Daniel asks…
what order should i put my guitar pedals in?
heres a list of what i have. cry baby wah, ibanez tube screamer ts9, mi audio crunch box distortion, boss ge-7 eq, mxr phase 90, electro harmonix small clone chorus. i built a board now i could use some help putting them in the best order. thanks
actually i think the order does matter. anyone have a better answer than the first one?
NydiaMccartney answers:
You’re right, there is actually a recommended way to setup your pedals. You can do it any way you want, but there is an ideal setup.
Ts9, distortion, phase, chorus, ge-7, wah
Or you could do this route:
Ge-7,Ts9, distortion, phase, chorus, wah
The ge-7 can be pretty universal. You can put it at the beginning of your chain, which would mean that you are shaping the clean guitar, then letting it go through. Or you can put it towards the end, and shape the effected guitar. Personally I like it at the end, but I’ve seen it both ways.
Basically you want distortion, reverb, ocatve / phaser, chorus, and delay. Manipulating the signal starts first, then changing the signal goes towards the end. Distortion, etc. Manipulates, why phase shifting and delay changes it.
Good Luck.
Steven asks…
I’m trying to build a guitar pedal board.?
Hello everybody,
I’m trying to build a guitar pedal board, but I don’t know much a bout pedals. I was wondering if I can get a compilation of pedals you suggest and something that’s affordable. I’m looking for 3-4 pedals, one might be the BOSS chromatic tuner already. Thanks.
NydiaMccartney answers:
This is purely based on what kind of music you are playing and whats most important to you. It also depends on what you use on your amp. I prefer my amp distortion, but use my pedal distortion most of the time, so having a distortion pedal is key in my game. Wah is another thing I NEED, but its outside my board. Chorus is a definite thing. I have reverb on my board, but its because the amps where I rehearse don’t have it, but my amp does. I want reverb on my sound… But I can use my amp reverb. So, lets say you have distortion on your amp and reverb on your amp… 4 must have pedals. Not the tuner… You don’t need a tuner pedal, you can just get an inline tuner.
Chorus, Noise Suppression, Phase or Flange, Wah.
James asks…
How would i go about building a guitar pedalboard?
I have a (too large) piece of wood and some offcuts. it does not need to be portabkle. Help!
NydiaMccartney answers:
The main components of a pro pedalboard are:
– The interface. (That is, the inputs and outputs)
– The power supply(s) for the effects
– The pedals themselves
– The interconnects between the pedals.
Before you build anything, put all of your effects on the floor in front of you and make sure you can reach everything you want. Almost all pedals have signal flow that goes from right (input) to left (output), so you’ll want to put your effects in the order that you’re going to chain them together. Make sure that you leave enough space between effects so that you can pull the plugs and remove it if you need to.
Once you’ve got this laid out, measure a rectangle around the whole thing, and that’s going to be the dimensions of the wood base. You might want to make it a little bigger in case you want to add add something else later.
After that, attach everything to the board. If you’re not traveling with it, use a good 3M industrial grade Velcro to attach everything.
Of course, that’s a very high level view of the assembly process, but this should get you started.
Greetings from Austin, TX
Ken
Charles asks…
any effects petals for acoustic guitar that people recommend?
I am a huge howie day fan and I am a musician. I was wondering what sort of petals out there that people would recommend for use with an acoustic guitar?
NydiaMccartney answers:
Sweet man, Howie Day is awesome. I’m a big fan of his too and I have built my setup to be very similar to his.
Let me give you a list of cool effects, I’d recommend going with the loop station first, because if you’re a fan of Howie, then you know the power of the loop station.
1. Boss RC-50 Loop Station – $499
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/RC50
The possibilities are endless. It’s basically on the fly recording. You lay down a track, then you keep laying stuff over the top of it. Howie opened the doors. You can lay down drum beats, bass line, solo, and jam.
1(a). Boss RC-20XL Loop Station – $250
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/RC20XL/
It’s a loop station, just not as many options as the RC-50.
1(c). Boss RC-2 Loop Station – $180
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/RC2/
A compact stomp pedal looper. It doesn’t have as many options as the ones above.
1(d). Line 6 DL4 – $250
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/DL4Modeler/
This is what Howie uses to lay down loops. It does the delay effect as well as allow sound over sound looping. The loop station on this is not the same as the Boss RC series, as you this one does decay looping. Meaning you eventually cap out, and sounds start disappearing as you lay down more and more layers. Howie mastered that though.
2. DD-20 Digital Delay – $220
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/DD20
Howie uses the DD-3 which isn’t made anymore. But you can use this on the guitar or vocals for the echo effect, called delay. The delay pedal sounds great with the acoustic guitar.
3. OC-3 Octave Pedal – $120
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/OC3
This Octave pedal lets you drop down two octaves or up two octaves. What it actually does, is allows you to play a bass with your acoustic, it’s how Howie does his bass line in songs like Ghost.
4. Boss GE-7 Equalizer – $100
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/GE7/
This is just an equalizer. Howie will throw this on his vocals to give another effect. You can manipulate the EQ on your voice to make it sound different.
5. Line 6 Space Chorus – $120
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/SpaceChorus
Howie doesn’t use the Chorus effect. But it’s another type of delay sound that works well with the acoustic.
The big thing with Howie Day, is he has two pedal boards. One for his vocals and one for his guitar. That’s why he has two DL4′s in his setup. It allows him to do Vocal Loops as well as Loop his guitar. But if you get a loop station, two delay pedals, an OC-3 pedal, and an GE-7, then you can cover Howie songs perfectly.
I recommend doing Ghost or Sorry so Sorry, both are great looping songs.
If you have any further questions feel free to email me.
Joseph asks…
How do you get sound on a guitar to sustain longer?
I am learning the solo for Don’t fear the reaper, but the noise won’t last long enough to do all the hammer-ons and pull-offs
don’t answer if you don’t play guitar
NydiaMccartney answers:
The truest form of sustain is mechanical, and comes from having a well-built guitar with decent quality tone wood. This is something that your guitar either has or doesn’t have.
Since note decay is defined as a tone becoming quieter over time, if we make the signal louder then that means it will sound like the guitar is sustaining longer. This is the basis of all other forms of sustain – compression, amp, distortion, etc.
If we have a pedal that sets parameters that say that at when the guitar gets this quiet we boost gain and at this loud we lower gain, well, that’s a compression pedal. By boosting the quiet parts and limiting the louder parts we achieve the impression of a consistently louder sound.
Distortion gives us sustain also, whether the softer-clip variety that you find in overdrive pedals and amps, or the hard-clip that you find in distortion devices. The idea is that if we raise gain across the board, ie, always make the signal louder, then the quiet parts get louder. Of course, the louder parts get louder, too, and at some point those louder points are going to hit a ceiling where they just can’t get any louder. The top part of the wave is clipped off, and distortion happens. How the wave is clipped determines its sound.
Anyways, in general you want a hotter signal. Try raising your pickups a smidge, especially on the treble side (thin strings), and consider either increasing the gain on your amp, or getting a pedal to boost your signal for the solo. An EQ pedal or an overdrive pedal should do the trick…. A distortion pedal will not.
Saul
Maria asks…
What is the best guitar pedal for metalcore..?
Right. So I have been playing guitar for quite a while. I have the Line 6 Spider IV and I have the pedal to change between the 4 effects so I was wondering what other effect pedal I could have to help me play better. I want to play metalcore/post-hardcore like TDWP, B4MV, Blessthefall, Asking Alexandria, Bring me the Horizon.
NydiaMccartney answers:
Try experimenting with the settings on the built in effect “Laccoil:The game” which iis pretty close to B4MV. Failing that have a play with the Boss Virtual Pedal Board http://www.bossus.com/go/vpb-2/ and see if anything in the pedal line up appeals. (Have play with it anyways, it’s fun).
John asks…
Is there any bass guitar gear that can get dubstep sounds but also let me play other stuff like rock?
I like many kinds of music. I want to get some bass gear that allows me to get dubsteps sounds and also play rock. Like chili peppers and stuff. Yes I know I have a wide range in taste of music. I’d like to get something that allows me to do this.
NydiaMccartney answers:
I don’t listen to dubstep, but what I understand about it is that it’s distinctive bass effect is the “wobble,” very hard to get with a traditional bass setup since it’s originally all programmed on synthesizers. Source Audio has a thing called the Hot Hand, it involves a thumb ring that enables you to create the wobble effect. I don’t think you’d use it for anything other than dubstep though.
Wide range in musical taste is a good thing.
Do you already have a bass and amp? That would be the place to start of course…
Apart from that, you’re basically talking about effects pedals. Different bassists all have their preferences, and use them in different combinations. To cover the bases (pun intended), a decent pedalboard might have distortion or overdrive, chorus or flanger, an envelope filter or synth wah, maybe an octaver, maybe a wah pedal or autowah (not the same thing as the synth wah), often a “boost” box with EQ etc., and may as well put a tuner on there while you’re building the thing.
Just for ideas, I found a thread from talkbass on Flea’s pedal board going back to around 2003 or 2004; looks like at the time he was using a Dunlop 105-q wah pedal, Boss bass overdrive (ODB-3), an MXR micro amp (for boost) and an Electro-Harmonix Q-tron envelope filter. He usually plays a Modulus through GK amps. I don’t know how he may have changed his rig since then.
Mary asks…
How do I get on-board distortion?
I want to make my guitar have permanent distortion.
but only the most brutal tones will suffice.
i heard about that black ice thing
but it doesnt seem like it would be up my alley
space isnt an issue either, ill glue a bord to the front of the guitar if i have to.
NydiaMccartney answers:
Ha ha ha, that’s awesome!
Yeah, the black ice thing won’t work for you, it gives more of a tweed style overdrive – it’s basically just two diodes wired into your circuitry, not exactly complex or anything, and no real gain, so you do get some signal loss with it in.
So the first link below is a good place to start. The units are pretty inexpensive, probably the cheapest you’ll find anywhere. Here’s the thing – I haven’t used them myself, so I can’t vouch for them…. But you’re also not going to find anything similar anywhere near that price range!
The thing is, it does kinda depend what you want. If you want the sound of a Metal Zone coming out of your guitar, you’re going to need to put a Metal Zone in your guitar, you know? And anything like that would mean shielding the hell out of the cavity and/or whatever additional circuitry you’re installing. Any time you have electronics around pickups you have to be careful, but add high-gain into the picture and proper grounding and shielding become crucial to getting a good low-noise no-hum no-static signal.
I would suggest start with something like this – the benefit of this little mod would be that you would get an active tone, which means higher output, which means that you’re going to be able to sound much better going into whatever other gear you’ve got.
What I don’t necessarily recommend is going through the effort of installing onboard full-blown distortion. There’s a reason why you don’t see a lot of guitarists doing it… Well, one, there isn’t a lot of space in the cavity. