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 :)

MXR CARBON COPY DELAY M169

I tested this guy on a real gig just this evening on my church and I have tons of things to say but I'll keep it as short as possible. Enjoy my review :)

Another delay pedal?

Yes. To be more exact: another true analog delay pedal with true bypass. Remember my Electro Harmonix Memory Boy review last month? Well, this is actually kind of similar like that.

This thing packs lots of features in a relatively small foot print. It's very easy to use and it has the same size as your nano-sized EHX pedals. The regen knob is for the feedback time, mix is for dry vs wet and of course delay knob is for the delay time. It has a modulation switch that turns on chorus-like effect on the repeats to emulate the famous tape echo effect. This thing is not 100% true bypass by the way, it has what they call a hard-wired bypass. I don't know what it is, but this doesn't seem to suck a very significant amount of tone so it's still better compared to a Boss or Ibanez pedal.

So what sets this thing apart from other analog delay pedals?

The delay time can reach a maximum time of around 600ms, that's long enough for me. The warmth of the repeats also has some unique characteristics that doesn't appear in any other pedal. It's hard to describe what I heard from this pedal, but trust me, this thing is good.

So far so good...

Please note, however, that this pedal is a very straight forward delay pedal. It will do basic analog delay functions, it doesn't do fancy stuffs, it doesn't have expression pedal output, it doesn't have stereo capability, no multi output, no fancy switching.

I personally use this pedal together for long-delay sound around 500ms. It works well combined with other delay pedals and it's quiet enough so that it doesn't create noises or anything. I switch to this pedal mostly during lead guitar parts and it does a great job on getting the repeats to blend together with the notes as long as you set the knobs carefully.

The obvious: is it worth?

Absolutely! Well, it's a bit pricier than a Memory Boy frankly speaking, but still, for this kind of price you get something very good. It sounds just nice, works very well as an analog delay pedal. You can get this pedal for around $140.00 more or less.

From 0 to 10?

I'll give this pedal a 9.5! Could be better if it's cheaper of course, and also I haven't really tweak the internal trim pots for modulation range and depth. I'll get back with more info once I tweak those pots!

Sound clip: click HERE --> dry, wet no modulation, wet with modulation, combined with Memory Boy and Holy Grail Reverb. I used a tube screamer on all sounds to add a bit of top end chunk.

Update: The internal trim pots for the width and speed of the modulation doesn't really change the sound that much since as you can hear on my sound clip that the modulation is too narrow and hard to hear. Nonetheless, without the modulation it already sounds great. Still 9.5....

Cheers and God bless :)

p.s: I will post a discussion about Memory Boy vs Carbon Copy soon

ELECTRO HARMONIX EXH MEMORY BOY

Analog Delay Pedal

Almost everyone who plays lead guitar can't live without delay pedals or racks on his or her rig. If you are a tone chaser, you would not want to settle for just any kind of delay FX, you'll either use an Echoplex tape echo that costs you as much as a brand new American Strat or an expensive digital rack that eats a lot of space and hard to carry around.

Hence, the analog delay pedals were created. Popular one is the EHX Deluxe Memory Man, used by Eric Johnson, Andy Timmons(YES, him again) and possibly some other cool players out there. That pedal is still pretty expensive by the way, thus EHX creates cheaper delay pedals that still carry the same basic function of a DMM but in a more affordable price. This is one of those.

Basic Sound

To start, analog delays are usually famous for their warmth and added 3D quality on the repeats. This sounds very different from the usual digital delay that just copy and paste your signal without adding anything. The EHX DMM is famous for it's ability to replicate a tape echo that has slightly out of tune repeats that makes the chorus-like effect on the repeats. Hence, it's usually called analog delay pedal with modulation/chorus.

This pedal here is basically doing that analog delay with added chorus effect. I don't know how it will compare to a DMM since I don't have one and the stores near me don't have them in stock since it's pretty rare. But this one, I kind of like it. When you turn it on, the entire signal will get more warmth and 3D-ness.

Chorus, Vibrato, Expression Pedal

I never tried the Expression Pedal mode. I enjoyed the Chorus modulation but only when it is engaged on triangular waveform with only tiny amount of blend. When you use the blend knob above 8am, it will sound very out of tune. Some people might be able to use that to create some weird layered sound but I personally don't aim for that sound. The vibrato is also nice to have around since it straightly makes the note bent on the repeats, unlike the chorus that uses layering to get that effect.

Boy vs Man, Boy vs other Boys

I really wish to compare this with a DMM and see how much compromisation is happening. I am able to find some youtube videos that compares between the two, but the sound quality is not really detailed(audio are recorded using the same device to take the video, not from recording).

Compared to other delay pedals out there, this one is still one of the warmest on its price range. It's not overly expensive and it does not have too much options. But this basic package already contributes a lot in my signal chain. Everytime I have my lead time, I just turn on this pedal and the hairs on my back rise haha !

Worth?

For only $120.00, this one is not too expensive. It surely beats the Carbon Copy from MXR for sure, I've seen it happening. Also I prefer this to a standard Boss Digital Delay since this adds more touches to your entire signal rather than just copy paste and make the repeats. Basic functions, great sound, great price, it is surely worth the price.

Dislikes?

Well, we all know there's a debate about price vs quality. Better quality needs greater price sometimes; this pedal is great, but maybe a real DMM will sound better, who knows, and that will surely change how you view the Memory Boy once you can compare it with the real deal. But I don't find any flaw on this pedal, I got compliment from using this pedal.

From 0 to 10

I say 9.5 for now, wait until I can compare with a DMM and maybe it'll get lower or higher. Hopefully the apple doesn't fall far from the tree haha !

Edit: I compared it with a DMM, here's the link to that post: CLICK HERE

Here's the audio clip: CLICK HERE

Cheers and God bless ! :D