Effects Bay

I’ve been really getting into pedal hacking and I’ve been a little obsessed over the idea of making pedals one day. The pedal hacking community is incredibly kind and helpful, and it’s really easy to get the bug and desire to make something.. and if all goes well, works with your guitar.

A couple of days ago @4ntwaan let me know about something that Zachary Vex of ZVex has been up to. At the 2010 NAMM he was talking about the Inventobox, basically a pedal hacker’s dream box. It allows you to wire in pots, drop in ‘modules’ or craft you own circuits into the pedal.

Here is a video where Zachary explains the Inventobox:

As you can see, there is some great cool potential here. I’ve been planning on making a prototyping board that interfaces with a bredboard and pedal enclosure (ala Beavis Board) and this is definitely the hi-tech version of this. Awesome!

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Today’s pedal line is from Kevin Ian Common (@TheCommonMen). 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 Every Friday I’ll showcase a pedal line submission. Make sure you include any links to your band or music page.

Here’s my Pedal Line with descriptions Thanks! – Kevin Ian Common

About 5 years ago I abandoned effects processors in favor of stomp boxes. My setup has changed, grown, shrunk, and now expanded since then. In looking for great tone, I am fairly satisfied. My recent additions (which I will note) are now more about finding ways to manipulate and transform my sound. My friends and fans who have followed my work call it “Building a Spaceship”

My biggest influences on guitar are The Edge (U2), Reeves Gabrels – Earl Slick – Mick Ronson (David Bowie), Robert Fripp – Adrian Belew (King Crimson), Bernard Sumner (Joy Division, New Order), and Daniel Kessler – Paul Banks (Interpol). These guitarists have two things in common: 1) Distinctive Overdrive/Distorion/Fuzz, and 2) Interesting ways to play/manipulate guitar tones.

My three main axes are an Italia Rimini 6, a Reverend Club King 290, and an Eastwood Coronado. The Semi-hollow design of the Italia and Reverend coupled with p90’s give me a very resonant, glassy tone. The Eastwood has a chambered body which gives the guitar an different character from the others.

My rig is broken up into two boards: Guitar and Texture

Guitar:

Danelectro Chicken Salad: This pedal sounds great and is very inexpensive. It gives me everything from a lush vibe setting to a quacking tremolo. I tend to use the latter more often

Vox V810: I had read that Interpol used this pedal all over their first album. It’s been long-discontinued, but I managed to find it on eBay. It gives me a chime-like overdrive. I keep the gain relatively low.

Barber Small Fry: This is my distortion pedal. I use the asymmetrical clipping setting on the distortion most often. This pedal either goes on top of the V810 for high gain leads, or by itself when I want just a tad more distortion than the V810.

Dwarfcraft Spectacular Aenima: This is my newest pedal. I’ve recently gotten into more extreme and harsh textures, and this pedal does many different things. I use this to add atari-sounding fuzz on top of everything for leads or motor-boating textures. The pedal also contains a feedback looper which I will discuss later. It also contains a PEEP–a photosensitive eye–which reacts to light. That explains the book lights clipped onto the pedal board.

Electro Harmonix #1 Echo: I keep this pedal on at all times. It is used for a quick slap back that sits back in the mix. I don’t always need delay, but I like a very subtle “slap,” at all times.

MXR Carbon Copy: This is my main delay.

Behringer EM600 Echo Machine: This pedal performs very well and I use it for swells, multi delays and ducking effects.

Digitech DigiDelay: I use this for reverse delay. NOM

BBE Sonic Stomp: I don’t fully understand how this pedal works, but after testing it out a few years ago, it’s never left any incarnation of my rig.

Next is my “Texture Board.” This board was added recently to accommodate my Spectacular Aenima. All of these pedals become completely different pedals when you have them feedback upon each other. I set them up in random order to see how they react to each other, and this has yielded the best results:

Digitech Synth Wah

Danelectro Rocky Road

Danelectro Fab Flange

Digitech DigiDelay

Behringer US 600 Ultra Shifter/Harmonist

The PEEP is highly temperamental, but when it works, it is total chaos. You can disengage the feedback option and it works like a regular pedal board, but with tons of weird noises and static involved.

I’ve been looking into other pedals to add to both boards, including the Moody Mushroom Delay, Mid-fi Glitch Computer, the WMD Geiger Counter, and the Robot by Death by Audio. I’m currently accepting donations

- Kevin Ian Common

I mentioned to a few people on Twitter that Devi Ever pedals are now at Musician’s Friend, which is absolutely great. I’m super stoked that the variety and availability of pedals out there is growing almost daily.

