDexter would be GREAT to use with Roxi Grace preamp, for purely acoustic instruments. The ToneDexter would create a great “mic” like sound for the acoustic contact pickup. AND the RoxiGrace preamp would be a great pre-amp for an accrual microphone. So, you could conceivably get two sounds at once, possibly in stereo, for an acoustic guitar, one modifying the pickup to give it a mic sound, and one modifying the mic to allow you add EQ and also other pedals.
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The pedal order plans are based on the assumption that you want the effect of each pedal to be expressed as normally intended without being "messed up" by the other effects... so the whole order plan is ultimately based on evaluations of the order of pairs of effects. The basis of the pedal order plan is those evaluations have been done and there is a "best practices" popular result.
However, many of the greatest iconic guitar sounds have come from not meeting the above assumption, especially in the earlier periods (guitarists of Iron Butterfly and early Genesis, e.g.).
First order of business might be to make a list of the kinds of sounds you want to make, best specified as a list of youtube videos of songs where the guitars are making the sounds you want to play. Some of those sounds very well might not be from using the usual and customary pedal order plan - people here that recognize those sounds perhaps would be able to point you toward the "wrong" pedal order that makes those sounds.
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I know this isn't what the OP is asking for, but I will throw it in the mix in case folks reading this thread decide this particular route might carry some weight.
I have had piles o' pedals on a board and then the all-in-one with the endless menu diving to set up a couple of effects. Recently, I switched from a Boss/Roland GT-1000Core to a Carl Martin Acoustic Gig:
Acoustic GiG | carl
This is but one example of many similar products that are available these days. Another good one is by T-Rex:
? T-REX EFFECTS ? Pedals for guitar and bass players!
There are others too, but I think you get the idea. The order of the effects is fixed and, at least among the products I have actually been able to try, they all seem to sound decent. The difference one would look for is which effects a particular board has, and choose the one that has what you need and leaves off what you would rather get separately.
As an example, the Acoustic Gig doesn't have a chorus effect, but it does provide an effects loop (i.e. typical return/send). I bought a Boss Waza CE-2W, which is the actual analog recreation of their earlier CE-1 and CE-2 chorus pedals rather than a digital simulation that is supposed to somehow sound just like the original. I much prefer that particular chorus pedal to anything I have heard in one of these multi-effect products. The Acoustic Gig also does not include a looper. I didn't want that in the product because I have an EHX 95000, which has 6 tracks per loop and does it all on microSD cards instead of internal storage that can hold over 12 hours of your recordings. Most of the loopers included in similar multi-effect products are very basic with very little recording time.
The Acoustic Gig has the effects I would want in such a product (compressor, reverb, 3 band parametric EQ, clean boost, echo), so that was the right choice for me, while somebody else might do better with the T-Rex or one of the other similar products.
Note that I use my looper for recording my practice and/or recording a chord progression to practice with. There seems to be a lot of advice regarding practice that says it really helps to record your practice. I find a looper a lot easier to do that with than having to mess with a typical recorder. Also, by having removable microSD cards as the recording media, I can save practices to go back and listen to months later to determine whether I am heading in the right direction. Also, there is no menu diving. That is probably a weird use of a looper to many people, but it really works well for me - easy and quick.
What I like about these products is that, like individual pedals, these don't require menu diving. You just twist knobs to get the sounds you are looking for. Also, these things are usually smaller and lighter than the equivalent in the pedals the represent, and you don't have interconnecting cables to hassle with.
Most of the companies that make these acoustic rigs, also make them for rockers with distortion and whatever else is needed to make big noise.
The acoustic versions of these products are clean and more subtle than their rocker equivalents.
I hope this is useful to somebody here.
Tony
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If You are thinking about the technical side of the pedalboard, a Finnish pedalboard company Custom Boards has compiled a lot of information in their site:
https://en.customboards.fi/pages/the...own-pedalboard
Their founder, Kimmo Aroluoma has been a guitar tech for the many main bands in Finland and Custom Boards makes the boards for the top guitarists here. He is a nice guy and shares his vast knowledge and experience even for us who like to make our own boards.
The other side of the making the pedal board, the artistic side, is in Your possession. Go and experience!
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Great resource - thanks! Originally Posted by Herbie
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(If you ever get board try and search for the perfect fuzz pedal. There are probably more fuzz pedals floating around then TS clones).
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He's got a Fulltone '70 which is an extremely good fuzz box. It will be an expensive search to find something better. Originally Posted by st.bede
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I was making a joke. Fulltone stuff is good. Originally Posted by DawgBone
There are zillion little adaptations of the basic fuzz designs. Like most pedals you can find one that works better when using x, while doing y.
Smallsound Bigsound has some interesting designs, and Basic Audio has some great stuff.
What is really funny is that a Rat pedal is also a fuzz. I am super lucky that I bought an Alpha Dog when VFE was making them. The “clean” blend can really make it more useful for jazz type stuff. I am also lucky that I bought a Analogman fuzz. I could sell mine and buy a bunch of new pedals, but then I would not have it anymore. … NKT275 … how and why these things happen is beyond me.
I always wanted to pick up the Pharaoh Supreme by Black Arts Toneworks.
Fuzz is endless.
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thanks again for all these responses. One thing I am definitely gong to do is implement two very unique pedals for fully acoustic guitars with piezo type of pickups (I have 2, a Brahms 8 string classical with an UltraTonic pickup and the Solomon acoustic archtop with a Barbera transducer)
Note that the top channel of the Buscarino Chameleon powered amp and cab has two inputs, one for the mic and one for the instrument cable. Thus, I can use, simultaneously,two separate really interesting preamp pedals, one in the Mic input and one in the instrument input: the ToneDexter pedal and the RoxiGrace preamp pedal . The ToneDexter is like adding impulse responses to shape the internal pickup (e.g, the Barbera transducer or the UltraTonic pickup) to really snape and countour the sound. . The ToneDexter pedal would go in the instrument channel, and the RoxiGrace Petal, which works in conjunction with a proper microphone, would be used in the Mic input. The RoxiGrace pedal can act as an EQ to the Mic, shaping the mids, highs, lows, basically at every frequency. You can also add any kind of pedal to the RoxiGrace, creating a pedal chain for the microphone.
I really have found the Holy Grail of amps. Thank you, John Buscarino!
The ToneDexter was developed by James May, who lives in Grass Valley, CA. Mr. May also worked as a consultant with Mr. Buscarino in the development of the Chameleon powered amp and cab.
I will post a video of the great acoustic steel string guitarist, Molly Tuttle, demonstrating how to use the ToneDexter.
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