ShortScale.org

Dirty>Choppy>Wobbly

Polychorus and Supa-Trem have to be on there, then I choose some kind of dirt options (booster, RAT, fuzz).

I have Made by Mike at the begining of my signal chain. Everything else from there is window dressing.

I like using alot of pedals it's like using different colors of paint, when I hear about just using overdrives and distortions
I think wow your using the colors white and black to make varying shades of grey when you could use modulation and delays as well
as reverbs and make an awesome rainbow of sound!

I've gone through just about every phase of pedalboards....it used to be an obsession as I'm sure it is for many people here still.

Now my pedalboard is a Korg pitchblack tuner, and a DOD Yngwie Malmsteen YJ308 (just a vintage 250 overdrive clone). That and an amp with built in spring reverb/tremolo and I'm all set.

I haven't felt the need for anything more than that in quite some time. If I need fancier sounds than that I'll play a keyboard instead of a guitar.

I started with a TU-2 for playing acoustic. I bought my Marshall JTM30and my Boss Bf-2 Flanger for my first electric guitar. I started moving from Acoustic to electric and picking more pedals. I started with BOSS pedals and eventually got the Small Clone Chorus from EHX. I really started loving the craziness of the old school analog pedals and prefer that to the modeling pedals, though I love the versatility of my Line 6 DL-4. I saw some of Mike's demos and got 3 MBM pedals. Eventually, I wanted to be able to keep my pedals organized and mobile in my small Office space. I did lots of research and I built my own pedalboard from a Calzone Mixer case. It was great, but I fell in love with the simplicity of the Pedaltrain design and the ability to hide cables and power plants under the pedalboard. I loaded the Pedaltrain pro all the way up and recently sold some EHX pedals I was not using. I think pedalboards are a constantly evolving thing as we learn more about pedals, try new things, get rid of things we don't need anymore, or simply just getting back to basics. Here are some of my recent pedalboard changes.:
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Fully Loaded Pedaltrain

Current Pedalboard


I am currently considering a MBM Muff (Rams head or IC).

Started off with a Boss Blues Driver and then worked my way up to a TU-2 and a Boss DD-5 when I managed to get them both for around £45

Then went and bought a RAT because the singer in the band I was in at the time used two and I thought they sounded immense.

I then bought a cheap pedal board and started to gradually assemble a few other things... Tremolo, Reverb and also my Memory Man w/Hazarai

I started getting massively into ambient and post-rock music and joined a new band. Something I felt my tastes were more suited to and then my board had consisted of the following pretty much ever since -

2/3 Delays
Reverb
Distortion/Fuzz
OD
Tremolo
Volume Pedal

Never been all that bothered about modulated effects. The only other effect I would like is some kind of Pitch Shifter, purely for shits and giggles and so I can pretend I'm Jonny Greenwood.

I've been from nothing to silly amounts of pedals and back again.

I pretty much only need Clean and Overdriven sounds to do what I do (badly played cloggy indie rock stylings), but it's nice to have a Trem and a Delay on there for more interesting sounds so generally I have those two pedals (Saltshaker and Echo Base). If I'm playing with my amp (Marshall 6100), then that's supplying the dirt so I just have a Korg DT-10 on there and we're done. If I'm borrowing an amp such as Stewart's Fender at the Shortscale gig, then I through my Dual Drive pedal on there. (OCD -> DLS) which is what I also use at home with my Champ.

I never planned ahead when I was really into pedals, just bought what took my fancy when it took my fancy and I had the money. Now I'm way more of a skinflint about it, I'm pretty good at talking myself out of stuff these days. Sometimes.

About as crazy as it got:


It calmed down and then got crazy again:

Cody_Pole wrote:I like using alot of pedals it's like using different colors of paint, when I hear about just using overdrives and distortions
I think wow your using the colors white and black to make varying shades of grey when you could use modulation and delays as well
as reverbs and make an awesome rainbow of sound!

It completely depends on personal taste, i happen to find modulation lame as fuck in most applications and delay just gets in the way of what i'm playing 98% of the time. If your playing style doesn't lend itself to those kind of effects there's no point.

I used to like to have a load of dirt pedals as I like to have a variation in sounds, now I just can't be arsed carrying a massive board around. Generally when I gig I don't use my own amp so I need to rely on bringing my own dirt pedals to get a sound I like.

stewart wrote:

Cody_Pole wrote:I like using alot of pedals it's like using different colors of paint, when I hear about just using overdrives and distortions
I think wow your using the colors white and black to make varying shades of grey when you could use modulation and delays as well
as reverbs and make an awesome rainbow of sound!