Today, I wanted to bring up the Devi Ever ‘The Bit’ fuzz pedal. I love this video by Aen, and I love the sounds this thing can produce… which is pretty crazy. From snarl to synth, I’m sure you’ll find something that will fit.

Here is the official description:

The Bit Legend of Fuzz Guitar Effects Pedal is an intense sawtooth shaping fuzz that creates tones reminiscent of C64, Atari, and other old video game consoles. Operates on standard 9 volt battery.

Devi Ever The Bit: Legend of Fuzz Guitar Effects Pedal Features:

* Controls:
* Volume knob: lots of gain on tap
* Control knob: changes fuzz intensity and texture
* (Graphics and knobs may vary)

Here is a video by theonetrueaen:

You can pick up the Devi Ever The Bit fuzz for $97.50 at Musician’s Friend.

Remember, if you like reading about pedals and seeing videos reviews from others, please subscribe to the RSS feed and get notified via email when there are new postings!

Popularity: 8%

If you’ve been following this site early on, you know how much I loved the movie “It Might Get Loud“. I was fortunate enough to see it in a theatre (granted it was sort of a crappy theatre). I went to the movie by myself, and I was completely blown away by what I saw, heard and felt. I remember it stayed with me for a long time. This movie is suppose to be a “documentary about the electric guitar from the point of three significant rock musicians”. I would definitely disagree. Sure it was about guitars, but to me, it was really about showing passion. Passion to ‘create’, and the tool just happened to be a electric guitar. I thought it was interesting how they related to each other, I thought it was interesting how I related to them. Great movie.

Well, I wanted my wife to see the film so we rented the DVD the other night, and she was absolutely blown away as well. I also thought I enjoyed it even more the second time around. I think every guitarist on the planet should watch this movie.. it is quite inspirational. But if you’re a fan of documentaries this is great regardless of playing a instrument or not. Passion is infectious and inspirational.

The DVD also has some bonus features, and we watched a few of the deleted scenes,etc. But there is a great press conference where the producers, directors and the three musician’s get to answer some interesting questions and provide further insight to the film.

You can pick up the DVD at Amazon.com

Popularity: 7%

Over the weekend I found myself working on a fun project. I’ve been slowly chipping away on my pedal board and one item I wanted to introduce was a bypass loop strip.  I wanted this for several reasons.

- To isolate my pedals and remove them from the signal chain while not being used
- Create chained effects and activate those effects with one switch
- Create a loop for my delay

Now, I already use a Boss LS-2 for my primary lead loop which consists of Holy Fire Overdrive and Ibanez TS9 Tube Screamer, but I really wanted a loop for my Line 6 DL 4. I’ve been working on a few songs where I want to turn the delay on and off, but I loose my tempo when I do so, with this in a loop I can maintain the tempo I set throughout the song and pull it in or out.

There are lots of loop strips out there, but I wanted to see if I could build one. It was somewhat challenging to understand how the 3PDT switches work in relationship to the signal paths, and there is a lot of soldering involved, but overall, it was a easy project.

For those of you that might be interested, I documented my steps, and I’ll supply my part list for building the 5 loop strip. First though, I have to thank SingleCoil.com for writing a great article on this very subject. I used their diagram for this project and is a great resource to understand how this all works. Please check out their website. I’d also like Matt from Cheese Blocks Effects for taking a look at my project (via email) and offering some suggestions for the next build.

Okay… now to the build. First off, let’s start with a part list. I ordered everything from PedalPartsPlus.com.

1 1411TU Looper Enclosure
1 Switchcraft 1/4″ Stereo Jack #12B (I would probably not order this again and just go with 12 monos)
11 Switchcraft 1/4″ Mono Jack #11
1 DC Power Jack
5 Red LEDs (5mm)
5 5mm LED Bezels
5 Xicon 1/4watt 1* Metal Film Resistors 470 ohms
5 (CLIFF) RoHS 3PDT True Bypass Switches
#24/7 Green Wire
#24/7 Red Wire
#24/7 White Wire
#24/7 Black Wire

Tools you’ll need: wrenches, screwdriver, soldering iron, wire strippers, wire cutters, solder (I used 60/40 rosin-core .032 dia) and needle nosed plyers. It’s incredibly nice to have the ‘3rd set of hands’ alligator clips deal for soldering. Also a nice pair of wire strippers makes things easier.

This is what it looks like when I got the package. Note in this photo I have 5 560k resistors. I did not need to use those.

Next, I loosely inserted the jacks and switches. I locked in the LED bezels. I say loosely added them, because you’ll be pulling them out again. I basically put them into position so I could measure the wire lengths needed. I wanted to make sure I could open the enclosure if there was a problem. Also this enclosure is pretty tight for soldering.

