Re: your effects setup?

[F15hface]

My distortion wasn’t doing it in a band context and I remembered that I don’t really care about delay so the board has been jiggled:



Got the monument on there because I was missing tremolo, and brought the rat in for high gain because it just works.

[marqueemoon]

brought the rat in for high gain because it just works.

Yep. I have swapped many pedals in for this job and always come back to a Rat. Nice setup.

[crazyzeke]

Lack of delay aside (hehe ) that's a good board. I think the HF-2 is an underrated pedal, certainly whips the BF-2 (hi-band flanging is the only kind I like otherwise I go for phaser, I want it to colour the guitar tone not be the guitar tone), and almost no-one ever went wrong with a RAT. Which JHS pedal is that?

[F15hface]

Lack of delay aside (hehe ) that's a good board. I think the HF-2 is an underrated pedal, certainly whips the BF-2 (hi-band flanging is the only kind I like otherwise I go for phaser, I want it to colour the guitar tone not be the guitar tone), and almost no-one ever went wrong with a RAT. Which JHS pedal is that?

I knew the lack of delay would an anathema to a lot of OSG. What you say about flanger is exactly why I got the HF-2, I haven’t exactly set it for subtlety but it feels a lot more transparent that other flangers on similar settings would.

No JHS on the board atm, which pedal are you referring to?

[crazyzeke]

I knew the lack of delay would an anathema to a lot of OSG. What you say about flanger is exactly why I got the HF-2, I haven’t exactly set it for subtlety but it feels a lot more transparent that other flangers on similar settings would.

No JHS on the board atm, which pedal are you referring to?

The red one with the three white controls and the "kindly remember" text on the top, for some reason I always think that's a Josh pedal

With the delay that's more teasing - up until recently I used to practice Jag -> clean boost -> practice amp with gain/master volume, it's only recently I've gone for the Affordaboard which can have up to 3 delays on it, cascading into each other, and all sounds great in the rehearsal room too, even the Daddy-O pedal which didn't sound as good at lower volumes comes alive when there's drums and bass to bounce off of.

[F15hface]

I knew the lack of delay would an anathema to a lot of OSG. What you say about flanger is exactly why I got the HF-2, I haven’t exactly set it for subtlety but it feels a lot more transparent that other flangers on similar settings would.

No JHS on the board atm, which pedal are you referring to?

The red one with the three white controls and the "kindly remember" text on the top, for some reason I always think that's a Josh pedal

Ah yeah, that’s a Klon KTR. I figured it l if I was going to try the whole Klon thing I should do it properly, and after stumbling upon one in stock for retail when used ones were £500 and also very sleep deprived I went for it. Great pedal.

[i love sharin foo]

Today I swapped the Big Muff out for my Lovetone Cheese Source, so this is already out of date. The Big Muff is one that I built into a gutted enclosure. It’s a Bubble Font. The old Fender Tube Reverb is downstream of course. I hardly ever play without it. The lowend response on the Carmen Ghia is super fat, so I hooked up the old MXR eq to tweak it a bit.

[sal paradise]

Today I swapped the Big Muff out for my Lovetone Cheese Source, so this is already out of date. The Big Muff is one that I built into a gutted enclosure. It’s a Bubble Font. The old Fender Tube Reverb is downstream of course. I hardly ever play without it. The lowend response on the Carmen Ghia is super fat, so I hooked up the old MXR eq to tweak it a bit.

Great photo

Looks like you’re going to need a third board

[zhivago]

Fuzz-tastic, as always, Justin!!!!

[crazyzeke]

Looks like you’re going to need a third board

Yeah he does... in an ideal world I'd have 3-4 pedal boards and about 6 amps, but it would be a nightmare to sort out at gigs (basically impossible at smaller venues)

[i love sharin foo]

I am finally at the point in my life where I realize that NO gear is going to make me a better player. Nothing will make me sound like someone else beyond the most basic things. The only way I’m going to get to where I want to go is paying my dues by practicing and learning as much as I possibly can. And that is what I’ve been doing for months now and I have no plans to let up. With that said, I’m fortunate and grateful to have a lot of the gear that I do. It took a long time for all this stuff to pile up like it has hehe. I have plenty of room, cables, and power supplies to run really ridiculously gigantic setups, so what the hell it’s nice to not beat myself up trying to figure which one or two Fuzz Faces sound best or something like that. I just hook up both. If I were venturing out of the basement to go jam somewhere, I figure I could easily get by with only 4 or 5 pedals probably. Good amps do most of the heavy lifting as far as my favorite tones go. I’m just glad to not be stuck in the rut where I think a certain effect is going to work wonders for me then move on to the next one when I’m still the same player I was before.

