When I was in a band that relied heavily upon my effects use (the band was called Star Commander, fwiw), I needed certain sounds for certain songs. I couldn't get rid of pedals because I straight up couldn't play those songs without them. I relied upon those pedals, and the basic structure of my board (CC/DC-valve boost-RAT-Tone Machine-two delays-flanger hoax) stayed pretty much the same.
That band broke up, and everything fucking changed. Now, I use whatever effects I happen to have at the moment for my (shit, five I guess?) bands that I'm in. I'm starting to rely upon a few, but I like keeping things fresh now. I used to HATE it. But now it's my favorite thing to tear apart my entire board for a show I have coming up. I have a few I can't get rid of because I need those sounds, but nothing is sacred anymore.
Haki wrote:Ghost Disaster at the start of the chain, then all kinds of dirt, modulation section, then a Goatse, another delay and mini-RRR at the end. The dirt and modulation gets swapped around a fair bit but that helps keep it fun.
Very cool... so do you use the ghost as a "wash" of sound feeding into all the dirt?
Yup! It's great at that. Or when I'm too lazy to play with strings I'll just max delay time and repeats, hit a few notes to get near endless repeats, then play with the knobs on the Goatse and Moog Ringmod to get various patterns and sounds. I should probably get something like a Drone Commander but this is fun enough.
stripes wrote:Haki, that board sounds awesome! Recently I've been liking the idea of doing that type of "sandwiching" with dirt and modulation, and reverb and delay on both sides of the chain. It's just a matter of WHICH pedals I like the best. I just left the band that I was playing in to focus on my own music, and I'm still finding the "sound" that I want for recordings and live shows. And although I'm inspired by pedals, I think sometimes they stray me from what sounds I actually want... Hmm
The great thing about sandwiching is that it allows for a ton of versatility. Or just turn on everything and destroy the world. As a bonus it justifies having multiple pedals of the same type. Everybody wins! Having an overdrive pre and post fuzz is really great as well. Tom is a genius for making the Hugger (if only he didn't hide that thing on his website as an obscure special order).
I think I'm pretty much there. I went from giant boards (well, maybe not by ILF standards) to just a couple of dirt pedals, and now I'm using a little more expanded board...but not by much. I'm the only guitar player and main vocalist in both the little groups I'm playing in, and just can't handle a gigantic board while I'm trying to "sing" and all that. I'm wanting to have a few fuzz pedals to swap out, but yeah...wah, fuzz, boost, and delay, plus amp trem and reverb and I'm good.
My pedal order pretty much never hanges, and some "building blocks" in the pedal chain are likely to remain the same for the forseeable future, but everything else is a matter of evolution. I'm not the kind of guy to change out a pedal for one gig, or every other week, but I like seeing a pedalboard evolve. Like Zounds, I'm doing vocals and guitar in one of my bands, and I could not run the sort of board I do without a TB strip. I don't have it to solve tone issues or whatever, but I use it like a channel selector for pedals - all my mod pedals are in one loop, all delays and reverbs in one, distortion in one etc. That way I can choose what pedals/combinations I need for a song, turn everything on at once then use the TB strip to select them on the fly. I love it. Road Rage for the win.
Gone Fission wrote: ↑Thu Oct 24, 2024 2:21 pm
That’s quarter-assed at best.