Having written about what guitars I'm currently using a couple of weeks ago, I thought I'd write about my pedalboard, seeing as it's next in the signal chain! So I'l start at the beginning. My guitar goes straight into the Dunlop Crybaby Wah, which I don't use all that often, but when I do it's usually for some more mid presence in a distorted solo, or for funky clean rhythm stuff. For the little amount I use wah for, the crybaby certainly does the job, but if I was ever to get a new one, I'd look for a less pronounced high end boost at the top of the sweep, to make the overall sound more 'underwater'.
From the wah into the tuner, I use the Korg Pitch Black Tuning pedal - I know a lot of people have big love for the Boss tuner, but I prefer the big LED display on the Korg. I've never had any trouble with it tuning incorrectly or inaccurately, so works for me!
The tuner then goes into a Boss CS-3, which is one of my newest pedals. I use it for smoothing out the volume for picked open chord parts, bringing the higher pitched strings up and the lower ones down in volume. This setting also works well for evening out the tone in general for rhythm playing, but I definitely wouldn't be one of these people who leave a compressor on all the time, it might just be this pedal, but it's quite squishy, working well in the applications I use it for, but not as an overall tone shaper.
This pedal goes into my Fender ABY pedal, which splits the guitar signal in two, which is then sent out to both my dry amp and the rest of my pedals (but more of this at another time!). The send to the rest of the pedals goes then into my Boss BD-2. This is set as a clean boost with slight crunch, i.e. it's a clean boost which pushes my amp, so if I dig in I get a decent crunch. My main tone is very clean, so this is my clean solo sound. This then goes to the Digitech Blues Screamer, a cheap, transparent overdrive which just adds the next layer of crunch onto my tone. If a crunchy rhythm tone is required, I will use this, and the Boss BD-2 as a solo boost.
The next pedal in line is the Boss SD-1, which is a creamy solo overdrive which works on top of any of the other pedals as a nice mid range boost with a decent amount of crunch. This then goes out to the front end of my wet amp.
Coming out of the effects send of my wet amp goes straight into a Daphon volume pedal. This is a cheap volume pedal which is really transparent and has a nice even sweep. I use it for volume swells, and does the job perfectly well. This pedal goes into my very old Crossfire analogue delay pedal, set as a subtle slapback delay. This is one pedal which I would leave on all the time, much like reverb it sits nicely in the mix and adds a bit of depth to lead playing.
Next in the chain is my Boss DD-20 delay pedal. This pedal has 5 different delay presets for different parts. These are as follows: 'warp' setting, which sustains the delayed note for as long as I hold the pedal down; modulated delay setting, which has a slapjack delay sound with a chorus effect on the delay; dotted 8th analogue delay; dotted 8th digital delay (which is slightly longer and more obvious than the analogue setting); and a longer crotchet digital delay, set quite subtle and used on distorted solos.
From the DD-20 I go into a custom Bright Onion Pedals looper, which has two pedals either had noisy switches or altered the bypass tone in it. These are the Electro-Harmonix Nano Clone, an analogue chorus set to be more subtle than the modulated delay effect but does remove some bass from the guitar signal (mainly used for rhythm chorus requirements), and the Mooer Shimverb, which is set on a slightly over the top room sound. Back into the custom looper, this goes to the return of the wet amp.
And there you have it, except for the channel switchers for my wet and dry amps and a tap tempo, that's my pedalboard covered! Since I don't have room for my pedalboard at uni, I don't have a photo to share, but I will upload one when I'm home at some point. The pedals I bring to uni to use are just the Korg tuner, the BD-2 and the DD-20 - I use my amp on a more crunchy setting than I would with my whole pedalboard setup, and clean it up with the volume on my guitar.
If you liked this little chat about my pedals and would like to see more in depth reviews of pedals, let me know! I'd definitely be up for expanding my reviews to different guitar gear in the future.
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