[crazyzeke]

That was a beautifully introspective post so I'm going to try to tread lightly and give good advice because "it's not the gear" is one of the greatest epiphany moments in guitar playing that I personally have ever experienced.

I am finally at the point in my life where I realize that NO gear is going to make me a better player.

Correct, gear can often be a crutch and getting past that point can be liberating when you make peace with the realisation.

Nothing will make me sound like someone else beyond the most basic things.

Your playing is informed by everyone you were influenced by so you will by proxy sound like them, but hopefully also like yourself, and that's the best thing. Copying other people gets you only so far, but when you realise a common theme to things you like about the guitar, you can go after a concept rather than a specific sound or player.

For example, I'm massively in love with jazz chords/extensions and how to use them in rock/pop for flavour but not draw too much attention. The players who got me here include Andy Summers and James Dean Bradfield, they were the jumping off point, but because it made me want to study chord theory and looking at how pianists approach it (tight clusters are important for minimal hand movement so good ones are using inversions all the time, or missing out notes that other instruments have covered already) I ended up learning more than I would have just aping someone else's playing style - I'd have the end result (the sound) but I wouldn't understand the why, and honestly the why is the real knowledge.

The only way I’m going to get to where I want to go is paying my dues by practicing and learning as much as I possibly can. And that is what I’ve been doing for months now and I have no plans to let up.

This is wonderful, and you should keep at it as long as it's fun, you know? Taking the pressure off of yourself so you are learning and practicing, applying what you're learning, but keeping it spontaneous. Sometimes writing something interesting is as simple as learning or discovering a new chord/scale and just playing around with it.

I’m just glad to not be stuck in the rut where I think a certain effect is going to work wonders for me then move on to the next one when I’m still the same player I was before.

This is why I'm a big believer in no rig or only one pedal - I used to practice just guitar -> amp for years, because then the challenge is making the guitar parts interesting with no pedals to hide behind. I even did it last night when I was retuning the Jag/Meteora to Eb for the paid gig tonight. Initially going "oh I miss the clean boost and the stereo amp setup with chorus blah blah blah" but then I was like, work with what you have. And proceeded to play funk for an hour on the Meteora, chuckling about how it sounded ridiculous and Fenders are just the silliest sounding guitars (thin, twangy, lots of attack not enough sustain) but somehow it works and they're awesome.

[Shadoweclipse13]

So, with the house finally starting to take shape and get a bit more organized since the move, I'm finally getting around to building and planning out my patchbay pedal setup. I've got a question from those if you who've either done something like this, or have dealt with noise in your studio.

I've had this idea for a while that below the server racks that my pedals will be on, I'd have a footswitch looper (GigRig Quartermaster 6), so I could patch in a footswitch for performance-based stuff. But to do that, that would entail having a send and return from a patchbay down go each loop of the Quartermaster, which would be a lot of cable for each pedal in a loop. Something like this:
Signal (from guitar) > Patchbay send to Quartermaster main input > Quartermaster loop send back to patchbay > patch cable over to pedal input from Patchbay > pedal out back into Patchbay > patch cable to Quartermaster send from patchbay > Quartermaster main output back to Quartermaster main return patchbay > patch cable to patchbay main output (to amp).

I'm mostly worried about the added noise and signal loss just to be able to have a pedal be footswitchable. So I'm wondering, those of you who've recorded things in a studio or at home writing an album, how often do you really switch pedals on or off during recording? Would having this option really be worth the extra cable and potential noise?

I do realize that I could re-amp things if I wanted to add an effect to an already recorded track, or if I really wanted to be able to turn pedals on or off, in theory I could take the pedal off the rack, and just put it on a simple pedalboard for the recording.

For the record, I *will* be putting the pedals on a rack and hooked up to a patchbay, because I almost exclusively play at home, by myself. The only question is whether to add the option for footswitching or not.

EDIT: I could also add a buffer or two for the whole thing is the only issue was signal loss/degradation as well. I've been thinking about that. I will be having my recording loopers on the floor and hooked up to a patchbay, so I may have some signal degradation anywho. Just trying to minimize it wherever I can, and save some money on cables and little things like that wherever I can too :

EDIT: Sorry, I've had a drink on my day off and my mind is all over the place I should say that I'm not just recording either. This whole setup is for me to just jam and practice in my basement as well. So, there *could* be a bit of fun playing a song and being able to switch pedals on and out during a song. But again, I haven't decided if I really want to have the footswitch looper hooked up to the patchbay or not, and I could always put together a little board for small stuff if needed.