Pedal Line Friday – 2/26 – Kevin Ian Common

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 pedalline@nulleffectsbay.com. 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

thecommonmenmusic@nullgmail.com

Kevin Ian Common will do anything to achieve other-worldly guitar sounds. He has used drills, vibrators, violin bows, batteries, microphones stands, microphones, pumpkins, prosthetic hands, and various sections of many stages and drum risers. He is currently the vocalist/guitarist for The Common Men, a post-punk band from Northern California. You can check them out on
Myspace, Facebook, or Twitter. Their main page is on Myspace: www.myspace.com/thecommonmen