Effects Bay

Today’s pedal line is from Scott Reynolds. If you have a pedal line (doesn’t have to be in a board) for your rig, please email me a photo, bio, description of pedals and routing to pedallineeffectsbaycom. Every Friday I’ll showcase a pedal line submission. Make sure you include any links to your band or music page.

I play in a worship band with a silent stage.  For a couple of years I’ve used various multi effects pedals with amplifier simulations.  While the amps usually sound good, the effects can be limiting.  So I set up a pedal board with the analog effects I used along with a Tech21 Sansamp pedal to do amp/speaker simulation.  This allowed me to use good quality pedals for the effects I use and get the tone I want.  The board is an old SKB that works well except the power connections aren’t isolated.  I use a combination of George L patch cables and some generic ones that will eventually get replaced with more George Ls.  Signal order is as follows.

Line6 G30 Wireless receiver (inexpensive wireless freedom)
Morley Volume Pedal  (it’s a volume pedal, optical so no noise)
Fulltone ’69 Fuzz Mk II (fuzz/crunch/distortion, very smooth distortion, Germanium pnp)
TC Electronic Polytune
Morley Mini Wah (doesn’t take up much room but it’s very sensitive)
Fulltone OCD  (lead tones, sounds like what an overdrive should sound like)
Tech21 Sansamp Blonde  (gives me the Fender Deluxe tone I prefer)
TC Electronic Flashback x4 Delay (I got it for the ability to use presets)
Marshall Reflector Reverb (lots of options and used ones are cheap)
TC Electronic Ditto Loop (for when I have to solo over chords and I don’t have another guitarist)

The order is a little unusual due to some of the pedal requirements.  The Fulltone Fuzz is recommended to be installed before anything with a buffer including tuners.  If you put the ’69 after the tuner, it loses the smooth distortion they are known for.  Time based effects like delay and reverb are placed after the sansamp per Tech21 recommendation.  The sansamp is set up to emulate a fender Deluxe and sounds very close to all the other emulations I have used for that amp.  By using a simple amp simulator rather than an “all in one” I can effectively use the fulltones and the flashback delay.  The tones and options from these three pedals is just fantastic.  I don’t use reverb much so the Marshall has all the options of the better reverbs for less cash.

Premier Guitar just put out a very interesting Rig Rundown of Brian May. I’ve always been slightly fascinated with this guy. Primarily with his very distinct tone bread from an early DIY ethic. I love the fact that he built his guitar with his father, and that guitar today is still his #1 go to axe, even though he has other versions created by others.

Here is the video by Premier Guitar:

After watching the video, there were a few interesting points I was surprised with.

Frets – I was super surprised that his number one guitar (Red Special) has NEVER been refretted. I thought that was insanely odd, for the amount of play time that would have had, that the frets have held up. I know he plays .009s and use to play .008s, but still, you think 40+ years of bends would wear the frets down.

Coins – I do remember hearing he played with coins vs. picks, but again, I think this is odd. But again, if that’s what you’re use to, I could understand, but was surprised he’s not using metal picks. I would think the blunt edge would be difficult to work with, but that’s part of his tone-puzzle.

Treble Booster – I was surprised that he runs the treble booster in front of the wireless pack, and on his strap. Very cool. I can see with volume control and the Vox AC30s, how he can get the sweet variety of tone by using the treble booster to increase his signal. I would figure this would be the same post-wireless, so that was interesting.

What did you guys think? Comment below!

This morning I came across the Digitech JamMan Express XT looper. First off, I wanted to discuss some of the issues with loopers in general that I’ve experienced with, to help explain why I think this pedal is very interesting.

When dealing with loopers, you’re usually left with ‘stacking’. This means, that new loops are on top of old loops, and if you want to shut off the 2nd loop out of 5 loops.. you’re SOL. Some loopers (ie: Boomerang) does allow for dedicated loop ‘channels’ that is very nice. Another thing that I’ve experimented with is using 2 loopers. I used a RC-3 and a Line 6 DL4, and one thing that happens is that they slowly go out of sync. Milliseconds add up and the loops will drift, simply because they’re not sync’d.

Now, let’s talk about the XT Looper. At first glance, it seems very similar to the TC Electronic Ditto Looper. Level control and single footswitch for play, record and overdub with a double click to shut the looper off. BUT.. where things get very cool, is the ability to ‘sync’ units. This sort of blows my mind. So you could connect one or more XT Loopers together and make a multi channel looper with the first looper as the master (allowing one footswitch to stop all the others). Sync’ing is done with 1/8″ plug/cable. Each unit can have unlimited overdubs with undo/redo handling.

