Pedal Line Friday – 1/22 – Mark Grundhoefer

Today’s pedal line is from Mark Grundhoefer (@markgrundhoefer). 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.

As a performer and educator, my pedalboard is always changing when new equipment comes out, old vintage pedals are found, and unique sounds are required.  This is my current setup, and although a few pedals have been added and subtracted over the past few months, there have been a core group of stompboxes that have remained with me over the years.  The music I play on a daily basis requires a very pure tone which is why I have spent so much time searching for pedals that deliver clean uncompromised sounds.  Analog is a big selling point when looking for pedals and while there are a few on my board that are not “true” but high quality digital bypass, everything else is in my signal chain is true bypass.

I play an upgraded Brian Moore “strat” style guitar with an HSH pickup configuration and a coil tap on the Sheptone in the bridge.  It has a synth pickup built in and sometimes I’ll run through a Roland GR-20 Guitar Synthesizer with my pedalboard in the effects loop.

The first pedal on my board is the super clean Keeley 2 Knob Compressor.  This thing can really add a lot of sustain to your leads or round out a rhythm guitar. Next I go into my newly acquired Rockbox Boiling Point Overdrive.  Seriously, what can I say…this thing is the real deal.  So many tonal options.  It took the place of my Keeley TS9 Baked Mod.  It’s that good! Then I run into one of my favorites: the Xotic AC Booste.  This pedal is usually left on since it cleans up so well with the volume knob. The EWS Fuzzy Drive is next followed by the Arion Chorus which was modded by EWS to be true bypass and to kind of beef up the tone.  Two great products from EWS! After that I go through a Dunlop 95Q Switchless Wah.  This is spring loaded so as soon as I step on the wah it is engaged.  No need to slam down the front.

The signal moves to the other side of my board and goes through the MXR Phase 90, EVH style, and then into an MXR Carbon Copy Analog Delay. I love the Carbon Copy for lead work. And the trim pots on the inside are easily tweaked to add a bit more modulation.  Nothing can match that analog delay sound, but for rhythm stuff I use the TC Electronics Nova Delay so that I have access to the tap tempo.  Plus, for a digital pedal, it’s extremely high quality.

The Electro Harmonix Pulsar Tremolo is next followed by your basic Ernie Ball Volume Pedal.  I use the tuner out of the volume pedal to go into a simple Boss hand held tuner.

The entire board is wired with Lava solderless patch cables.  I highly recommend those as they are an extremely easy DIY cable package as well as super high quality.  No loss of tone from one end of my board to the other. I use an SKB pedalboard with velcro attachments.  SKB is an amazing company with some of the best customer support I have had the pleasure of  dealing with.

Thanks for checking out my equipment and visit my website
www.myspace.com/markgrundhoefer or follow me on twitter www.twitter.com/markgrundhoefer for live show listings as well as info on lessons in the Greater Los Angeles area.