Finished??!! (Rig Update Part 1….The Board)

In keeping with the theme of changing mindsets from ‘look how cool my rig is’ to ‘how best can my rig help the music (and in turn, glorify God) in tone, versatility, reliability, and playability’, it’s rig posting time. It’s been about a two year process for me, but I am finally close to finishing…….. well, I’ve been around long enough now to know that a guitarists’ rig is never finished. Nope, never. I’ve thought I was finished about 37 times in the last 5 years of tone journey (more if you include the first 5 years of playing where I would inform everyone that pedals were cheating, and good guitarists’ didn’t need them, and then proceed to try to emulate phase and rhythmic delay sounds without pedals while botching immensely some Eddie Van Halen solo….. oh ya….. those were the days.) So, probably not finished, but the closest I’ve been in a long while.

So, first off in the Rig Update Series is the pedalboard. If tone is made up of Mind–>Hands–>Guitar–>Pedalboard–>Amp–>Cab, the board is probably the least important of all of these. It’s important, but not as important as the other factors. But I’m starting with it, because, you gotta admit, the boards are the coolest. That’s what people ask you about after the show. They’ll say, ‘Hey, which pedal gives you that great clean sound?’ And you’ll say, ’Actually, this bypass box takes all my pedals out of my signal for my clean tone, so that’s just the sound of the guitar and amp.’ And they’ll say, ‘Ya, but which one of these pedals is your clean tone?’ So…….it’s the coolest part.

Here’s my current board, as of today:

(Big, unfortunately, but relatively simple)

 

(I meant this to be a cool angle shot, and failed.)

 

(And of course, the obligatory space ship shot. The lights on the two Timelines flash, and I missed most of their lights when I snapped the picture. Blast.)

So, yes, it’s still big, but only because I have the unfortunate fate of liking big pedals. Every time I try out pedals, it’s like……you gotta be kidding me. My favorite sound came out of the blasted biggest one again. Oh, well. But if you count ‘em up, there’s only 11 effects including the volume pedal, 2 bypass loops, 2 midi switchers, a tuner, and the pedal power-er underneath the tier.

It’s simple, quiet, versatile, playable, and lets my guitars and amp do the tone work. See, my mindset has come to be (for now) that the best tone you can have will come from the guitar straight into the amp. However, in a lot of modern music, you need some effects. So, you try and place them into your chain as inobtrusively as possible. So, the bypass loopers (grey ones in bottom left) allow me to take all my pedals out of the signal chain, so there is no excess cable length and circuitry to bog down my guitar signal. Currently, I’m not using any buffers or clean boosts either.

Compare that with my board two years ago:

(Scary……fun, but holy tone suck, Batman!)

There’s a Memory Man delay/chorus under the orange and black boxes at the top left of the board that split my signal to go into two amps. So, in this one, signal went into the fuzz (little electrical box), into the blue looper, down into the grey looper on the lower tier, into the Fatdrive clean boost, into the grey looper on the upper tier, and then into the Memory Man. Not so simple, and some definite tone suck.

So, here’s how my current board lays out.

Signal goes into:

Loop-Master 4 bypass loop box with tuner mute and master bypass–>

Loop-Master 6 bypass loop box with master bypass

And all (except like, two, that I still need to change out) Lava ELC cables. Very nice cable with no tone suck, but not adding their own highs to make up for tone suck. Transparent…..yikes, I use that word way too much.

And that’s it. Much simpler, cleaner, and more toneful. The first Loop-Master box is the grey one at the bottom middle. It’s my overdrive loop box. I have fuzz, overdrive w/ switchable boost, heavier overdrive/distortion, and a solo boost. The master bypass is quite useful if I’m stacking overdrives….means I can switch them all off in one click. And the tuner mute keeps the tuner out of my signal chain, and also allows me to mute my guitar, as I don’t keep the volume pedal in my chain anymore.

The second Loop-Master box takes care of my effects (as opposed to drive pedals). I have phase, tremolo, volume pedal, rhythmic delay & ambient delay (in one loop), modulation & recording loops (one pedal does both), and chorusy delay. And loops four and five have very little to no tone suck, so I leave them on most of the time, and use one of the delays as an always on, low in the mix, sound. Really adds some warmth and depth. 

And I power everything with a Furman Power Conditioner Pro in a rack. Really important for some of the high powered delays. The Diamond Memory Lane and both Damage Control Timeline’s liek their own power. And the rest of the pedals are powered by a Voodoo Labs Pedal Power 2+ underneath the rig. I had to sell some pedals to to get the power taken care of, but it quiets your rig so much. It’s definitely been worth it.

So, this is the part where, if you don’t want gross tech specs, you can just jump to the ’splendid’ part below. ‘Cause I’m gonna list my whole chain and their purposes. Yikes.

Signal from guitar–>

Loop-Master 4 loop bypass box–>

–>Tuner out/mute–>Peterson Strobostomp 2 (this my mute switch, and I tune on it, too. I have learned to never, ever underestimate the beauty of being in perfect tune at all times. Just my opinion, but you should always have a tuner easy to tune with silently and at a moment’s notice. And the Peterson, though expensive for a tuner, is extremly accurate. I’d sell a delay if I had to to buy this and stay in tune)

–>Loop 1–>homemade (but not by me) Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face clone (germanium fuzz for nice, sweet, modulated and harmonic, saturated dirt sounds…… I use this for a lot of swells and such, as well as some just classic dirt and some weird stuff. It really takes on a life of its own, especially in providing feedback. I don’t completely ‘get’ this pedal yet. Fun to experiment with.

–>Loop 2–>Paul Cochrane Tim overdrive (light, indie overdrive with solo/distortion boost switch….. my main overdrive…..really transparent…… sounds like your guitar’s and amp’s tone, just overdriven)

–>Loop 3–>Hermida Mosferatu (beautiful, harmonic heavier overdrive/distortion….. clean, glassy, and full….. I use this for really driven sounds, as well as leads)

–>Loop 4–>SIB Varidrive with ECC81 tube (my solo boost…….. I leave it on the high gain setting and it just sings for solos…… cuts through the mix beautifully, and sounds really clean but still saturated…… has some compression to it which makes it not as desireable for me as an overdrive, but very desireable as a solo boost high on the neck….. the ECC81 tube is important, because the stock ECC83 has too much grain and grit in my humble opinion……. doesn’t really matter what pedal is on when you stack this, it just kinda takes over)

–>Loop-Master 6 loop bypass box–>

–>Loop 1–>Subdecay Quasar phaser (warmest and most useable phase sounds I’ve found in this small of a box….. sounds good fast and slow, and will go really slow, too…… also hasa mix knob which is very useful to hide it in the background of layers……I use it mostly for ambient stuff, though….. sometimes for vibe-ish chords)

–>Loop 2–>Guyatone Vintage Tremolo (probably the cheesiest pedal I own as far as name and color goes, but best sounding trem ever. I’ll use it for slicing sounds, rhythmic tremolo at moderate speeds to sit in the background, and for nice, slow throb)

–>Loop 3–>Ernie Ball volume pedal junior (best volume I’ve found, but it does suck some tone, so I stick it in a loop…..I only use it for swells and builds…..some sets it will never get turned on, but some sets I need it constantly…..good throw to it)

–>Loop 4–>Damage Control Timeline (my main delay…… I have to do a separate post on all the stuff this thing can do, but it’s got everything you could want…… and 128 presets that I control with the Rocktron Midi Mate at the bottom right…… I program my whole worship setlist into this thing…… dotted eighths, reverse, swells, multi-tap, modulation, whatever you want….. love this delay)

                –>Diamond Pedals Memory Lane 1 (same loop as the Timeline) (I use this for ambient delays that need huge, deep modulation sounds and also for rhythmic playing or solos that just need something more….. the tap tempo is invaluable…….works great for single strummed chords, too……. amazing analog delay)

–>Loop 5–>Damage Control Timeline (I use this Timeline for recorded loops as it has a really, really good and touch sensitive phrase sampler in it…… I also use it for modulation effects….. reverb, chorus, ambient delays…….seriously, an amazing delay…..and again, 128 presets that I control with the Tech 21 Midi Mouse)

–>Loop 6–>1985 Arion SAD-1 analog delay (I use it sparingly for washy, chorusy sounds on swells, and also to be able to switch the Timeline’s loop recorder off a little less abruptly)

–>Amp.

So that’s the long of it. There’s a ton of information here, and I only delved slightly into the mindset stuff, so hopefully you can skim through it and glean whatever you want. If you read the whole thing, you’re probably a guitarist as crazy into gear as I am.

More worship music mindset stuff to come, as well as a post on Guitars, and Amps in this series.

Splendid.

Karl.