Tuesday
May272008
The forecast for today: Nerdy with a chance of rock.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008 at 10:32AM
I've threatened, you've asked, and today my girls got up so early that I have more than enough time this morning to write it all down. That's right, it's pedalboard time.
First off, thanks to everybody who came to my show this past Saturday night. It was a good time, Nick and Owen were great, and I got to play my new blue Tele.
Ok, now onto the geekiness. Here's a photo of my big board to begin with...
This board is fundamentally different from anything I've ever used before. Everything revolves around the thin silver strip at the bottom. It's a true bypass strip, with ins and outs for every pedal on the board. The guitar signal goes into the volume pedal, then to the true bypass strip, then out to the amp selector (above the volume).
With the strip, at least the way I use it, you leave all your pedals on all the time. When you click the button assigned to that pedal, the strip opens the path to and from that pedal, otherwise it bypasses it completely. This way, if you're only using one pedal your signal just goes from the volume to the strip to the one pedal to the output. Much, much, much cleaner than if you went through everything turned off.
My output from this board is almost double what it was before, just because the signal isn't getting degraded with each little cable and pedal. And it makes it much easier to change sounds, since everything is right there, you don't have to do weird yoga to get to that switch way over there.
All the pedals that require more than just on/off are in the front row, so I can still turn on the Full Drive's boost, change delay patches, etc... This is easily the most in control I've ever been, and I feel like it's freed me up to lean more on the guitar than the board, in a way that doesn't really make sense.
On to the pedals themselves...
The strip has nine loops (i.e. ins and out for pedals) and a master bypass, which immediately just goes guitar to amp, leaving your settings. Very handy. I've labeled each loop with a number and the name of the pedal. Then I labeled it with the name of the pedal again because I found some glow-in-the-dark tape. Which is super cool.
So we start with the Ernie Ball volume, which has a tuner out going to, wait for it, the tuner. Then we go to the true bypass strip and the first pedal is the AnalogMan "BiComp", a dual channel compressor pedal. I usually leave it on the more typical Ross side, but the Orange Squeeze side is way more intense, and I kick it on for the back half of the "When Will I Run" solo.
The second pedal is the "4-Speed Overdrive" by Tim, the Pedal Doctor. (One of the other great things with this setup is that you don't have to put the pedals in their exact order. Instead you can put them on the board wherever they would best fit, in this case, all the way at the top, where I'd never put something as often used as an overdrive.) The next pedal is the FullTone "FullDrive 2". Live, I usually set the "4-Speed" a little darker and heavier, and leave the "FullDrive" as more open and clean-ish. In sessions, though, they get changed around constantly. They both have so many tone options.
Next up is the Line6 "Echo Park". I used to use the big green Line6 delay, but I don't really love any of the sounds except for the swell, aka auto-volume delay. I got this mini version to just leave on that sound. It's not a bad pedal, actually, a nice surprise.
From there we go all the way up to the top left to the Electro-Harmonix "MicroSynth". This pedal is just plain crazy. I got this during the making of Photographs because Malcolm Burn told me I needed it. Four years later I figured out how to actually use it. Two years after that I finally got it on a board. With this thing your signal is split into four, the octave below, above, the natural range and a square wave. You blend these together and then pick the high and low points of your synth wave (crazy) and then the speed of the filter sweep. I can't even describe what this sounds like, because every time it sounds different. Therein lies the fun. It's always a bit of a surprise.
After that it's the Digitech "Space Station", which I use for a string sound and which Josh told me is almost done. Again. Then it's off to the Carl Martin "Trem o' Vibe", which is a great tremolo and vibrato pedal. I usually use the trem, but both sounds are amazing. It's up front so I can switch between the two sounds.
Then we go to the Boss "GigaDelay", which has the best "Memory Man" and "Space Echo" sounds I've heard besides the real things. And since this is smaller and won't break every six minutes on the road, it's the right thing for the board. There's a small tap tempo button for this right in between the volume pedal and the bypass strip, which has turned out to be a handy spot.
The last pedal is the Option 5 "Destination Rotation", a leslie simulator. You can set the high speed and the low speed and ramp between them. I have it placed so the ramp button is nearest the front. This is the newest addition to the club. After a session for Ben Shive's amazing record where I played through the Leslie at Sputnik for every song, I realized I really needed the ability to have that sound at any time. It's not as amazing as the real thing, but it's pretty dang close. I may try and swap this out with the Micro POG occasionally. Has anybody had any experience with those?
From there it goes to the output selector, a big box made by AnalogMan that Josh at the studio rewired to be 1 in 3 out. Josh's nickname around Sputnik is "Soup" and he decided that this pedal ought to be dubbed "$OUPERTRONiXXX". From this pedal I can go out to the DI for acoustics, the Fender "ProSonic" and/or the BadCat "Cub II".
The board itself is a PedalTrain Pro, which comes in a great hardcase. I love these boards. You can run the cables through the slats of the floor and you can use zip ties as well as velcro to really secure the pedals down. Also, the whole board is powered by a Voodoo Lab "Pedal Power II". Good power makes a HUGE difference. That and good cable, I use George L., helps so much with clarity and openness of the sound. Can't recommend that stuff enough.