It completely depends on personal taste, i happen to find modulation lame as fuck in most applications and delay just gets in the way of what i'm playing 98% of the time. If your playing style doesn't lend itself to those kind of effects there's no point.

Agree. I find modulation tends to make everything sound naff, but that's just my personal point of view. Loads of people love that shit...

I'd say I'm massively influenced by ambient/post-rock styles so I always have a use for Delays and Reverb. That's not to say I drape every song we play witn those effects. If you're hearing the same sounds in every song you play then it just gets boring. I do find myself relying on Reverb more and more though... just makes everything sound a little less harsh.

stewart wrote:

Cody_Pole wrote:I like using alot of pedals it's like using different colors of paint, when I hear about just using overdrives and distortions
I think wow your using the colors white and black to make varying shades of grey when you could use modulation and delays as well
as reverbs and make an awesome rainbow of sound!

It completely depends on personal taste, i happen to find modulation lame as fuck in most applications and delay just gets in the way of what i'm playing 98% of the time. If your playing style doesn't lend itself to those kind of effects there's no point.

Bang on, I'm really not a fan of any effect with an audible "sweep", unless it's subtle; SWOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH phasing doesn't do anything for a song other than make it sound like you're cycling through Zoom 505 presets.

I like to use a Phaser on the Quiet Parts

Swirly phase sounds on clean parts sound awesome but with drive they just sound a bit too OTT for me, although I recently heard some clips of a Phase 45 with drive and they sounded really good because the phase was a lot more subtle than other phasers i've heard. I like a bit of Flange too (no dirty jokes please) but i'm not keen on the loud airplane type flange sounds, I much prefer to use it in a Robert Smith/The Cure or John McGeogh/Magazine/Siouxsie & The Banshees way to add texture or ambience to parts but not to overpower them.

I think my thing with alot of pedals was always overcoming the fact that I was more of a singer than a guitar player so I lied to have alot of different guitar tones to at least add that level of variation in sound and texture becuase I was never going to take off on any leads. We went through enough guitar players that I probably did as many shows as a 3 piece without a lead guitar player at all as I did with a lead player.

I use the same thoughts when I play acoustic. I use a vocal pedal (TC Elec Harmony g) to add some BG vocals (very limited though), and I use a chorus pedal and a light OD pedal with my acoustic. I just like to have some variation since if I am playing and singing somewhere for 2-3 hours and am not a lead player, I need some variation outside of just setlist type stuff.

Thanks for all your replies, some interest boards and methods.

spent a little of yesterday going through my pedals, working out what would work/sound good with the dual terror. i've opted to try a basic board tonight of a saltbooster, tuner and amp switch and see how it goes from there. got my TS9 in my bag just in case, though to be honest the TT does seem to gel that well with it. thinking that a mid heavy amp doesn't like mid heavy pedals?

endsjustifymeans wrote:I just got a giant fucking board and have everything I own in one line with absolutely no rhyme or reason.

This looks awesome. Needs moar Shivas, though.

Progrockabuse wrote:got my TS9 in my bag just in case, though to be honest the TT does seem to gel that well with it. thinking that a mid heavy amp doesn't like mid heavy pedals?

I always found that my Orange amps just didn't take dirt pedals well at all.
But that didn't really matter as the amp drive was just blissful.

I like using two amps so just having dirt pedals I'd at least have to have my pn-2 and rv-7 so I could run things in stereo

Doog wrote:

stewart wrote:

Cody_Pole wrote:I like using alot of pedals it's like using different colors of paint, when I hear about just using overdrives and distortions
I think wow your using the colors white and black to make varying shades of grey when you could use modulation and delays as well
as reverbs and make an awesome rainbow of sound!

It completely depends on personal taste, i happen to find modulation lame as fuck in most applications and delay just gets in the way of what i'm playing 98% of the time. If your playing style doesn't lend itself to those kind of effects there's no point.

Bang on, I'm really not a fan of any effect with an audible "sweep", unless it's subtle; SWOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH phasing doesn't do anything for a song other than make it sound like you're cycling through Zoom 505 presets.

I really love chorus but really hate the oscillating. I'd love a nice thick chorus without the oscillating, if that's possible. Or a chorus pedal with a freeze switch or something.