Pedal Line Friday – 11/20 – Arkie Alphita

Before I get started… if you haven’t heard about the crazy give away happening right now, you need to check this great give away by Thunder Road Guitars and the Bass Shop Seattle. We’re talking $1500 worth of gear that is up for grabs. Get some! Details can be found here. Don’t miss out on this one people!!!

Today’s Pedal Line Friday submission is from Arkie Alphita. 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.

Hello Effectsbay!

My name is Arkie Alphita, a guitar player who lived in Indonesia. I play guitar as my side activity, while I have some idle time after office hours. I play mostly modern rock, pop jazz, and gospel music sometimes. I have a band called Welovemonday. Please check my band’s Soundcloud at https://soundcloud.com/welovemonday. You can reach me on Instagram: @alphitarkie and my email: alphita.arkie@nullgmail.com.

The list of pedals in the photo is my current favorite setup. My main guitar is Fender Stratocaster American Standard with Lollar Blonde pickups, and equipped with Emerson Blender 5-way Strat Prewired Kit. I use Orange Tiny Terror in my room, and Marshall JCM900 in the studio.

So here is the lowdown:
1. Zvex Super Hard On (Handwired version): This is my always-on pedal. I set the knob at 10 or 11 as preamp booster. This pedal makes my guitar sound very fresh, just like it was equipped with new pickup! I’m not bias, but that was my first impression when I turned on this pedal for the first time.

2. Bondi Sick As Ovedrive: This is my main transparent OD. Sometimes I put Sick As as always-on pedal when I play heavier song. This pedal is very versatile. It could cover wide range area of gain and sounds fantastic. So far, it is my favorite “Klon” type pedal.

3. Bondi Del Mar Overdrive: I set Delmar in TS mode, with the gain knob set at 12. The drive sounds very smooth and chime. It also has very usable bass & treble control. When it stacks with Sick As, they produce thick, fat and beautiful dirt sound.

4. Emerson Paramount Handwired Overdrive: A very unique overdrive. No pedal sounds similar with it, I believe. I prefer using Paramount as 3rd stage overdrive, stacks it with Delmar and Sick As to color my drive. When these 3 guys stack together, they produce really unique dirt sound. Yes, this is my secret signature overdrive recipe. You should try it!

5. Fulltone Fulldrive 3: This is my alternate dirt option. I can say this is “muscle” version of FD2 with independent boost. The only delta of this pedal is the tone knob. It would be perfect if the tone knob has wider range and not sounds too dark (that’s why I set it at 5). Apart from that, FD3 still a great overdrive pedal. In some gigs if I need higher gain, I replace this pedal with JHS Sweet Tea.

6. Ernie Ball VP Jr. JHS Mod: One of the most “famous” pedal. I believe you already seen many on people’s pedalboards lol. The best order for me is after the drive and before modulation pedal.

7. TC Electronic Polytune Mini: Another “famous” pedal out there. I ran this pedal thru VP Jr. I prefer the pedal version rather than the clip, so I have no difficulty to tune on the stage when I change my guitar.

8. Chase Bliss Audio Gravitas: Surely the best tremolo I have ever tried. It sounds warm, natural and has a lot of feature. With the dip switches, I could get everything more than I expected for a tremolo pedal. In a band, I set it for smooth tremolo to sweeten my clean tone.

9. Chase Bliss Audio Wombtone mkII: Well.. I think this is a phaser pedal with unlimited features on it. I could always dial something new from this pedal. The phaser sounds warm and nice, it can be smooth or very extreme, depends on how we set it. I love to combine it with my dirt pedal. One thing I know, this pedal really loves fuzz (yeahh..unfortunately no fuzz pedal on my current rig).

10. Strymon Timeline: Mighty Delay Pedal! In my current set, I use Timeline to dial lo-fi delay and ice delay when I play ambience part, and also to dial sweet delay + boost during solo part.

11. Red Panda Raster: Unique, Crazy, and Weird pedal! This pedal has really really sweet delay tone. The reverse delay mode also sounds very natural. For pitch shifting, Raster also offers really fun and usable features. I can find my self spending hours having fun with this pedal.

12. Red Panda Context: Just like Raster, this pedal has a lot of features in terms of reverb. I set this pedal as always-on reverb. When I play ambience music, I set it on “Cathedral Reverb” mode. It delivers good ambience and sweet shimmer.

13. Cioks DC10: This is the power supply I used to feed all of my pedals on the pedal board. This power supply is very powerful and has very cool design and appearance. I don’t really like using noise reducer pedal, so I need good quality isolated power supply to keep my pedals quiet. Yes, this power supply delivers it.

That’s it, thanks for checking up my pedalboard!

Regards,
Arkie Alphita