Well, I think that's about it. Thanks for indulging me. Feel free to ask any questions. Onward Tone Warriors!!
First off, thanks to everybody who came to my show this past Saturday night. It was a good time, Nick and Owen were great, and I got to play my new blue Tele.
Ok, now onto the geekiness. Here's a photo of my big board to begin with...
This board is fundamentally different from anything I've ever used before. Everything revolves around the thin silver strip at the bottom. It's a true bypass strip, with ins and outs for every pedal on the board. The guitar signal goes into the volume pedal, then to the true bypass strip, then out to the amp selector (above the volume).
With the strip, at least the way I use it, you leave all your pedals on all the time. When you click the button assigned to that pedal, the strip opens the path to and from that pedal, otherwise it bypasses it completely. This way, if you're only using one pedal your signal just goes from the volume to the strip to the one pedal to the output. Much, much, much cleaner than if you went through everything turned off.
My output from this board is almost double what it was before, just because the signal isn't getting degraded with each little cable and pedal. And it makes it much easier to change sounds, since everything is right there, you don't have to do weird yoga to get to that switch way over there.
All the pedals that require more than just on/off are in the front row, so I can still turn on the Full Drive's boost, change delay patches, etc... This is easily the most in control I've ever been, and I feel like it's freed me up to lean more on the guitar than the board, in a way that doesn't really make sense.
On to the pedals themselves...
The strip has nine loops (i.e. ins and out for pedals) and a master bypass, which immediately just goes guitar to amp, leaving your settings. Very handy. I've labeled each loop with a number and the name of the pedal. Then I labeled it with the name of the pedal again because I found some glow-in-the-dark tape. Which is super cool.
So we start with the Ernie Ball volume, which has a tuner out going to, wait for it, the tuner. Then we go to the true bypass strip and the first pedal is the AnalogMan "BiComp", a dual channel compressor pedal. I usually leave it on the more typical Ross side, but the Orange Squeeze side is way more intense, and I kick it on for the back half of the "When Will I Run" solo.
The second pedal is the "4-Speed Overdrive" by Tim, the Pedal Doctor. (One of the other great things with this setup is that you don't have to put the pedals in their exact order. Instead you can put them on the board wherever they would best fit, in this case, all the way at the top, where I'd never put something as often used as an overdrive.) The next pedal is the FullTone "FullDrive 2". Live, I usually set the "4-Speed" a little darker and heavier, and leave the "FullDrive" as more open and clean-ish. In sessions, though, they get changed around constantly. They both have so many tone options.
Next up is the Line6 "Echo Park". I used to use the big green Line6 delay, but I don't really love any of the sounds except for the swell, aka auto-volume delay. I got this mini version to just leave on that sound. It's not a bad pedal, actually, a nice surprise.
From there we go all the way up to the top left to the Electro-Harmonix "MicroSynth". This pedal is just plain crazy. I got this during the making of Photographs because Malcolm Burn told me I needed it. Four years later I figured out how to actually use it. Two years after that I finally got it on a board. With this thing your signal is split into four, the octave below, above, the natural range and a square wave. You blend these together and then pick the high and low points of your synth wave (crazy) and then the speed of the filter sweep. I can't even describe what this sounds like, because every time it sounds different. Therein lies the fun. It's always a bit of a surprise.
After that it's the Digitech "Space Station", which I use for a string sound and which Josh told me is almost done. Again. Then it's off to the Carl Martin "Trem o' Vibe", which is a great tremolo and vibrato pedal. I usually use the trem, but both sounds are amazing. It's up front so I can switch between the two sounds.
Then we go to the Boss "GigaDelay", which has the best "Memory Man" and "Space Echo" sounds I've heard besides the real things. And since this is smaller and won't break every six minutes on the road, it's the right thing for the board. There's a small tap tempo button for this right in between the volume pedal and the bypass strip, which has turned out to be a handy spot.
The last pedal is the Option 5 "Destination Rotation", a leslie simulator. You can set the high speed and the low speed and ramp between them. I have it placed so the ramp button is nearest the front. This is the newest addition to the club. After a session for Ben Shive's amazing record where I played through the Leslie at Sputnik for every song, I realized I really needed the ability to have that sound at any time. It's not as amazing as the real thing, but it's pretty dang close. I may try and swap this out with the Micro POG occasionally. Has anybody had any experience with those?
From there it goes to the output selector, a big box made by AnalogMan that Josh at the studio rewired to be 1 in 3 out. Josh's nickname around Sputnik is "Soup" and he decided that this pedal ought to be dubbed "$OUPERTRONiXXX". From this pedal I can go out to the DI for acoustics, the Fender "ProSonic" and/or the BadCat "Cub II".
The board itself is a PedalTrain Pro, which comes in a great hardcase. I love these boards. You can run the cables through the slats of the floor and you can use zip ties as well as velcro to really secure the pedals down. Also, the whole board is powered by a Voodoo Lab "Pedal Power II". Good power makes a HUGE difference. That and good cable, I use George L., helps so much with clarity and openness of the sound. Can't recommend that stuff enough.
