The Muso Equipment Nerdery Thread 🎸

[danny la rouge]

Did there used to be a making music sub forum?

No matter, I wish to discuss guitar pedals with fellow nerds.

So, this is my capsule effect pedal board:



I’ve never been big on effects. I’ve had the Fab Tone since the 90s. It’s an old fashioned sound, but it’s part of my sound now, so I have no intention of replacing it.

I should probs swap the positions of the Acoustikar and the Rotosound (cream and pink, in the middle), but I never run the former through the latter, so I’m not sure it matters on such a small board. The boost at the end of the chain is for volume jumps in solos and so on, not for tone.

And that’s all I’ve needed of late. I’ve prided myself on keeping it pared back. (I have a bag with my second shelf effects, which I occasionally swap in. For example a Fender tremolo for that sixties sound).

Now. I’ve been coveting an Electro-Harmonix B9 organ simulator.




And I recently put a bid in on a used one on a well-known market site. If I win the big square bugger, fellow musos, should I place it off the board before the distortion pedals (which I won’t have on when using the B9 pedal), or should I get a bigger board and put it in the conventional place before the reverb?

I’m second guitar in this band, not strictly rhythm, but if it was early Humble Pie I’d be Steve Marriott to my mate’s Frampton. I take the occasional lead break, but I’m mainly Steve Croppering (not as well, mind!) my way through chords, fills and licks under the first guitarist.

I play through a 60s Marshall plexi on a 4 x 12 Marshall wedge, mic’ed up through a PA.

So, thoughts.

 

[danny la rouge]

Also, don’t find it and outbid me you fucks.

 

[kabbes]

Ι’d love to learn to use this stuff. I bought myself an electronic pedal board but it proved too fiddly for me as a pedal novice to actually use to while playing. I’m tempted to just get a pedal to do things but I don’t know what those things would be. I merely yearn.

 

[Chilli.s]

I have an echo pedal then a reverb then the amp

 

[JimW]

*pared back. Sorry to be an arse but it jumped out.

 

[Steel Icarus]

There's no 'should'. Just whatever sounds (ahem) boss.

I've never had a proper board as in fixed to a specific thing, but I have a lot of pedals. I'll have to dig them out later. My setup with three delays, a chorus, and a POG2 octave generator was spacey lol

 

[danny la rouge]

Ι’d love to learn to use this stuff. I bought myself an electronic pedal board but it proved too fiddly for me as a pedal novice to actually use to while playing. I’m tempted to just get a pedal to do things but I don’t know what those things would be. I merely yearn.

I think fiddle would sound amazing through the EH B9!

 

[danny la rouge]

Also, if anyone cares, the Danelectro Fab Tone:

 

[danny la rouge]

Also, @bees can fuck off. I’m not getting a smaller amp.

 

[maomao]

I have tons of pedals but it's all cheap shit. The more fuzz the better. I will post a photo later as an illustration of what not to do.

 

[kabbes]

I think fiddle would sound amazing through the EH B9!

Awesome. I wonder if it would work from an acoustic instrument or whether I would need to use the electric violin? I have a little Yamaha THR5A amp with built-in effects and they just straight up don’t seem to do anything from my main violin, only the electric one.

 

[kabbes]

JFC this pedal board

 

[Chilli.s]

I like the amp up full and the geetaw down low so the distortion is all amp made when I turn up the vol on the guitar as its needed when playing. I think the amp is 1 watt valve into an old 12 inch speaker so full blast aint too loud anyway. Always have a little reverb on but not as an effect as such and dont touch it at all, just leave it on.

I have a few pedals but rarely use them except the echo, an effect I love, wish I had more money to buy a proper echo

Quite like the looper but its not really a pedal board thing either

 

[danny la rouge]

I wonder if it would work from an acoustic instrument or whether I would need to use the electric violin?

If the acoustic violin has a pick-up or on-board mic, in theory the signal will be there for it to work on. But I don’t know enough about violin sound dynamics to say for sure. I know I’ve put acoustic guitars through effects not strictly intended for them in the past, and they can sound awesome. I used to overdrive an electro-acoustic just through an amp in the early 90s, in one band I was in. It was great for the particular sound we were after. Keith Richards famously puts an acoustic through overdrive on recordings. (Often overdriving a cassette recorder to get the sound).

 

[izz]

Ι’d love to learn to use this stuff. I bought myself an electronic pedal board but it proved too fiddly for me as a pedal novice to actually use to while playing. I’m tempted to just get a pedal to do things but I don’t know what those things would be. I merely yearn.

