Thursday, May 9

Presenting the slimmer, sleeker pedal board:


I know, somehow it's less colorful than it has been in the past. So that's kinda sad.

What you're looking at is the result of the last year of deciding exactly what I needed and what I didn't, then trying to find the best of each thing that I could. Notable is that I only have one delay pedal (for now), the newly acquired DD-20, after finally losing patience with the awkwardness of the DL4. I still really like the way that the DL4 sounds, but I've been using my DD-7 on my leading board and have realized just how little I need dual-delays to get the big delay sound that I use most often, and, well, the DD-20 just does more for less space, and has an extra preset. The thing I will miss is that it's missing an expression knob/pedal, which the DL4 had, but I wasn't overly pleased with how the DL4 worked with the expression pedal. If I get a legit analog delay, I will probably be set. Also, no POG. Again, I really liked the POG 2, but if I'm being completely honest, I never used it. And that thing was a beast in terms of real estate, so it got the axe.

I put an expression knob on my Tap-a-Whirl which is something I saw James Duke do and thought it was a great idea. Just cannibalized it from the expression pedal that I was using on the gone-but-not-forgotten DL4. And my drive section is what it is. I was kind of surprised that my favorite drive pedals didn't make it on there, those being the Signa Drive and the Morning Glory. I love both of those, but each of these pedals just add more "weight" to the signal when they're on, and I thought that was probably the most important thing for a drive pedal to do, at least from this board. If I had room for one more drive pedal, it would be the Fulltone Fatboost because I love what that does to push other drive pedals, but I couldn't find a non-awkward way to get it on there. The Timmy has a new chip in it, too; I couldn't quite get behind the one that was in there, so this guy told me to try swapping it out since it's got a chip socket instead of just a soldered chip, and I did, and it kind of blew me away. The actual chip cost me $1.04 with tax from a local electronics shop, and is a version of an LM1458 (I think...). Which seems like I should know exactly what it is, but I don't feel like opening it up to check. But it took me exactly 30 seconds to mod, and man, that guy rocks now. I used to find it a little harsh, now it's smoother. And weight.

Anyway, the current chain (for the pedal nerds like me out there) is:

Guitar -> JHS Little Black Buffer -> MXR Dynacomp -> Vox Wah -> Gravity Drive (a.k.a. Bluesbreaker clone) -> Fulldrive 2 (non-MOSFET for extra street cred...also it sounds pretty awesome) -> Timmy with new chip -> Ernie Ball volume pedal -> Boss DD-20 (with tap tempo) -> Cusack Tap-A-Whirl -> Boss Tu-2 -> Boss RV-5 -> BBE Sonic Stomp -> Amp


...but it will probably change next week.