Next, I thought I would work on the switches. In the diagram I was using you needed to make a ground jumper from bottom left to middle right.  I first soldered the resistors for the LEDs and clipped the remaining unused lead tail and used that as the jumper and soldered that in place. I was using this diagram from SingleCoil.com (http://www.singlecoil.com/tb-strip/dia3.html).

I then started on the ground connections. Linking all the mono jacks and linking the send/receive pairs back to the the switches, as well as linking those to the master input and output of the strip. It’s important to understand the jacks and what lugs are what. Mono jacks only have ‘tip’ and ’sleeve’.  Stereo jacks have tip, ring and sleeve. The sleeve will be the ground and the tip will be your signal from the guitar. The lug (what you’re soldering to) is opposite of the tip or opposite of the sleeve. For this strip, you should be using all mono jacks since it’ll be DC powered and we don’t need to activate the current with the input jack like most pedals. For this project, I accidentally wired the signal to the sleeve of the stereo jack instead of the tip. Here is a good diagram that I was using illustrating a jack and it’s lugs: http://skyturtle.com/2009/02/17/stereo-phone-jack/

From here, I started to wire the send and returns of the effect loops as well as the DC jack.

All that is left is to connect the LEDs to the resistors and to chain the positives together. Matt from Cheese Blocks recommended that I should have used heat shrink tubing on those leads, and I definitely thought about it. In the future I’ll definitely add that to help prevent any shorts. For this project I made sure that the leads were bent up towards the lid and away from the switches as best as I could, but that little bit of shorting prevention could go a long way.

One thing that I would recommend is to make sure you clip any excess leads from wires and components, especially at the jack lugs. These jacks are very close together and could be another area of potential short circuits. Make sure you use a hot soldering iron and to focus on clean joints.

When she was all done (and after I fought the ’sleeve’ issue with the master input) it was time to test it out. All the loops worked and everything sounded great. Here is shot of it on my board for initial testing:

Hope this comes in handy. I’ll be making another one here shortly, like to add a few more items in there.. master on/off switch, tuner out.. maybe even play with a buffered loop.

Popularity: 18%

THIS CONTEST IS CLOSED

Hello everyone! I’m here to announce another pedal give-away! For this give-away, I’ve teamed up with Phil from Fat Tone Guitars again and he is generously giving up a Mellowtone Trumpet Fuzz pedal to our pedal give-away efforts! So I want to send out a special ‘Thank You’ to Phil!

This pedal normally sells for $82.99 at Fat Tone Guitars, and this is your chance to win it for nadda!

How do you get a chance to win this pedal? It’s super simple.

First, be sure to follow me on Twitter and/or Facebook to keep up to date with this give-away

Second, you just need to fill out the form below.  The pedal will be mailed directly from Fat Tone Guitars to you!

Here is the official pedal description:

Named for it’s brassy sound when played staccato at low gain, the Trumpet Fuzz is a harsh nasty octave up fuzz in classic form. The Attack control alters the gain and sustain. Max out the attack and get a great sustaining octavia type sound with an octave up that comes through even on the bridge pickup (best results achieved with the neck pickup of course). Turn the Attack control down for a broken guitar sound or play it staccato high up on the neck for some trumpet like tones.

Click here for additional information at Fat Tone Guitars

While we’re on the subject of Fat Tone Guitars, I wanted to let you know a little bit about them!

At Fat Tone Guitars, we love guitars, amps and effects.  We are always on the lookout for new gear to bring to our customers–gear that sounds great and gear that we know our customers will love. We pride ourselves in having the best selection of guitar and bass effect pedals in the Chicago area and the web. Our lineup of stompboxes includes the best of what’s new and the best of what’s tried and true. We constantly talk with our customers to learn what makes their tone. And we are constantly scouring the web and attending tradeshows to learn about what’s hot. Then we deliver.

We also carry a wide array of vintage and pre-owned gear. Check our website often to see what’s arrived. And if you are interested in trading up for some hot new guitar or amp, give us a call as we are always looking to trade.

Fat Tone also has a full service department. In additional to setups, we repair electric and acoustic guitars and tube amps–both new and vintage. In addition to repairs, we also perform mods and upgrades on guitars and amps. From pickups to electronics; from tube replacement to cap jobs.

Fill out the form below, in a week and a half  (March 3rd) I’ll randomly pick 3 entries as finalists. I’ll email the 3 finalists and the first one out of the 3 that emails me back will be the winner.You must enter a ‘valid’ email address, bounce back emails will be rejected. One entry per person. After the winner has been notified and all is good (I’ve retrieved mailing address, etc), I’ll coordinate with Phil at Fat Tone Guitars to get the pedal shipped to the winner.

