Effects Bay

Today’s pedal line is from Steve Gerlach. 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.

Signal Flow: BYOC 5-Knob Compressor> Paul Trombetta-Modded Rat*> Mid-Fi Glitch Computer> Radial Tonebone Classic> Peterson Strobo-Stomp> EHX Bassballs> Digitech Hardwire Delay> TC Electonics Nova Modulator> Digitech Whammy> Dr. Scientist Reverberator> Fulltone Fat-Boost (+ Yamaha Channel Switcher)

* Modded Rat includes feedback loop; Momentary (on the side of the pedal) or Fixed, Odd/Even Harmonics switch, and blend knob for feedback loop (on the side as well) demos of his Rat mods can be heard here  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZQpIOairZQ

My pedal setup has reached relative stasis in the last year or so, and I mainly use 100-Watt amps (I have a Hiwatt and a Soldano-Designed Yamaha combo, also a Top Hat Club Deluxe and a bunch of old, low-wattage combos). I run the amp clean and get whatever character I need from the pedals, which means that if I have a good, clean tube amp, I can get more or less the same sound anywhere, anytime. I have owned many, many Fuzz boxes*, but at present the only ones on the board are the Mid-Fi and the heavily-modded Rat, which give me a decent variety of fuzz textures.

For a straighter overdrive sound, you can’t beat Radial preamps; worth every penny, and this pedal is “on” more often than not. Everything else is pretty self-explanatory – Filter, Delay, Whammy, Reverb, Modulation, and finally Boost, which, being last in line, will change the audible level of the reverb and echo, but I’ve found that it works for me that way; Those effects are on most of the time, and when the Fat-Boost is on, they are more pronounced and lively, the way I like it.

I suppose this is a fairly modest setup by some standards, and I probably own 20 more pedals not on the board currently. My favorite players would include Robert Fripp, Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Steve Howe, Mick Ronson, Adrian Belew, Elliot Easton, and Jimmy Page. I play on everything from Disney records to space-punk freakouts, happily. I use Gibson-type guitars mostly.

* One esoteric Fuzz I own but don’t use live is the Effector 13 Synth Mangler, which can be heard with minimal accompaniment here.  There is an underpinning synth-bass track, but most of what you’re hearing here is that pedal, which goes berserk towards the end.

Cheers,
s

About the author:
Sent by Steve Gerlach, Tomorrow The Moon, Tommy Keene, John Cale, Ralph’s World, etc)
http://www.myspace.com/tomorrowthemoon
http://www.myspace.com/stevegerlachmusic

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