Pedal Line Friday – 5/20 – Mustafa Icil

Today’s Pedal Line Friday submission is from Mustafa Icil. 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,

First of all, thanks for starting this absolutely great thread. Fantastic to see different people’s pedalboards and hear their love and hate relationships with their pedals 🙂

Attached is the photo of my pedalboard. I have two setups, one at home and another in a small studio where I practice with my band. In the studio, I have a Gibson Les Paul Studio and a Marshall JVM 205C. At home, I have my Gibson Les Paul Standard and a small practice amp (still trying to decide on a new low watt tube amp to replace the existing one). Since I did not want to build two separate pedalboards for both home and studio, I preferred a portable but functional mini pedalboard that I can easily carry around.

In front of the amp, I have:

– TC Electronics Bonafide Buffer: All my pedals are true bypass. This buffer gives me an ease of mind. No more worrying about a signal degradation through true bypass pedals and long cables. What you give in is what you get out thanks to the buffer 🙂

– Polytune Mini Tuner: Accurate, true bypass, bright and silent… And I love the PolyTune technology where you can check the tunings of all your strings at once. Saves sooo much time !

– TC Spark Mini: I use this pedal to push my crunch channel to further overdrive for leads. It gives a “spark” to the channel beyond just more overdrive. I also tried MCR Boost/Line Driver and EP Booster for this purpose before, but I came back to this one… gives a smoother boost with a bit of shine which is great for leads. Also the momentary switch function is a killer… very useful for short licks.

-  Xotic SL Drive: I fully use and prefer amp distortion but I am keeping this pedal as a backup when I have to play in a studio without an amp of my choice. Tried many distortion and overdrive pedals. This one seems to respond and sound like a Marshall more… as much as a pedal can. I use it with the Xotic Voltage Doubler which doubles the voltage to 18V. Not a major hearable difference for me between 9V and 18V operation but the feel is better with 18V… seems to be more punchy with the extra headroom.

In the FX loop of the amp, I have:

– TC Electronics Flashback Mini: I am not a delay tweaker. I choose a toneprint I like and use it with minor adjustments using the knobs, so the mini version of Flashback is perfect for me. Currently I use it with the Analog delay mode… gives a better ambience than digital delay modes.

– TC Electronic Ditto Looper: Helps to practice at home. Extremely easy one button operation which I love, but this simplicity makes it impossible to use it live. Very difficult to turn on and off with a single button while playing guitar and trying to keep in pace with the band… but at home… must have pedal for practice.

All my pedals sit on a Pedaltrain Nano+ pedalboard and they are powered with a single high current pedal and a daisy chain power cable… did not have any need for an isolated power supply so far.

Cheers !

Mustafa Icil
www.mustafaicil.com