ConcreteBadger.net

I must confess that I’m a guitar gear junkie. I’m a victim of that continual search for ‘your sound’ which drives so many musicians to distraction; even when I think I’ve found the setup I’m looking for my personal tastes have changed and another trawl through numerous music stores follows. At the end of 2009 the array of boxes sitting in front of my amp looks something like this:

This doesn’t include my Boss flanger and Electro-Harmonix Small Stone phase shifter, because I rarely use them. The pedals above (yes, all seven of them) get pretty regular use. I believe there’s also a condition known as Pedalboard Envy, which is brought on by the epic rigs from the likes of Mono’s ‘Taka’ Goto; seriously, what the hell?! Anyway, I have settled on a setup of distortion boxes in the mix which do the trick for me…for the time being at least.

The amp I’m using at the moment, a Marshall DSL 401, isn’t all that great and the only thing I really like about it (apart from the D.I. out socket) is the clean channel! I have the distortion boxes connected up with the Blues Driver first in line, followed by the Rat and finally the Big Muff, which then goes into the spatial-type effects. I settled on this order because the Boss is great as a level boost to drive pedals further down the effects chain, while the Rat is less suited and as for the Big Muff…you’d be hard-pushed to find a useable sound when combining it with anything!

Boss BD-2 Blues Driver

The BD has a relatively mellow and valve-like sound, allegedly based on the sound of an old-style valve amp being overdriven. It doesn’t have the sustain I need for lead work but for mild distortion, especially when playing rhythm, it has a great gritty sound that lets the guitar’s own tone shine through. I actually picked this up when in Japan on holiday because Boss gear is slightly cheaper there than in the UK; I tried it out on a Les Paul standard and this is where it’s in its comfort zone: it goes well with power chords and bluesy riffs played on a guitar with double-coiled humbucker pickups.

What the Blues Driver lacks in gain and sustain (which makes it unsuitable for heavier stuff) it makes up for in volume. It’s a pretty loud pedal so if you’re after a box that can push a valve amp while only subtly changing the tone, it’s perfect. I often use it to colour the sound before running it through the other pedals in my rig, not to mention giving the amp more gain to work with.

Pro-Co Rat 2

I’ve had this one for a while and love it. It has its little quirks – such as the filter control working in the opposite direction to the tone controls of the other two, meaning you lose top end as you turn it clockwise, and the taper of the pots meaning you have to tweak it gently to dial in the sound you want – but otherwise it’s really easy to use. It has a very unique sound – warm, thick and grungey (e.g. the chorus to Nirnana’s Heart Shaped Box) that’s neither fuzz nor the crunch you get from amp.

With the gain at 0 and the volume full up it’s totally distortion-free and at doesn’t give any volume change at all. There’s a lot of gain on tap though – it goes from mild bluesy grit to insane levels of fuzz. I’ve actually managed to coax feedback from this pedal at bedroom levels so suffice to say it has all the distortion most players will need. The filter control is very sensitive too: it goes from raspy fuzz, through wall-of-sound overdrive to dark sludge. The build quality’s superb too; I can see it lasting me years.

Big Muff USA Reissue

This is it: the classic, unmistakable fuzz tone of Pink Floyd and the fat rhythm chords or the Smashing Pumpkins…the legendary (not to mention amusingly-titled) Big Muff. I have to say I had the tone of Dave Gilmour and Billy Corgan clearly in mind when I bought this so nailing the sound of Cherub Rock and Time right out of the box made up for its limitations. The sound is so distinctive and so un-transparent it’s far from verstatile: unless you intend otherwise you really have to use it through a clean amp, or an amp on the edge of distorting, because it descends into a murky sludge of fuzz that buries the character of your instrument completely and feeds back like mad if you’re not careful with gain levels and unshielded cables.

It’s not passive bypass either, so when this pedal is in your effects chain you’ll notice a slight loss of top end to your sound. At the end of the day though, it’s the old-school classic fuzz tone fans know and love, in one neat box that has an impressive battery life. With a bit of careful tweaking I’ve managed to run my guitar through the Rat or Blues Driver with the volume high and gain low and still get a useable sound out of the Big Muff when its sustain control is backed off. In this configuration I get not only the classic fuzz which sustains forever, but more tonal variation that makes palm-muted chords sound okay. It’s a one-trick pony really, but I love the sound of it anyway.

If my amp was a little more suited to my current tastes I’d probably crank up the gain on that but for the range of stuff I play these days – from blues and classic rock to heavier 90s alternative and more recently ambient post-rock too – I need a wider range of tones and ways of throwing up a wall of sound easily, plus being able to experiment a bit. I still prefer individual pedals over the all-in-one modelling multi-effect units because there are little quirks with the ways the individual boxes interact. Good quality cables are a must though – I’ve found feedback (of the bad variety) and background noise to be a problem live, which I would never noticed when practicing at home.

Is this the end of it? Hell no. Every now and then I spot something that sounds interesting, such as the reissue of the notorious Fender Blender. I must say I’m tempted…