Currently, on Amazon.com you can pick up the Digitech JamMan XT Looper for $94.98. For example, if you purchased 3 units, you would have 3 dedicated loop channels with stacking.. for much less than other ‘big’ loopers. Very interesting.

Digitech’s official video does not demonstrate this well, but I found this, which is much better:

If you own a JamMan Express XT Looper, I would love to hear what you think about it! I’m especially interested in the linking/syncing. Please let us what you think by commenting below!

Today, I wanted to put out a reminder post for the Pedal Projects Owly Booster Give Away. If you’re running a tube amp, this is going to be a great addition to your board. Boosting your signal to overdrive those pre-amp tubes is a great thing. But, the pedal could also be used to drive pedals as well (so I don’t want to say that tube amp is required for goodness). I’m a huge fan of driving the preamp!

First, let’s talk about Pedal Projects. They’re a great company out of Iceland making some awesome sounding/looking pedals. Attention to detail is high. Ásgeir is a pleasure to deal with. Among the Owly, he also makes the Growly, Klone, Marbleverb, Litli Fuzz, Bufferlo and also performs modification. One mod that is gaining popularity is a EM+Drive Mod. Definitely check out Pedal Projects for more information. I also did an an interview with Ásgeir a while back as well!

One of my favorite demo guys is Curtis Kent (I would highly recommend that you subscribe to his YouTube Channel. He does an excellent job showing what pedals are capable of, goes through the functionality, and the recording quality is high. I also love that he uses a Matchless amp (I too use Matchless.. love those amps!!). Here is Curtis’ demo of the Pedal Projects Owly Booster:

Okay.. now back to the give away! You have until July 28th to get your entry in… and you can do that here. Also, if you could, please share, tweet, email anyone that might be interested! Spreading the word would greatly be appreciated!

Today’s pedal line is from Florent Paris. If you have a pedal line (doesn’t have to be in a board) for your rig, please email me a photo, bio, description of pedals and routing to pedallineeffectsbaycom. Every Friday I’ll showcase a pedal line submission. Make sure you include any links to your band or music page.

Hi effects bay !

Here’s a new french contribution for your friday’s pedal line !

So basically the first board is for both my guitars (Fender Jazzmaster & Harley Benton Open tunned), going to a Fender BluesJunior. The second board is for both my accoustic guitars. I play mainly for my solo ambient/post-rock instrumental project called Hors Sujet, and you can find all the latest news here: www.facebook.com/horssujetmusic

Now about the gear itself

First Board :

SHO clone : A Super Hard On Clone made by a french compagny called Crust Pedals. A great way for me to boost the incoming signal into the pedalboard. Plus the Crust pedal’s guys are really kind and did a custom paint just for me ! You can trust the Crust!

Buzz Electronics ABY box : Allows me to change between my Jazzmaster and the Harley Benton (Open tunned).

Earnie Ball Jr: The attack is faster than the Boss FV, which is good!

TC Electronics Polytune mini: Recent purchase, I thought it couldn’t do open tuning (I had read that somewhere, long time ago), but this little baby can’t be more precise for both my guitars!

Zvex Instant Lofi I love the immediate and typical vintage compressed sound it can delivers, and although it doesn’t fit everywhere you can get a subtil and delightful sound with it. It works VERY VERY well when the EHX Freeze is freezing a note.

Digitech Whammy  Lot of use of this one. Mainly for its one-octave-down bass layers, I also loop a lot of glitchy sounds and play with them. Since I play solo, it’s perfect to have some strong bass layers!

Fairfield Circuitry Barbershop My main sound. It gives me its lovely crunch. I’ll never get rid of it. 95% on, it goes from great boost to really warm overdrive.

Fulltone OCD My big overdrive. It’s sharp, very versatile and nice overdrive.

EHX Big Muff Really awesome fuzz ! Big wall of sound, infinite sustain, and when I use it with the whammy, boom, fat bass !

Devi Ever Aenima : Depending on the mood, I use this fuzz or the HFOA (see below). The Aenima is really a textural fuzz. Dirty, yet very distinct. So much gain from this cute thing.

Holy Fuzz of Antioche (the yellow one on the far left of the unused) Here’s the story: I was a member of a forum, but few months ago they decided to put an end to that forum. So a nice guy decided to make a “present” to some people, and built a pedal as a “farewell forum” thing. This is a heavy fuzz, really massive.