To enter fill out the form below. I’m asking the question “What/Who inspired you to play guitar?”.  Seems like talking with various musicians, sometimes there is a definitive moment which prompted you to pick up a guitar for the first time. Could be a song, could be seeing a band playing live, could be as simple as a birthday present, etc. Let’s hear it!

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@imaustingood asked me what my thoughts were on the Boss CE-20 Chorus Ensemble Twin Pedal. I’m personally not too into modulation pedals, occasionally I use my MXR Phase 100 pedal. The part of why I have this blog, is to definitely look outside of my rut and see what’s out there, so I definitely like these questions, please keep them coming!

Looking at the Boss CE-20, I see it’s a ‘twin’ pedal and is a the big brother of the CE-1. The first pedal engages the manual settings of the chorus, while the second pedal manages presets.

Here is the official pedal description by Boss:

The Boss CE-20 Chorus Ensemble Twin Pedal is one of the best chorus effects pedals made. Lush but transparent. Models classics such as the CE-1 and SDD-320 and lets you create entirely new effects including chorus for bass and acoustic guitars. Brilliance and Ambience knobs provide unprecedented control over the effect engine. 6 chorus modes, 4 user memories with pedal recall, stereo I/O, headphone jack, and BOSS 5-year warranty.

Boss CE-20 Chorus Ensemble Twin Pedal Features:

* Models of classics
* 4 user memories with pedal recall
* Brilliance and Ambience knobs for more profound control
* Stereo I/O
* Headphone out
* 5-year warranty

I found a nice video going into great detail of what this pedal is capable of by azb24.

You can pick up the Boss CE-20 Chorus Ensemble Twin Pedal for $169.00 at Musician’s Friend.

Remember, if you like reading about pedals and seeing videos reviews from others, please subscribe to the RSS feed and get notified via email when there are new postings!

Popularity: 9%

A few months ago I posted about Reggie Watts (who is from my home state) and does some fun things with loops.  Well, I just found out he’s in a commercial for DieHard batteries!

He use to primarily use the Line 6 DL 4 delay for loops, but I’ve been seeing him use a second unit for his main loop building. I took a quick still from the above video. Anyone know what the unit is to the left of the DL 4?

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Today’s pedal line is from Mike Mulholland (@mikewtf). 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 Every Friday I’ll showcase a pedal line submission. Make sure you include any links to your band or music page.

Hi, my name is Mike and I play guitar for a band called Emmure.  Catch us on the upcoming Mosh Lives II tour and this summer’s Vans Warped Tour on the Hurley stage. If you live in Australia, we’ll be out there with Machine Head and Hatebreed this coming spring, as well.

I’m a gear head and this is my pedal board.

Loop 4 – “Heat” – Tube screamer and two noise suppressors (Boss NS-2). I run this pretty much all the time as my main high gain tone on top of my lead channel. I found that two noise suppressors, directly in line, works really well and allows me to push the tube screamer hard without feeding back. For those wondering, it’s a custom, made by a guy named jason, whom I have since lost contact. It’s basically a Maxon OD-9 with a JRC4558D chip. I’ve had it a couple years, and it’s the best sounding overdrive i’ve had.

Loop 3 – “Soundwave” – This is the individual loop for the Boss Phase Shifter. It’s a great pedal but it is noisy as hell. I use it for a song called sound wave superior, hence the title.

Loop 2 – “Delay” – In this loop, I’m running my MXR Carbon Copy and Phase 90. I often use these two together, I recently swapped my Boss DD3 for the Carbon Copy, it’s so much warmer, I mostly use it to thicken up leads. The Phase 90 gives a little extra texture to everything, i keep it pretty low. Having them both running at the flip of one switch is nice.

Loop 1 – “Whammy” – Switches on my Whammy and Boss Super Shifter. I did have two Whammys directly in line, because we have songs where we octave up and octave down without enough time to bend over and turn the knob. I recently swapped out one of the Whammys for a Boss Super Shifter, because our octave down parts don’t require much expression, so instead of having to switch on, express down, express up and then switch off on a whammy, I use the tremolo arm function on the Super Shifter and just hold on it for as long as I need to dump down an octave. As soon as my foot is off it, i’m back to normal. I have found though, that the tracking on the whammy is slightly better for the low stuff. Harmonizer functions of both pedals are awesome.