Well, I think that's about it. Thanks for indulging me. Feel free to ask any questions. Onward Tone Warriors!!
Reader Comments (20)
I wonder how much electricity you use up after a show?? I can imagine something like the scene in The Christmas Vacation with the Griswolds when he turns on his house covered in Christmas lights...
andy,
i am a huge fan of your "sound" it is an inspiration and fresh breath of air. i've been listening to your sounds since the days if the Normals and you have such an ear for tone... i wish i could even start to have the tonal ear that you have
The micro POG doesn't have the flexibility of the regular POG. The great thing about the big one, is that it has the detuning octaves. The micro doesn't have this feature, making the 12 and 18 string sound hard to get. Plus, the big one has the filter slider, which is the best thing about that effect IMHO.
"Then we go to the true bypass strip and the first pedal is the AnalogMan “BiComp�, a dual channel compressor pedal. I usually leave it on the more typical Ross side, but the Orange Squeeze side is way more intense, and I kick it on for the back half of the “When Will I Run� solo."
I have a new favorite pedal! .
Nice! Now we need a video demo of you showing off all the sweet sounds you can get.
You mentioned your output is almost double what it was when your signal was going through all the "off" pedals. So now, won't it start to degrade the sound if you turn a bunch of the pedals on? Is there significant volume change between "all pedals bypassed" vs. "many/all pedals on"?
Very cool! I'm a little scared of some similarities between our boards. Hopefully that means I'm doing something right.
I actually much prefer the micro pog to the POG. The "12 string" and "18 string" sounds on the big POG were harsh, brittle, and sounded way too synthed. The micro POG is 1.) smaller, 2.) easier to get a good sound out of, 3.) Sounds more like and octave pedal and less like a 12 string simulator. I used to have a regular POG but sold it, I'm looking into getting a micro POG now. The biggest thing I learned with the POG was; Location Location Location. It needs to be at the front [or close to] of your chain. Once you add distortion, delay, or modulation waves -octave pedals have serious problems tracking...which makes sense. But running the octave pedal after my compressor and eq I had no problems with it tracking.
I've been looking at swaping out my vibrato [I have a modded boss chorus that is now a vibe], and I need a new tremolo. How long have you been using the Trem O Vibe?
Question for the mailbag:
How do you match a tune and a set of lyrics? I have lyrics that have been sitting for far too long because while I have words, I don't have any concept of how to create a melody out of nothing, and the few melodies I do come up with generally don't seem to fit with any of the words I have written down.
So i just end up with a stack of poems when what i'm trying to make is songs.
I hope you're not saying that my "new" Memory Man will break every six minutes.
Now, a question about the board: I'm intrigued that your volume pedal comes first. Isn't the quality of the effect altered by the amount of signal going into the pedal? I typically have my volume pedal last, leaving my guitar volume all the way up, thereby maximizing the effect input and output and control the overll volume last.
Thanks
Who made your bypass strip? I would love to have one of those.
I feel like I'm witnessing a magician revealing his secrets. Very cool. I also would like to know where the bypass strip came from.
There's a Guitar World channel on Joost that has a nice feature on The Edge's full rig that you'd probably dig: http://joost.com/2980019 I bet that thing uses more electricity than my house.
Love the new tele.
Fantastic post. Thanks!
Question,
Did i miss them online or are we awaiting the ask about the pedal board t-shirts?
Thanks for the questions and comments. Let me answer in a big batch.
Matt, you're right. With more pedals engaged you do lose a bit of signal with each. However, with this system you only engage them for the particular sound you want, and so you can adjust it accordingly. When you've got seven pedals on, it's probably a crazy big sound anyway, so the decibels you lose aren't that important.
Josh, I've had the Trem o' Vibe for about a year and I love it. It's so good people actually ask me about it after shows, something that I've never heard about a tremolo. And they're cheap, too. Built like a tank.
Doug, I tried the volume pedal last for a long time, but I realized I never use it for anything besides on/off. Since I have the output switcher, two on/off's at the end is redundant. Having one at the front and one at the end has been really helpful for me. But that's very much about the kind of player you are. I always leave my guitar volume at 10, but I often switch between pickups. Other folks use their volume pot a lot. I think more typically what you say would be the "correct" thing to do.
And Gareth Davies (if that is your real name) the t-shirts will be up on the store when the new site launches. And that is coming faster than you know.
Thanks!
i wanted to comment on the volume pedal thing. i run my volume pedal right after my compressor but before everything else, so i can alter the amount of signal going to my overdrives, allowing me to clean up my tone with my volume pedal, as many people would with the volume knob on their guitar. since the compressor more or less evens out the signal from the guitar, it makes the volume knob less effective for this, and that's where running the volume pedal after the compressor comes in handy for me.
Dude come on.... who made your bypass strip?
Oh yeah, loop-master.com
So, which pedal helps you suppress social interaction and translate english to klingon?
That's the one you loaned me a while ago. I really do need to get that back to you. Sorry I've had it for so long.
No, no the one I loaned you helps you talk to girls. But I do need that back.