EHX#1 Echo Clean delays. I do a lot of slapback echoes with it, the blend knob can be strange at the first attempts, but once you get it, you’ll love it.

Sib! Mr Echo My favorite so far.For his warm decay and the craziness of the self-oscillation (if you press the Slam switch, you’ll never forget it). I’m still amazed by the harsh noise it can produce. This one was hard to get (I had to get it on american ebay, and ask for the man to send it to France…that wasn’t easy believe me). Back in these days I had got it for 80$.

Boss RV3 Perfect pedal. It has the 100% wet, the reverb+delay, and the delay itself.

Boss TR2 The first tremolo I had, I’m not that much of a modulation guy, but I like this one. This is the best example of “I bought it when I built the board, it’s hard to imagine it without this pedal, haha)

Looper Reverser This is the kind of thing that change the pedal’s order.This one allows me to change the order of the RC2 and the Kaoss Pad III, to avoid double overdubs. When there’s some sample played on the RC2, the Kaoss Pad has to be first to avoid re-recording RC2′s samples, and vice-versa.

Boss RC-3 + DIY footswitch Small, incredibly useful, it’s the second most used pedal of my righ. Everything goes in, a looooot of things are sampled there, and since I’m playing solo it’s a great tool to play live with. Coupled with the Kaoss Pad = more fun. 99 banks, perfect for live !

Kaoss Pad III : Such a powerful and incredible tool for musical creativity, a lot of different effects and since it’s a tactil unit it’s a great way to experiment unusual settings. I really like the stutter effects of its looper and the sampler’s effects. I often record small and little layers, like swells or bowed strings for exemple.

EHX Freeze This little pedal is amazing, you can go from simple layers to really weird things (by playing on the guitar’s head for ex., or with the reverb trails)

EHX SuperEgo Before the loopers on the rig, it’s a perfect way to have some unbelievable torturated layers or to merge different notes with the glissando effect. Love it.

T1M Buffer : End buffer, just to enhance the tone & gain loss before the amp. And when I say “enhance”, I’m talking about a REALLY NICE enhancement with this one !

Second Board :

Boss FV500: I’ve got this one for ages (since the beginning of my project), nothing to say about it since it does its job perfectly.

Boss LS2 : What do you want more, I can choose between 2 instruments and an additionnal third one (piezzo mic for Mandoline, my casio SK1, sometimes my Hurdy Gurdy…), it’s a perfect tool !

Korg Pitchblack : Super tuner, I often play in small places without lights, but the lights can spread through in any dark places!

Modified Boss CS3 Nice for accoustics, clean the tone and compress slightly.

Mooer Pitch box : Same use as the first board. Mostly for “others” instruments than accoustic guitars, this little guy does its job perfectly.

TC Electronics Hall Of Fame mini : How nice. The reverb aren’t too cold, you can change them via the Tone Print Editor, it adds a little bit of reverb on the accoustic set.

Line 6 Echo Park : My old friend. Very versatile, can goes from warm analog-sound delays to digital clean repeats. The reverse is really fun to play with !

Boss RC20xl : Same job as the first board, but with the reverse and the fade out options !

Needless to say that I’m always considering a lot of new gear to try, the more important thing is the sound itself and how to improve what’s in your head and how to draw it with music. If you wanna listen what I do with all that, feel free to go on my facebook / bandcamp or even to browse my videos. Here it is, thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed, if you want some details, I’d be more than glad to talk about that !

Florent Paris | Hors Sujet
Toulouse, France

This is not an ‘effect’, but I’m a big fan of routing tools. They can be quite handy and can make life much easier. Today I wanted to talk about the Morley George Lynch Tripler Multi-Amp switch. Note, this is an amp switcher for the ‘front end’ of the amp. Do NOT plug speaker cable outs into this unit. This switcher basically routes output signal to 1-3 amp inputs. With this device, you would run your pedals into the input of the switcher, and the signal is then split into 3 signals which could be delivered individually to amps, or set to send signal to all 3 amps at the same time.

This can be quite cool for rhythm vs. lead tones handled by amps vs. pedals. The downside of this, is you would need to lug around multiple amps, but the upside, some serious tone and control!

Beyond the 3 footswitches, there are also is a Boost knob providing 20dB of clean boost to all 3 outputs.  LEDs indicate what amp is receiving signal.

If found this YouTube demo of the Morley George Lynch Tripler by Andrew Gardiner:

I also wanted to bring this up, because I found a sale price on this unit. The Morley George Lynch Tripler lists for $206, and is usually available for $103, but is currently on sale at Amazon for only $79.13 and ships for FREE. Not bad.