The great thing about running a Voodoo Lab pedal switcher is that you have to put much less thought into the configuration of your pedals, since whatever effects you have activated are the only ones in line to the front end of your amp. If you want to get really wild, the pedal switcher is MIDI programmable and you can link one or more of them up to a Voodoo Labs pedal commander, and have each button control any configurations of pedals you’d like, similar to the GCX/Ground Control, except you can leave all of your pedals on the floor. I’m trying to keep it simple, and I tend to tweak my pedals quite a bit on stage. This is also much more portable than a GCX for me, because when I head overseas I don’t have to dismantle my whole rack setup.

All my pedals are stock and I’m running George Ls and a few monster rock patch cables, and I’m using the Voodoo Labs Pedal Power 2+. My board is a pedal train pro, it’s got a bracket on the bottom to bolt in the Voodoo PP2+, but leaving it on top makes it easy for myself or my tech to find a problem and fix it (sometimes things get a little hectic on stage, kids have used my pedalboard as a diving board on way more than one occasion). I’ve left the extra real estate on the right to accommodate my wireless unit (sennheiser) for overseas and one off shows, when we haven’t got access to our main rigs and are using rented or borrowed/shared back lines.

If you’re curious, my live rig consists of a Peavey 5150 II, through a pair of Mesa/Boogie flat front cabinets. I’m running an additional EQ and noise gate through the loop on my heads. I play fender telecasters with EMG pickups (81/60).

Some of my pedals that are not pictured here and not included in my live rig, but sometimes make special appearances:

*Radial BigShot
Boss RC-20
Boss GE-7 (2)
Boss DD-20 Delay
Boss DD-3 Delay
Boss CH-1 Super Chorus
MXR Wylde OD
Dunlop Cry Baby
Dunlop 535Q
EH Big Muff*
*Decimator G String*

Thanks for looking! Now follow me on twitter for the occasional bit of gear nerdery and tour insanity.

Mike Mulholland
Emmure
twitter.com/mikewtf
www.myspace.com/emmure

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For today’s post, I thought I would do a post on how I replaced the wah pot in a Fulltone Clyde Wah. In the process of finding a replacement, I definitely learned a lot about the Fulltone Clyde. At Fulltone’s site they have a replacement pot available, but no way to ‘order’ it direct. I sent them a email but didn’t hear back immediately, so I started to do some research. I found out that Fulltone use to sell these pots, but stopped. Apparently there were a lot of people switching out pots for a few bucks and getting something close to the Clyde. I also read that they quit shipping them all together and you need to send in the broken unit. That was a deal breaker for me, so I was off to find a replacement.

After doing some research about the original Vox Clyde McCoy wahs, I saw that it’s a very ’special’ pot that is required. Builders like Fulltone and Teese have contracted out to pot manufacturers to create pots to match their exact specifications, so it’s not as simple as finding a pot with the same resistance and dropping in there. Basically, the pot is a 100k ICAR tapered pot. You can find various pots on eBay as well as other retailers. I hear the pots commonly found on eBay ‘work’ but don’t sound as good. I also found that Area 51 was  selling CTS ICAR tapered pots so I purchased on from there.

The next day, I received an email from Fulltone saying that they would send me a pot, but I needed to email/fax a proof of billing or send a photo of the wah. I didn’t have the receipt, so I took a photo of the wah with a piece of paper where I signed my name and dated the paper. No problems.. and the pot was on the way. I was happy to get a Fulltone replacement, so I’ll be saving the CTS ICAR pot from Area 51 for another wah project down the road.

Here is a photo of the wah opened u. My two new pots. The one with the dust cover is the Area 51 pot, and the one right of it is the Fulltone replacement pot.

For me to do this replacement, I need to desolder the original connections. I have a little solder bulb (not sure if that’s what you call it) for sucking the wet solder and a hot soldering iron.

I used some colored alligator clips to help me remember what wire goes where and desoldered the connections. I also moved the loop (loop provides tension against the rack) away from the rack (rack is the straight gear).

I then used a wrench to loosen the nut locking the pot in place and replaced it with the new pot. The photo below is the new pot locked in place and ready for soldering. Tighten the pot tight, but not too tight to damage the pot.

Here is a shot of the new pot with wires soldered into place. It’s important to use a HOT iron and to create good solder connections!

The next steps are pretty important. Depress the wah so the pot is cranked to full treble  and match the gear to the rack, but ‘click’ the wah. If you set it to the max without accounting for the footswitch, every time you’re clicking the wah on or off, you’re damaging the pot by forcing it to go beyond what it’s capable of doing. Once the gears are lined up, position the loop to press against the rack and tighten it.

That’s basically it. Slap the cover back on and give it a spin. Overall, it sounded real close to the other Clyde Wah I happen to have. It’s interesting how different components can color the tones differently, and I’ll be writing another post about this down the road. Hope this helps!

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