Pedal Line Friday (on Wednesday) – 8/28 – Nick V.

Been a fan for a while now and since I’m a junkie for effects, I thought it was time to share mine…

No band at the moment but I did just graduate from SAE Institute of San Francisco with a degree in audio engineering! So, I’m working on having plenty of awesome pedals for studio use and building my collection all the time…

Currently it is a bit minimal but really good…

First off is a Boss TU-3. Required that a tuner be on all pedalboards and this was my first. I hate buying utility gear but this one was really with it. I’d like to get a TC polytune soon for a smaller footprint,as well as an update.

Next up, BYOC Optical Compressor. I had a really fun time building this one. It only took about 4 hours to build the actual kit but about 4 days to paint it. It turned out great and I love that people always say,”what is that?” Fun pedal but it gets a bit crazy at extreme settings so its set pretty minimal for some fullness. especially with my Tele.

Fulltone Custom Shop Deja-Vibe #183 of 200. Holy crap. I love this. I have always loved vibe pedals and I was looking into what to buy. Fulltone promised the most accurate recreation of the original down to the photo-sensors. I found this used down at the local shop and it took a few payments but I got it. I recently read that Mike Fuller produced these custom shop versions to test the waters and see what kind of response he got. I guess it was great and they went into production right away. I feel so lucky to have gotten my hands on this and sounds AMAZING!!! the tremelo is really cool too, but the vintage mode chorus is pretty much where it stays all the time.

Divided By 13 Dyna-Ranger treble booster. This is the first treble booster I’ve played with and boy, what a good one. 5 way switch for tone and girth. and a boost knob that may blow some skirts up. So FUN!!! It just makes everything sound better…

Catalinbread Dirty Little Secret MKIII. I feel like I can never decide between OD and distortion. OD’s can be too weak and distortions are too strong. I really like something thats dynamic an responsive, that goes from soft bluesy OD all the way to sonic mayhem. This pedal does such a great job. theres 2 modes – SuperLead and SuperBass, emulating each of the classic marshall sounds. While both are great, It pretty much stays in SuperLead since I’m kind of a treble player. So fun though… Really sensitive to playing and your guitars volume knob.

Black Arts Tone Works Pharaoh Fuzz. In my opinion, this is the most versatile fuzz on the market. Quick feature rundown; Low/high gain switch, Silicon/offset germanium/transistor bypass(super high gain), sweeping tone control knob, highs knob, fuzz level knob, and output level knob. Whew… Tons of tone on tap here. any classic or modern sludgy swap rat sound I want.

Way Huge Aqua~Puss. Super rich analog delay. Really great for shorter delays but its a bit tough for dotted 8th’s with only 300ms max delay. It is really easy to dial in a great tone wether it’s rock-a-billy or super long solo delay. Great pedal but I’d like something with a little more delay time. This pedal was designed by George Tripps before he was hired on at MXR. So, I guess the MXR Carbon Copy is actually an updated version of this circuit with double the delay time and a mod feature but I guess i like it old skool…

TC electronic Hall Of Fame Reverb. Totally great digital reverb. The guys at TC can be trusted in the studio everyday so I can trust them on my board. I really like the long delays with the mix turned down about half way. I also like the tone knob up around 3 for a brighter tone. Church, Hall and (toneprint) Andy’s Church of tone reverb from Pro Guitar Shop. I don’t have a reverb or an effects loop on the amp so this does a great job of filling the void.

I use a Visual Sound 1-spot for most of my power but I need to run a few on batteries because of the 1920’s wiring in the building creating lots of noise. All of the pedals (barely) fit on a PedalTrain PT-1 ready for a gig at any time.

Thanks for letting me brag for a bit and I hope you enjoyed! anyone is welcome to email me with any questions about these pedals @ nickvinyl@nullgmail.com. Oh and, Viva La Effects Bay!