Pedal Line Friday – 3/26 – Alex Wade

Today’s pedal line is from Alex Wade. 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.

Hosa Modular 8 Channel Patch Bay –  Though not a pedal, this little thing makes my life a lot easier.  It’s basically just like a mini patch bay you would use in a studio.  It’s a way to have all of your in’s and out’s on the board in one location.  You can see it in the 3rd picture to the right, and how I run it is the top left 1/4 jack is the “in” to my front end chain (the chain that goes into the front end of the head) and the jack directly below it is the “out” that goes to the head.  The “in” is fed a chord that runs from my wireless in my rack case out to the board.  The jacks beside my front end jacks on the patch bay are my effects loop jacks which the top one is the send that goes to the “in” on my Line 6 POD X3 Live and the one below it is the return that goes back to the return on my head.  This keeps my board nice and clean and I can plug my 4 channel snake in all that the same place, run it back to my head, plug in everything there and be ready to rock.

Fryette Valvulator –  This is just a tube buffer/power supply.  It supplies clean power to my tuner, compressor, noise gate, and overdrive, as well as cleans up my tone a bit and gives it a nice push through my crazy chain of stuff so I don’t have any signal loss.

Boss TU-2 –  I think we all know what this is.  Just a good ol’ tuner.

Keeley 4 Knob Compressor – This is the holy grail of all compressors, or so I’ve heard.  I wouldn’t know, I just picked it up a few weeks ago and before that had never experimented with compressors.  I put it before my noise gate so I can set my noise gate tighter, but still have tons of sustain from the compressor while having the tight start/stop sound from a hard set noise gate.  Little trick I picked up from Misha the guitarist from Periphery.  Works like a charm.  It is always kept on.

ISP Decimator –  Best noise gate ever made in my opinion hands down.  One knob, set it to desired noise reduction and you’re done.  I run 2, one on my pedalboard for the front end of my head to cut feedback and another in my rack through the loop of my head to kill amp hum.

Digitech Whammy –  Cool pedal for sure, it does all kinds of things.  It can bend your note 2 octaves up, 1 octave up, 1 octave down, 2 octaves down, or even 3 octaves down (dive bomb mode).  It also has a drop tuning mode that will drop your tuning down a whole step, and it actually tracks the notes really well, it’s not all “warbly” and fake sounding.  I mainly use it for the drop tuning and dive domb settings.

Maxon OD-9 –  I couldn’t live without this thing.  Ever since I started playing my amp with an overdrive in front I have never looked back.  It really tightens up the gain structure of any amp, and gives you a more saturated and “juicy” tone.  It cuts a SLIGHT amount of bass from your tone, but in a good way, especially if you’re playing metal.  It makes all the notes just so clear and precise.  This is always left on as well.

Line 6 POD X3 Live –  I use this through the effects loop of my amp just for the effects.  I don’t use it for the amp simulation, all of my tone comes from my EVH 5150 III.  I just like it because with the stomp of a button I can go from a flanger with a lo fi EQ to a soaring lead tone with delay and reverb.  I use it for delay, reverb, lo fi (sounds like your amp is coming through a telephone), flanger, volume swells, and more.

My pedal line is as follows:

Sennheiser Wireless -> Patch Bay In -> Fryette Valvulator -> Boss TU-2 -> Keeley 4 Knob Compressor -> ISP Decimator -> Digitech Whammy -> Maxon OD-9 -> Patch Bay Out -> Front of Head

Send from effects loop -> ISP Decimator -> Patch Bay In -> Line 6 POD X3 Live -> Patch Bay Out -> Return to effects loop

My name is Alex Wade, I’m 23 and play guitar in the death metal band Whitechapel on Metal Blade Records (www.myspace.com/whitechapel).  I tour about 250-280 days out of the year all over the world, and the band is my career.  I’m obsessed with guitar tone and gear, and especially clean looking pedalboards and set ups.  I’m what some would call “OCD” hahaha.

http://www.whitechapelband.com
Twitter:  @alexchapel