MY CURRENT PEDALBOARD

Hello everyone, I want to share my current pedalboard that I use for practicing, recording and experimenting. It's actually a bit too big for me to carry during a gig, so I mainly use it only at home and I connect it with my Mesa Transatlantic TA-30 amplifier.

Signal Path
From guitar to Mesa TA-30 amp:
Boss GE-7 Equalizer, CAE MC404 Wah, EHX Micro POG, TC Polytune, EHX Doctor Q Envelope Filter, MXR Dyna Comp, EHX Worm, Ibanez AF-2 Airplane Flanger, Maxon OD9 Silvermod, Radial Tonebone Hot British, RC Booster, Morley Volume Plus.

On the FX Loop:
Boss DD-3, EHX Deluxe Memory Man.

Most of the pedals are powered by the 9V Visual Sound One Spot with the exceptions of Radial Tonebone, Deluxe Memory Man and EHX Worm.

Philosophy of my pedalboard
The general idea of this pedalboard is to be able to cover all kinds of popular effects that you usually hear on any guitar oriented music. Doctor Q can do some envelope filter funk songs, while Worm can deliver phaser,  trem and vibrato. On the other hand, OD9 can deliver some bluesy low gain overdrive tone while the Hot British can be cranked up to a very high gain John Petrucci crunch tone. The RC Booster acts as a transparent volume boost, more like a master volume rather than a gain box. MC404 wah can give you either a bright funky wah tone or a warm lead waht tone with a flick of a switch. Deluxe Memory Man will give you a rich dark analog delay tone while the DD-3 can cover more straight forward digital delay tone. AF-2 can act as either flanger or, with the right setting, an analog chorus from the '80s.

Do I need all of those 14 pedals to sound good?
This pedalboard grows from a simple idea that I talked about in a past post about signal path. Essentially, it can be reduced to four aspects with one pedal for each "tone aspect": EQ, Modulation, Overdrive and Delay. However, as we grow in terms of musical taste and tone consciousness, we usually want more choices for each aspect that I mentioned before. I've been very fortunate and blessed to have all these pedals but if the pedalboard is reduced to only 4 pedals to represent each tone aspect, I can still survive.

If you are a beginner in the world of effects, I wouldn't suggest you to get 14 pedals at once; buy just one or two pedals for each of the tone aspects I previously mentioned and then slowly upgrade in the future. Don't buy the cheapest you can get, buy the ones that sound good; buying cheap low quality pedals will give you hard time in the future, trust me.

What pedalboard to choose?
I'm using Gator GPT-Pro 16" x 30" but to be honest it's better if you can build your own simple board because you can save a lot of money unless you want to buy something more fancy like Pedaltrain or other high end pedalboards.

Thanks for reading this post, I hope you enjoy it. Cheers and God bless :)

SIGNAL PATH 101

Hi everyone, today I want to discuss about the so-called "GENERIC SIGNAL PATH" for guitar. Signal path is basically all the stuffs that are between your guitar and your amp or speaker or earphone or whatever device that will generate the sound. Let it be your preamp, your wah, your volume pedal, your FX pedals, your booster, your loop, your switching boxes, they're all part of the signal path.

There is no scientific rule about how to arrange your pedals

People had thousands of different configuration on their pedalboard. Some prefer certain pedals on a spot, others prefer same pedals on different spot. That really depends on a person's need and how they want their signal to sound.

What you need?

The first step on figuring out how to setup your signal path is by knowing what you need. These are what people usually need:

- at least one 'Gain Box' (Distortion, Overdrive, Boost or Fuzz)

- at least one 'Modulation' (Chorus, Flanger, Univibe or Phaser)

- Compressor

- Wah pedal

- at least one 'Time Based' (Delay or Reverb)

- Volume pedal

People go with rack-mounted effects for its superb control, but now stomp boxes are popular again. I'll go explain how I setup my stomp boxes, it's pretty general and you can apply my explanation to rack-mounted effects.

My signal path

On the input plug

Guitar -> Wah -> Overdrive -> Amp

On the FX loop

Send -> Boost -> Volume -> Chorus -> Delay -> Reverb

This is the most generic setup that you can find. You can replace the volume pedal out of the FX loop into the very beginning of the signal path to make it act like your guitar volume knob instead of making it acts like a master volume control. Some artists put wah pedal after distortion to get more extreme wah sound. Chorus or flanger can be put before or after distortion out from the loop to get more wobbly sound.

FX Loop

One thing that I should point out is the fact that I had a preamp pedal that acts as my amp and cabinet simulator. It has the send/return plugs for FX Loops which means you can put some boxes there that you don't want to get mixed with other pedals that you put before the amp. Usually you put delay/reverb pedal on the loop to avoid those pedals from getting affected by the increased gain signal from the overdrive or distortion pedal.