If you have experience with the Tripler, please let us know what you think by commenting below!

Yesterday, while on Facebook, I was introduced to the musician Petteri Sariola (aka Pete). The video was a cover of U2′s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”. I started to watch the video with the Petteri and his acoustic, and was expecting another “looper” singer/songwriter deal. My first initial thought during the first 10 seconds.. “yeah, it’s okay”, but then I started noticing and paying attention to what was going on. He was playing percussion on the guitar, but the sound was sounding quite realistic (especially the kick drum sounds). Then I started hearing the bass lines. Then I realized.. “hey wait.. there is no looping”. I had to learn more. But first, let’s get you up to speed.

Here is the video I mentioned above (posted by Candyrat Records):

Okay, as you can see/hear, there is a lot going on here. Petteri uses a special guitar with a custom top so he can do the percussion. Also, his set up is quite interesting, with splitters taking care of specific areas of frequencies, etc.

There is a great video where Petteri goes into detail about his set up. Very interesting!

Here is a break down of pedals that he is using:

Allen & Heath ZED 10FX Mixer
Digitech Whammy
Boss OC-3 Super Octave
Mad Professor Little Green Wonder Overdrive
Strymon Timeline Delay
TC Electronics Corona Chorus
TC Electronics PolyTune Mini
MXR M87 Bass Compressor
MXR KFK1 10 Band EQ
MXR M108 10 Band EQ
Suhr Buffer (w/ISO split)

Let me know what you think about this by commenting below!

I’m pretty excited about this give away!  I love showcasing builders, and I recently had an interview with Ásgeir of Pedal Projects located in the awesome country of Iceland! You can read the full interview here – “Talking with Ásgeir Helgi Þrastarson of Pedal Projects“. When I first started doing some research about Pedal Projects, the first thing that impressed me.. the circuit boards. You usually don’t get to appreciate the boards, but when you seen and awesome board, those details speak to me. Instead of just slapping something together, there is attention to detail found. This attention to detail results in great tone, great style, great construction, great service, etc. The small things, add up!

I was very stoked when Ásgeir sent over an Owly Booster to give away to a lucky EffectsBay reader, so let’s talk about the Owly! The Owly (v2) is a MOSFET (metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor) booster in a tiny enclosure. The Owly is great for boosting signal or to drive pedals, etc. Simple concept. One knob… set it to your preference and one switch to turn the unit on/off. Jacks are Neutrik and all wiring is 22AWG wire.

I’m going to a random entry on July 28th. I will email that random entry asking for the answer to the question listed below. You will have 24 hours to respond with the answer. If the 24 hours passes and I don’t hear from that finalist, I will select a new random entry and repeat the process until I receive confirmation from the winner. This is open to everyone. Yes, that means international! Also, one entry per person. Please read that last sentence again… “one” “entry” “per” “person”.

The submission form will be open until July 28th (Mon) 2PM MST.

On top of that, Ásgeir at Pedal Projects is going to sweeten the deal. If you ‘LIKE’ Pedal Projects on Facebook and you’re selected as the winner, he’ll throw in an extra prize – Pedal Projects t-shirt!

So, it’s pretty much a no-brainer to like Pedal Projects on Facebook! Just click the ‘like’ below.

Please take a moment to Tweet, Share, Email this give away to your gear friends. We all like free gear right?

So the question is…. “What was the first pedal you purchased? And do you still own it?”

Today’s pedal line is from Jason Williams. If you have a pedal line (doesn’t have to be in a board) for your rig, please email me a photo, bio, description of pedals and routing to pedallineeffectsbaycom. Every Friday I’ll showcase a pedal line submission. Make sure you include any links to your band or music page.

Hey,

My name’s Jason Williams, I perform vocals and guitars for the band, Animal Holograms.  I found out about your site from a friend of mine, Nathan (Hot Nerds, Some Girls, All Leather) who you recently featured.  Animal Holograms and Hot Nerds are actually playing a show together next month in Chicago.

I’ve been playing the guitar since I was nine years old and haven’t let go of it, tired it out or found it any less limitless as a tool for manipulating pitches, timbres or human emotions since.  I started Animal Holograms as a solo project while playing in other bands and often recorded guitars clean for my songs, then later manipulating them using all sorts of odd combinations of plug-ins, spending hours re-arranging the sequence of FX, their parameters, sending them to multiple buses and experimenting with “subcutaneous audio tissues” or “ghost nested” reflections of the source track in order to achieve an original sounding albeit only subconsciously perceivable, though present ambiance.

A few years of this led to finally getting the right people to perform Animal Holograms songs live, but I found myself without the outboard gear needed, let alone a single clue how to re-create or simulate the sounds I achieved mixing in-the-box with fancy plug-ins.  So I recently started constructing the board pictured in the attachment.  It has only four FX components:

1. Electro-Harmonix Vox Box
2. DOD Supra Distortion
3. Deltalab DD1 Delay
4. Lexicon MX200 Dual Channel FX Processor (reverbs and delays and the offshoot FX created by manipulating these like chorus FX, as well as a few others like pitch and modulation FX)

The guitar (Fender Telecaster) runs through the EH box (not effected, simply bypassed), the distortion pedal, then the delay where the signal is split.  The main signal (the prominent “source” guitar signal) is sent through the DD1′s “Output ‘A’” where it ends up running through a Marshall VS-100 half stack.  The “ambient signal”, or as I put it before the “subcutaneous audio tissues” or “ghost nested” reflections of the source signal, goes out from the DD1′s “Output ‘B’” where it is sent to the Lexicon MX200′s mono input and patched back out to a combo amp or a B-52 stack.  The signal is heavily reverberated, often delayed and creates essentially a washed out, organic sonic sea of sound for the main source signal to comfortably float in, giving a greater sense of space, color and atmosphere.  The ambient signal is quite a few dB’s quieter than the main signal, since the intent is not to combine, clash or compete with the first signal , but rather sit modestly in the background and serve more of a contextual, textural and supporting role sonically.

The only other input is the microphone which runs through the EH box and runs directly from there to the PA.  If set to Vocoder, the pitches/notes played on the guitar are recognized by the vox box and synthesize a vocoder effect keeping to the key of the song by analyzing the various frequencies present in a chord (ex: An A minor chord, depending how its played, will have, let’s say, an A4 (440Hz), C5 (523Hz) and E5 (659Hz) and replicating them synthetically.  Its really the only effect I use on that pedal except for vocal reverb and the occasional pitch manipulation using the “gender bending” parameter.

We’re in the process of preparing to record our first full length.  The tracks we have available on sound cloud are a mixture of heavily produced demos with electronic drums and full band with live instrumentation (ex: Hello, my Dark).

Listen to Animal Holograms on Sound Cloud

To hear specifically heavy & prominent guitar effects songs using my pedal board listen to:

- Gratur
- Circular Shapes
- Lorca

Thanks for taking the time to read this and hopefully you’ll consider featuring this homemade, very “MacGyver’d”, though beautiful as it can be abrasive sounding pedal board of simple design despite a relatively complex routing configuration and its various (seemingly endless) set of functions.

- Jason Williams

www.facebook.com/animalholograms
www.soundcloud.com/animalholograms
www.twitter.com/animalholograms

Andy over at Digital Audio Labs (maker of Stompblox Pedalboards) sent me an email yesterday including their press release about some expansions to their awesome line. Please read the press release below. For those of you not familiar with Stompblox Pedalboards.. they’re making a unique modular pedalboard system! Small boards that can be connected, and expand to your needs. Very cool!

Chanhassen, MN – June 9, 2014 Hot on the heels of the successful launch of Stompblox modular pedalboards, Digital Audio Labs announces the first modular expansions to the Stompblox line–the Stompblox Riser and the Stompblox Extend. These two products connect to the Stompblox system expanding functionality and customization options.

Players with large pedalboards often find themselves reaching, stretching, or dancing to try to reach pedals in the back row of their pedalboard. Stompblox Risers snaps into Stompblox pedalboards, raising sections for easier access to pedals. Multiple risers can be used to raise a whole section of a pedalboard, or just one can be used to raise a single effect pedal. Up to three risers can be used with each Stompblox unit and convenient pass throughs make cable management easy.

Stompblox Extend is a dual function extension for the Stompblox system that gives users an additional 4.5″ of surface depth for pedals while also housing nearly any power supply without drilling holes. A unique mounting system works with power supplies from Voodoo Labs, Modtone, Cioks, and others. And of course, Extend has plenty of pass throughs for cable management and routing.

Expected pricing for the Stompblox Riser is $8.99 and Stompblox Extend is $34.99. Both units will start shipping in September 2014.

The Stompblox modular pedalboard system including the Stompblox Riser and Stompblox Extend will be shown at the Digital Audio Labs booth #1236 at the Summer NAMM show in Nashville, TN.