Nothing wrong with Pedal Envy, planning by another name

 

[maomao]

Here's my shoestring effort. Except for the looper nothing on there cost over thirty quid. The Behringer SuperFuzz sounds amazing but the lack of true bypass is a pain as it has to be powered to work even if it's off.

 

[danny la rouge]

Here's my shoestring effort. Except for the looper nothing on there cost over thirty quid. The Behringer SuperFuzz sounds amazing but the lack of true bypass is a pain as it has to be powered to work even if it's off.

View attachment 343846

That looper is TINY!

 

[Steel Icarus]

Think I have one of those Donners somewhere,, a lo-fi pedal. I've got a few Electro-Harmonix pedals but tbh it's been so long I can't remember what I've sold and what I still have. I know I've a POG 2 octave pedal and a Memory Man Deluxe.

 

[maomao]

That looper is TINY

It has eleven memory banks on it. I can't even play eleven different songs.

 

[danny la rouge]

Moar pics pls!

 

[Signal 11]

If I win the big square bugger, fellow musos, should I place it off the board before the distortion pedals (which I won’t have on when using the B9 pedal), or should I get a bigger board and put it in the conventional place before the reverb?

I think I'd want it at the front so it would be like playing the organ through whatever effects you want. It sounds great on that demo.




In the middle is the Mod Duo which is a software based multiFX. You plug it into the computer and drag and drop virtual pedals onto virtual pedalboards. There's a demo here.

On the right is a Zoom B1Four multiFX for bass.

The others are a looper, A/B/Y for switching between amps and the footswitch for the Vox reverb/tremolo.

The Marshall is a 30W transistor amp and the Vox is an AC15.

 

[kabbes]

Not sure how much your eBay bid is Danny, but this second hand one is £155 delivered, if that works for you?

Electro-Harmonix KEY9 Electric Piano Machine | Reverb UK

Shop For New And Used Electro-Harmonix KEY9 Electric Piano Machine

reverb.com

 

[danny la rouge]

Not sure how much your eBay bid is Danny, but this second hand one is £155 delivered, if that works for you?

Electro-Harmonix KEY9 Electric Piano Machine | Reverb UK

Shop For New And Used Electro-Harmonix KEY9 Electric Piano Machine

reverb.com

My bid is less than that. But thanks. It may come to that.

 

[danny la rouge]

Vox is an AC15.

I had one of them back in the early 80s. Don’t know where it went. It’d be worth dosh now.

 

[heinous seamus]

I used to have a fabtone. A bit beefy for the spare room at my mum's tbh

I have a delay, looper, big muff and fuzz/octave. I still haven't found the pedal that covers up my shit guitar playing, though.

 

[danny la rouge]

Does anyone use a compressor, and do you like it? Maybe I’ve never experienced a good one, but I don’t like them.

 

[maomao]

Does anyone use a compressor, and do you like it? Maybe I’ve never experienced a good one, but I don’t like them.

You can see a disconnected one in the picture above. I've never managed to get it to do what I want it to do which is keep everything at the same volume so my single notes are as loud as my chords. It does seem to help a little with sustain but that's it.

 

[kabbes]

You can see a disconnected one in the picture above. I've never managed to get it to do what I want it to do which is keep everything at the same volume so my single notes are as loud as my chords. It does seem to help a little with sustain but that's it.

Is that what a compressor is for, then? Or are there other purposes?

 

[danny la rouge]

Is that what a compressor is for, then? Or are there other purposes?

Aye, well, with the caveat that what things are intended for and the creative ways they are later used are not always the same…

I’m not a sound engineer, so I’ll probably use the wrong terms. But basically if you look at a recorded sound wave, you’ll see peaks and troughs. Compression squashes that wave so there’s less wild variation.

The idea is that you then get a more uniform and in some ways “fuller” sound. So that you can place an instrument in a mix with confidence, and so on. The initial whack when your pick hits the strings isn’t then followed by emptiness as the strum decays.

Now, the characteristics of any sound are those peaks and troughs. And if you lose that initial whack, you get uniformity but also dullness.

The more expensive pedals will allow you to place where in the sound wave you want compression to “start” or have most effect. The cheapest ones just turn the waves into sausages.

In recording speech, I can see the point. We’ve all heard podcasts where compression should have been used. But actually on a guitar effects board, in my experience, it’s probably best avoided.

 

[danny la rouge]

I would just add, that what a skilled recording engineer uses their judgement to selectively apply is going to be different from an “always on” effect that a “listen-to-me” musician uses on stage!