yo pedal fiends - how long will a minimal board satisfy you?

[Zounds Perspex]

I ask because despite having 2 fair-sized boards these days,
I'm enjoying playing with just a Doomidrive and my Tonebender/wah combo pedal more than with either pedalboard.
am I nuts to think of selling off to buy more guitars (or something non-gear-related)? how long do you hold on to an unused pedal before you sell it?
is assembling a big colorful dumb shiny board more fun than actually using one?

[sylnau]

I don't keep the pedals that I don't use. I have 10 pedals at the moment... 11 soon.
When one of them dosen't get much attention it's for sale.

I'm not a collector.

[devnulljp]

I keep trying to do a single fuzz + treble booster only board.
One day I'll resit the urge to add to it.

[CBA]

Nothing feels better than getting rid of stuff. I'm not only talking pedals, but like everything. I go through my closet DAILY (totally serious) and love to pick out stuff that I've kept around for no good reason. I'm sure there are some who would disagree that it heightens your sense of creativity, but that's what it does for me. I've been a member of ILF for about a year and a half, maybe two, and I've gone through like 50 pedals since I joined... and I only own about 10 now, and some of those are rarely used. Guitars... yep, out the door with you.

I started my ILF jaunt using just guitar > RAT > amp. Two years and 50 pedals later, my favourite setup is guitar > RAT > amp.

C

[D.o.S.]

Depends on how often I'm doing the full band thing, versus being a solo tweaker. It's way easier to have no pedals when you have to worry about things like the other dude's key, or the drummer's tempo.

[hbombgraphics]

I love my giant boards, and I have trouble selling anything ever.

I do like assembling the boards almost as much as playing them,

Right now I am really loving the combination of a rams head clone and an Ibanez DL-10 they are pretty much getting use daily on my small board which is still 7 pedals and I only pull the big boards out on the weekend when I have time to have my stuff everywhere, part of it is just the logistics of sharing space with the family.

You are not nuts, I once realized I had a D-28 worth of pedals sitting under my sons train table and almost pulled the trigger, maybe someday.

[coldbrightsunlight]

These days I spend most of the time hooking up various signal chains rather than a set board (not in a band where I need pedals so...), sometimes I'll just use a few, fuzz-delay or fuzz-chorus-delay or something, but I do like having options with loads of pedals.

I only keep stuff that I don't use much around when it didn't cost a lot of money/I can't sell it because I can't really afford to keep loads of expensive pedals I don't use lying around.

[rfurtkamp]

If I'm going minimal, I don't even bring a pedal.

If I want pedal, I want pedals.

Then again, I thought it was a good idea to add a guitar synth to my existing two-rack case setup with 6-10 on the floor, so I'm probably not the guy to ask.

I sell extra gear that hasn't been used in a few years and that isn't part of my 'traditional' rig - I'll never get rid of a couple units because they were so essential the first 10-15 years of my playing. I did that once and spent a year finding the stuff again.

[Zounds Perspex]

interesting. and I keep telling myself to hold on to pedals because I might use them to record one day,
but the reality is that I don't record much and never have. I'm a dumb weekend jammer who likes to sometimes make guitar go scree-scree-scree,
but much much more often I'm wanting to actually play a tune with the dudes, bulldoze a riff into the ground, what have you.
Sabbath cover. Beer. Original song what sounds a fuck of a lot like Sabbath. Beer. Song that sounds like Melvins. Beer. Spacemen 3 ripoff. Beer.
This is my musical output, by and large.

[Shabbledoo]

Well, I have 3 pedals but only use 2 at any given time, and it's satisfying enough.

[MaxMaps]

I too have been through 40 or so different boxes. And while I do love to condense my life at any given time (I hate having just crap around) being an at home player I like to have options. I generally float around 6 boxes at a time and will probably stay at that number and get a few along the way that I have missed (like the monarch)

but I understand the feeling.

[jrmy]

I tend to keep pedals that I don't have on my board because I use them for my studio-only solo stuff, which tends to be very effct-heavy, and is something of a personal sound lab. I mean, if I have five pedals that do the exact same thing, or an extremely flippable pedal that I'm not attached to, I might consider trading it for something new & sparkly that catches my eye. But that's about it. For now, anyway. Any and all of my gear behaviors are subject to arbitrary whim.

[Mudfuzz]

I tend to keep pedals that I don't have on my board because I use them for my studio-only solo stuff, which tends to be very effct-heavy, and is something of a personal sound lab. I mean, if I have five pedals that do the exact same thing, or an extremely flippable pedal that I'm not attached to, I might consider trading it for something new & sparkly that catches my eye. But that's about it. For now, anyway. Any and all of my gear behaviors are subject to arbitrary whim.

[MEC]

My board is always one pedal away from being complete.

[Grrface]

The biggest I can really see my board getting is about 8 or so pedals. I'm still on the fuzz and possibly the OD hunt, and I'd like a little more modulation, but I'm a simple man by nature.