Pedal Line Friday – 1/3 – Chris Hendren

Today’s pedal line is from Chris Hendren. 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.

Hi!

I’m Chris Hendren, the lead singer and 2nd guitar player 3 Bucksworth (http://www.3bucksworth.com; http://www.reverbnation.com/3bucksworth; https://www.facebook.com/3bucksworth).   We’re an original classic rock band from Orlando, FL.  Our sound is somewhere in the range of Tom Petty meets Matchbox 20.  We’ve just begun work on our 3rd full-length studio CD with Brett Hestla Productions.  I’ve been playing guitar for almost 30 years (eeek!) and I’ve been playing professionally for about the last 15.  My main guitars are a Fender Nashville Tele with DiMarzio Area T’s and a PRS 25 th Anniversary Mira with soapbars.  I play mostly rhythm these days, but I do play lead on a few songs at every gig.  Here is my submission for Pedal Line Friday.

Board:
PedalTrain PT-1 with the cheaper hard case.  I don’t know how people use soft cases for pedalboards.  PedalTrain boards are pretty much bulletproof. The hard case is starting to come apart a little, but nothing a little gaffer tape won’t fix.  Notice the mic stand mount I bolted to the back of the board (not in use at the moment, but you can just see it above the “FISHMAN”).  I found it on a bird-feeder website and it’s the best decision I ever made!  I’ll never understand why more pedalboard makers don’t include this as an option.  All powered with a Visual Sound 1-spot.

Electro Harmonix Crying Tone Wah:
I love this wah!  I used a Dunlop Original Cry Baby for years, but I was having a hard time engaging it at gigs and I could never tell (other than tone) when it was on or off.  The EHX sounds AWESOME, somewhere between a wah and a talk box; very musical.  There are no moving parts and it lights up on top when engaged.  My only issue is that it doesn’t like to stay put when I use it, so I have to keep dragging it back.

Boss TU-3 Chromatic Tuner:
This is the 3rd pedal tuner I’ve used in the last couple years and I think this one will stick.  Easy, plenty bright for daytime gigs and very accurate.  I also really like the “flash” when the string is just right.

Visual Sound Route 66:
I’ve had really good luck with Visual Sound products and their customer service is the best.  This one has that great compression to give my tone a little more girth and roundness (I play only single-coils).  I use the overdrive for more modern-ish chunky sounds with the bass boost on, but it’s very versatile.

Visual Sound GarageTone Chainsaw Distortion:
I bought this on the first run on the GarageTone pedals and it’s become my main overdrive.  It gives me that vintage 70’s kind of tube OD with plenty of sparkle.  I also have the GarageTone “Chopper” Tremolo and I like it a lot as well.

BBE Boosta Grande:
This has been on my board since about 2006 and I don’t ever see it leaving. Just a clean boost and it’s easy to adjust the volume with your foot to get however much you need.  Simple, effective and tough.  I couldn’t live without it.

Visual Sound H2O:
Once again, Visual Sound!  Just a great pedal.  Everyone should have one of these!  The chorus is very liquid; lush and analog sounding, and the echo is very versatile.  I set it for long delay I need for a couple of songs and then I can flip the switch to “short” to get a cool slapback kind of echo sound, as I don’t have verb on this board.

Tech 21 “British” and “Blonde” SansAmps:
Tech 21 SansAmps are so cool!  I don’t know how they do it with no tubes, but they just kick ass!  We play monthly at a little pub we’ve been playing at for like 10 years and it gets very crowded, so there’s just no room for amps.  I use these straight to the board for there and other small rooms where it just doesn’t make sense to bring amps, whether for volume or space reasons.  And they make it much easier to control volume, mix and monitors. The “Blonde” covers a pretty wide range of Fendery sounds while the “British” is Marshally goodness.  And you just can’t believe how great they sound!  They actually sound and react like a real tube amp, responding to your guitar’s volume control and pick dynamics just like the real thing.  When I kick in my boost they overdrive like they should and they have speaker emulators you can switch on or off.  There’s simply nothing close in the price range that I’ve found.  When I use one of my amps (a Rivera Chubster 40, a ’74 twin or a Blackstar Stage 60) I can use them as additional overdrives, which they also do awesomely.

Fishman Aura:
I play quite a bit of acoustic guitar at our shows, and the Aura is the only product I’ve found that makes an amplified acoustic guitar actually sound like an acoustic guitar.  Nice that it has a built-in tuner as well.  This is the first generation; the newer ones are much smaller.  I had to grind off the “wings” to free up some pedalboard space.  It’s not in line with the rest of the board, but I do power it with the same 1 spot.

Thanks!!

Chris