Pedal Boards Part 2

After you have your pedal board, you are now ready to place your pedals onto it. But wait! You realize that you don’t really know what should go where and what order to chain them in! Luckily you found this blog where I am about to tell you how to “properly” set up and order your pedals. I use the “” marks because it isn’t just black or white, yes or no. Many guitarists in past have developed their tone by putting their pedals in an order that is different, but for the purpose of quickly ordering your board to get you back to making sweet sweet music these are just loose guidelines to follow.

To give credit where credit is due, most of the following information I learned a little while ago from a wondrous pedal maker and modifier named Robert Keeley. Here’s a link to his website for a more technical and in depth explanation: www.robertkeeley.com/faq.php#Effect Order.

The great phrase that I learned from him to help me remember what order to put effects pedals in is this: Which Chain Of Effects Pedals Makes Life Easy. It’s a phrase just like the one you learned in grade school for remembering what order to do math in (I think that was Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally). Anyways, the phrase stands for Wah, Compression, Overdrive, EQ, Pitch, Modulation, Level, and Echo.

I’ll go over just briefly what these include. Wah pedals are any pedal that you either sweep with your foot and it exemplifies a particular frequency or a pedal that does this electronically. For example: a Dunlop Crybaby or a MXR Phase 90 (like Van Halen uses). Compression pedals essentially “compress” your signal so that if your level exceeds a certain limit, it only lets that set amount through. A couple examples of compressors are the Boss CS-3 Compression Sustainer and the MXR Dyna Comp. If you couldn’t tell, compressors typically have some form of the word compressor in the name so they aren’t too hard to pick out. Overdrive pedals, also known as distortion pedals, essentially distort your signal or boost the overdrive to what it would be like if you were running your amp on 11 without having to kill your ears. From there you have EQ which shapes your tone or the tone of your Overdrive. Pitch pedals change the pitch of your guitar, for instance octave pedals or vibrato and tremolo pedals. Modulation pedals come next and give you unique and odd sounds like flangers or synth type sounds. Level pedals or volume pedals are quite simple: they just control the level of your output or your volume. And last but certainly not least is another pretty self explanatory category: Echo. Echo pedals basically just echo or repeat what you play just like yelling at the top of a mountain and hearing yourself over and over a couple times.

Remember, this is just a guideline to ordering your pedals. Putting them in a different order will still work, but you may run into some problems or get a unique or different outcome from doing so. Until next time, happy playing and keep rocking out \m/(>.<)\m/

Pedal Boards Part 1

Now first of all, you have to decide if you want to go the money saving route and build your own, or if you have the financial backing to buy one that has been made by some company. There is no right or wrong choice and both work great. I personally have gone all of these years with using my own home made pedal board up until Sunday when I talked myself into buying one due to the lack of space on my home made one. This brings me to my first point. Unless you never see yourself ever buying another pedal for the rest of your life, LEAVE EXTRA ROOM ON YOUR BOARD!!! Believe me, you’ll thank me later.

For those of you who have decided to build your own, it is very simple. Take all of your pedals and lay them on the floor and measure how much space you need. Then add a little extra space to that measurement for future purchases. After you have your measurements, go to your local hardware store and buy a piece of wood that size or larger so that you can cut it to the proper size. Also while you are there you’ll need to grab a package of Velcro, a can of primer, a handle that you can screw into the board, and your favorite color of spray paint to add your own personal flair. Now all you have to do is cut the board if necessary, prime and paint it, install the handle, and apply the Velcro to the board and the bottoms of your pedals preferably in two or three rows.

For those of you who decided to buy your board, there are some things you need to take into consideration as well. Once again, how much space do you need and then add some additional space to it. Then go onto musiciansfriend.com or whatever online music store you prefer and search around for what you can afford and will fit all your pedals plus one or two more. Just as a reference, Pedaltrain and SKB make great pedal board, but you can also find a good selection of pedal boards and pedal board cases on Ebay stores.

Either route you decide will work great for you. It is really all about personal preference and how much cash you have available at the time. Like I said, I, as well as many of my friends, have used homemade boards for a number of years now and they have served me well along with keeping my wallet full, but factory made boards are pretty sweet too.

Pedal Boards

Just like I promised, the next two posts are dedicated to all of you who are looking to build and/or set up your very own pedal board. To shorten the amount of time it takes for you to learn what you are looking for and get back to jammin’, this post will be in two different parts: building/buying a pedal board, and the “proper” way to set up your pedal board.

Welcome!

Welcome to all you guitar and gear addicts out there! In case you have already forgotten what you were searching for, or just stumbled upon this by accident, this blog is about gear, gear, and more gear: Guitars, Effects, and Amplifiers. I’ll be posting reviews and tips on gear for you beginners and intermediate players out there on finding the best gear for the tone you are looking for. Pros, unless you’re looking for a good laugh or just bored out of your mind on the tour bus, go ahead and hit the back button because if you don’t already know 99.9% of what’s to come you don’t deserve to be where you are. But, that doesn’t mean that I don’t know what I’m talking about. A little background on me; I’ve been playing guitar for close to 10 years now and have come across a vast variety of equipment over the years , searching for that tone that sounds like heaven’s angels to my ears. Everyone’s perfect sound is unique unto themselves so what I might find trash may be your treasure, but I will try to refrain from any bias I might have on a particular piece of gear and give you my personal experience with it, as well as the details and specs. Over my time as a guitar addict, I’ve done countless hours of research on company websites looking at specifications and been to numerous guitar stores playing that equipment to get the first hand feel. To give you a little heads up as to what to look forward to, upcoming posts will include; A beginners guide to buying your first guitar, How to ‘properly’ set up and arrange your pedal board, and a guide to what amp to buy next to get the sound you want. I always welcome comments and constructive criticism so please feel free to let me know what you think, and share your knowledge and two cents worth because we are all here to learn more about being an all around better guitarist. Until next time, keeping rocking \m/(>.<)\m/