Building my first pedal board part 1
I've never really been an effect guy other than distortion or overdrive. Actually for a long time the only pedal I had was a Danoelectro Daddy O and a crybaby wah. Most often I wouldn't even use the wah. A few years ago I bought myself a Boss ME50 and it's been a very fulfilling piece of musical gear. Part of the reason I bought the ME50 was that I've been playing lead in a band and I needed a few more effects to compliment what we were doing. The other reason was money, I bought the multi-effects board to stop myself from buying pedals. I work at a music store and there's a violent amount of eye candy and good deals that come in every day. This was my way of stopping myself going crazy!
The Boss ME50 is going to continue to be one of my main recording boards. It's infinitely handy to be able to pull up a specific sound (garage rock, dreamy weirdness, etc) and start recording. (more on that later). The downfall in a live band rehearsal setting was I really wanted two drive options, and different gain staging. I could create patches in the ME50 and cycle thru them, but this felt like more work than I needed. Having to remember patch B2 was the lead part for song 18 doesn't work with my ADHD brain. So it's friggin perfect board for recording and pretty decent for most things in a rehearsal space except GETTING OVER EVERYONE ELSE'S VOLUME TO PLAY THE TERRIBLE LEAD I MADE UP ON THE SPOT.
CUE FALLING INTO PEDAL BOARD MANIA.
In the last few months I've started to fall down the "build a pedal board" road. I think for the most part the reason for this is the following:
I've been fighting a lot of depression, anxiety over my Dad getting dementia. Because of this I've been trying to find something to occupy my brain space. Previously this was D&D. I tried to get back into it but it didn't really have the same gleam as it used to for me.
Enter falling into the trap of watching all of the wonderful JHS pedal's youtube videos.
I decided after a lot of research I needed a fairly basic board that I'm hoping will fit onto the Pedaltrain Nano+
Pedaltrain has this fantastic website where you can plop virtual pedals onto a board and see if everything will fit. https://pedalboardplanner.com/
Here is what I've come up with so far.
So it's pretty basic! Thus far I've acquired the EHX East River Drive, which is basically a tube screamer clone, the Mod 11 which will cover my love of tremolo and a TC Electronic Flashback delay that will replace the JHS Delay on the image above.
Next on the list is:
A noise gate (I play noisey fender guitars)
A soul food (because you need a Klon Clone!)
And that's the gist. Of course I have to get a board as well. Now as a newly minted member of the "pedal nerd community" I solemnly swear that this will be it! I won't buy anymore pedals after I complete this board. This one board will rule them all.
Who am I kidding?
Here's a clip of my band in action. I've dubbed us the "Unravelling Weedons" which is a reference to the Travelling Wilbury's and the street we practice on.
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