My pedalboard is (almost) complete
Lately I’ve had a bit of spare time (and, thanks to some overtime at work, a bit of spare cash for a change) which gave a good opportunity to get my guitar rig updated. I haven’t given up on the guitar restoration project and I’m still looking around for a new amp but if nothing else I don’t think my effects pedal collection is going to grow much more than this. At least, I hope not.
Click on pic for larger version
I’ve covered the distortion pedals already and I’m pretty happy with what I have at the moment. I’m either going to change the switch on the Big Muff to a true bypass (it sucks out some of the treble out of my sound, which is annoying) or swap it for a Fender Blender reissue or a Danelectro Fabtone for the more chaotic fuzz moments. As for the rest…it’s about right for me now.
I shopped around for ages looking for an affordable and compact 9V power supply. They tend to be very bulky or expensive, and there’s also the risk of ground loops and other unwanted background noise. The Diago Powerstation is not only small (around the same size as the transformer for a laptop) but relatively affordable, noise-free and offers a variety of different plug types as optional extras. Not all pedals have the Boss-type socket and some eat batteries for breakfast so it’s a neat solution.
The board itself isn’t the most rugged and high quality around but again it wasn’t too pricey and it does at least store everything in one place. Getting the velcro to stick onto the pedals was a pain though, and turned out to be stronger than any glue I use with it! In the end I settled on superglue for sticking the velcro on and when the time comes to (re)move the pedals I’ll have to use a blunt knife blade to pry the velcro off the lining of the board.
After all these years I still have that second-hand Boss chorus that I got off a friend at university but I find the sound to have a foggy, metallic tang to it. At some point I’ll replace it with a tremolo or some other chorus/vibrato unit but I’m still undecided. The pitch shifter/harmoniser is another one I don’t use all that often but I do like the octave up and down settings. With the detune function I can get a chorus-like sound of sorts.
The digital delay is another one I’ve had for quite a few years but I really need an external tap switch to set the tempo; converting the delays from milliseconds to BPM using the rate knob had me literally getting a pen, paper and calculator out; hardly practical when playing live and working to whatever tempo the rest of the band are following, so an external tempo control would help me get the best out of it.
Right from when I first started playing guitar I’ve been a huge fan of reverb-type effects so I guess it’s no surprise that I’ve wound up with more than one reverb pedal. The Holy Grail + has a Spring reverb setting that’s miles better than my amp’s and the Hall setting is fantastic. The Room setting on the other hand isn’t something I use very often and the Flerb is just…odd. The mix control is a brilliant idea though – I can have the effect on pretty much permanently and blend it in to suit whatever I’m playing at the time.
The RV-3 is a recent buy and is proof of how lethal Ebay can be for this sort of thing. They’re discontinued now sadly, which is a shame because the delay effect is the typical crisp, precise digital sound that the Boss pedals excel at and the combined delay/reverb settings are great. The reverbs on their own aren’t quite as warm as the HG+’s but using two delay effects at the same time with reverb on top of that gives some interesting ambient sounds when you’ve tweaked the delay times right.
It’s all connected up with the standard 6″ patch cables and Planet Waves 10′ cables to connect the pedals to the guitar and amp, which seems to eliminate most of the hum I used to get. Blending more than one distortion tone sounds great but when I used cheap unshielded cables I got unwanted noise and the sound quality wasn’t impressive either. Since I like my wall of sound and want to do home recording, noise was becoming more of an issue for me.
With the recording thing in mind I really want a new amp that sounds good at lower volume. I’ve been recommended all sorts of things from lower-powered Blackface Fenders (given time and living room space I’d buy a Twin Reverb in a heartbeat, although the loudness is way above what I would need right now) to the Orange Tiny Terror but at the moment the HT-5, a five watt model made by Blackstar, is looking like my best bet.
The 40 watt Marshall combo I’ve been using doesn’t suit my playing style any more and if you want the best out of a valve amp at a volume that won’t upset the neighbours you really need a lower-powered one. *sigh* Fortunately I think I’ll be able to sell my flanger pedal since I don’t really use it any more, which ought to offset how much the RV-3 cost me.
