Mid-Teenage pedal crisis

[Thom]

Anybody sized down their pedalboard and not regretted it?

Totally. I went from this:


To this:


Best thing I ever did.

[Haze]

To be fair, Thom, thats about the best board of all time

[Thom]

Cheers mate, I haven't wanted to change it since I put it together.

[cobascis]

Are you using a 1 spot to power them?

[Thom]

Are you using a 1 spot to power them?

It's a Diago Powerstation.

[Progrockabuse]

Are you using a 1 spot to power them?

It's a Diago Powerstation.

where do you get those diago clones from? heard someone mention them before.

[chisa]

when i was 15 i had a boss od2 and nothing else.

[Progrockabuse]

think my first pedal was a boss CE-5, hoping i might channel alex lifeson into me mits.

[Mustang Melx]

some of my opinions on pedals...

the whole point of a pedal board to me is to have a group of pedals for a very specific application, like playing a certain set of songs with your band. I mainly make music and record stuff at home so I don't have a pedal board. I have no permanent signal chain of any kind. the idea of having a pedal board where you are just stringing together every pedal you own into a giant mess of shit just makes no sense to me. I'm constantly switching the order of pedals and I generally go by the philosophy that more pedals just equals more stuff between the guitar signal and the amp, either adding noise or rolling off brightness, so you should try to keep it down to as few pedals as possible. if you can find a way to do without a certain pedal it should not be in your chain. you don't have to sell it necessarily but just toss it aside for another day. there's plenty of effects that come or go out of my rotation. effects like tremolo, chorus and phasers have very specific uses and naturally aren't going to be used as much as stuff like distortion and reverb. even delay and fuzz are relatively limited in their use.

the other thing for me with pedals is, there may be little minor differences here and there between different pedals but it's all subjective. I like to to search for oddball cheapo brands. I've scored some great pedals for $10 -$15 on eBay just because they're brands no one's heard of. they may sound minorly different to more expensive variants but that's fine, it gets you 95% there without straight ripping off some else's tone. maybe my pedal doesn't have that exact chip or resistor value, oh well, I guess that just makes me sound more unique.

the one glaring hole that I can see in your pedal collection here is the lack of an overdrive pedal of some sort. to me that's one of the most useful pedals you can possibly have. people will make different suggestions here but you might want to consider something like a Boss SD-1 or one of the other boss overdrive pedals. and there's the old standard tubescreamer and the variants. it's worth trying out. there's a reason why it's so commonly used. get ye a TS7 or TS5.

I agree with a lot of this.. and In some ways I'm similar... I don't have a pedal board or a permanent chain, I basically sold all my pedals and now I use my amps dirt (3 channels clean, drive 1, drive 2) a tuner, a boost, a fuzz, maybe a wah and that's it. I have a couple of dirt cheap multi-effects rack units (an old zoom and behringer) that I picked up on ebay for around £20 for those times when I'm recording something and 'fancy a bit of phaser' or whatever. Looking for oddballs on ebay is a great way to pick up some excellent stuff to, my mate does a great blog on such things... http://effectextra.blogspot.com/ old guyatones seem to be very cheap and excellent.

[Rayjaysonic]

Thom, whats the black pedal third from right with the white knobs??

[cobascis]

Are you using a 1 spot to power them?

It's a Diago Powerstation.

Oh, I see it now.

[cobascis]

Some awesome advice in this thread, thanks!

Band practice tomorrow and I'll really try to get some good sounds out of them, get rid of the rest.

[Thom]

where do you get those diago clones from? heard someone mention them before.

Haha - it's from Johnny Shredfreak - LANK.

Thom, whats the black pedal third from right with the white knobs??

That's "Lamp's Crunchy Distortion" It's a Made by Mike Crunch Box clone. He did a demo of it, it's on the Shortscale youtube page.

[cobascis]

I'm going through with the reduction..

I wasn't really happy with my FX tone throughout practice. The SP Aenima is cool, but it is to sqealy and hard to adjust for my tastes. I've already had a craigslist bite for it. There is an Dwarfcraft Eau Claire thunder on offset which I'm looking at.

Any of you guys have an eau claire, I think rob has one. From what I've seen it seems versatile from tame to rawr.

[Progrockabuse]

I find that sometimes, the effects sounds I try out at home don't work so well at band practise.

[Thom]

Totally the same for me. I often find myself eally cranking the treble on everything at home to make it sound crisp and biting only to find it really harsh and far too much top end when I get to practice and play at a decent volume.

[Josh]

eh, downsizing is cool.
all i use really is fuzz, and some kind of modulation for my band and whatnot.

[Skip]

and man be careful- everyone gets a new pedal and goes on harmony and writes about how it is the best pedal on the planet- two weeks later he will be selling it

[Haze]

Crxsh lol
I'm pretty sure everyonegoes through that honeymoon phase with new gear. I'm sure your mind won't let you realize it's not as great as you think it is because you are trying to justify the price. What really matters is how it makes you feel long term. The Hardwire Reverb I've had since it's release has blown me away every time I step on the thing. Even if I do "downsize" that pedal won't be leaving. I doubt I'd ever part with it. It's a constant hunt to find a pedal like that for every category. Overdrive, delays, etc.
Find the ones that suit your sound and needs and don't worry about size! A wise lesson!!!

[Pens]

I sold all my gear and started buying up about 18 months ago. I started by replacing my RAT with an older one. It was a world of difference as far as I was concerned. I was already familiar with the pedal. Trick with the RAT is to not turn the distortion knob all the way up. Use your filter and tone knob on your guitar carefully. And now days, I mostly use it as a boost anyway. I picked up a Vexter BOR a couple years prior so I took the plunge on a hand painted one. Again, given that I was a little familiar, and HP ones are identical to the Vexters, I was pretty happy to keep on purchasing. Next came the two 'left field' pedals. AD900 was bought off a friend and replaced what was first a DD-3 then OceanFX Vintage Echo (two built in one). First time I stepped foot in true 'vintage' land. And holy crap. I loved what it did to my tone, it isn't transparent by any means and the UFO sounds are FAT. I tried a lot of analog delays since then (Big box Memory Man, DM-2/3, Memory Boy, etc) and nothing comes 'thumpingly' close.

I don't use my RAT as much anymore (playing a lot of melodic stuff lately) and if I do it's as a boost due to the SHO being on all the time. Makes me sound like I have AlNiCo speakers. Bit more depth and less bite. Anyway I've never used settings off the internerds and since buying the vintage RAT (this was before the RAT craze I've noticed on a lot of the forums) I just gave up listening to people. I was being told to get OCDs, Timmys, BYOCs, etc etc........

And just so everyone is clear. World of difference between vintage RAT and newer reissues. Sound wise maybe similar but the way the knobs work, etc makes the vintage ones more appealing to me for adjusting on the fly as well as more 'sweet spots' than my RI one (I ab'd them for 6 months before selling, my RI was an early one too).