If you don't have FX loop, you can just put everything before the input of the amplifier or preamp. It will sound a bit different and some pedals might not be able to tolerate the amount of gain increase caused by gain boxes on the beginning part of your signal chain. If you do run into this problem, there are some loop boxes available to be placed right before your amp and it will have send/return option for your pedals.

Try to experiment as much as you can

You can start from the most generic signal path that I explained above, but ultimately there is no correct option of placing your FX units. Try to research different setup and see if you can find the best setup for the tone that you're looking for. Pay attention to your pedal requirements as well, sometimes a pedal doesn't want to be placed before of after a specific pedal because it might damage the unit.

That's all for now, I hope you enjoy my post!

Cheers and God bless ! :)

IBANEZ TONE LOK WEEPING DEMON WD7

Tone Chaser Class: Introduction to Wah Pedal 101(skip if you're a tone chaser)
In the world of modern electric guitar music, wah pedals are commonly used in many different areas covering rhythm and lead playing styles. Hendrix was among the first one to use this type of FX and this inspires lots of players nowadays to add wah pedal to their rig.

In the world of serious tone chasers and guitar gear heads, the word WAH will summon a generally known picture in their mind; a picture of dark valley covered with disturbing thoughts of tone sucking creatures that will haunt their precious tone all day all night. I'm sorry, this is a little bit too much but basically most wah pedal sucks your tone even in off-switch position.

Okay...

I got this pedal long time ago since it was the only wah pedal available in my town. I used it back then when I was still playing Guns N' Roses and needed a wah to play Sweet Child of Mine. Then I used this pedal also for Satriani and Vai stuffs.

The thing I like about this wah is the fact that it has automatic mode, you press the rocker and it turns on without having to hit the switch. Also I like the controls that are very flexible. You can cover wide range of frequencies (or Q) and adjust how sharp or wide is the sweep. Other useful control is the low tuning mode to make the wah covers lower frequencies.

I must say I can cover lots of ground using only this wah. No comparison has been made with other pedals but the good thing is I can cover so many frequency sweeps by just changing the knobs and suddenly I have a new sound, almost like having a new wah pedal !

That's kinda cool

Well not everything is cool with this pedal. They said that this pedal is using true bypass switching. NOT TRUE. I recognize that this pedal sucks tone when turned off. It's been proven, I can hear the difference(hopefully I'll post some audio clips soon). Well, it's not too much since this pedal is using buffered switching system and it's impossible to use 3PDT or 4PDT switch since it won't be compatible with the automatic on/off mode. But it bothers me to be honest since I am using low output pickups.

Oh and keep in mind that this pedal is not funk ready; it adds small amount of gain to your tone when engaged, so this can only be good if you're using an already saturated signal. If you want a super clean funk wah tone, this pedal won't make you happy.

Not true bypass :(, but is it worth?

Roughly less than $100.00 for a new one, this is where it starts to get tricky. If you really need to use multiple wah sounds and you don't mind buffered switching that's sucking your tone a little bit then this pedal will totally worth your money. But if you really want to keep the integrity of your whole signal chain, then I don't really think this is the best choice in this price. Add $60 bucks and you already got a boutique wah with true bypass switching called Budwah by Budda, check it out. I haven't got a chance to try one, but Andy Timmons(yes, him again) uses one and it sounds great in my opinion (FYI boutique wah can reach $200.00 or more).

Final verdict, from 0 to 10

*sigh* I can only give this pedal a 7.5. What's keeping it from getting lower score is the great enclosure, the auto on/off, the flexibility, the Tonelok(press the knob down and you won't hit it accidentaly with your feet) and the size of the rocker that fits perfectly to my right foot.

If this pedal comes with true bypass with no gain reduction, I'll give it an 8.7. If this pedal comes with gain reduction and no true bypass, I'll give it a 9.2. Comes with both, 10 if it does not pass $160.00.

Cheers and God bless :)

A TILTED VOX AMP AND AN ARMOR ALL SPRAY

One thing about tone chasing: it's endless, just like trying to chase your own tail and it will drive you crazy, both physically and financially. You will surely get better tone and you will learn so much about your guitar by doing that, but what matters the most is your final result.

It's good to make significant changes sometimes, for example upgrading from a cheap solid state amp into a fully loaded tube amp, or maybe replacing a tone-coloring pedal with something more decent. But trying to exhaust yourself trying to find a perfect tone is not going to happen quickly and in exhaustive way.

If you are concerned about the way your signal chain sounds, you should first worry about how you play your guitar. Observe basic simple techniques that will beautify your guitar playing. A player who makes great vibrato with a $85.00 Walmart Strat plugged into a cheap practice amp will still sound so much better compared to a player who tries to mask his bad technique using a $3000.00 guitar using exotic woods plugged into an echoplex that's connected to a Vintage Modern Marshall.

I want people not to get obsessed with gears but to get obsessed trying to make their playing to sound great. Guitar playing is not all about live action coolness or bragging expensive rig, it's more about how you put beautiful compositions into someone's ear.

Even the King of Tone himself said the same thing haha !

Cheers and God bless :D !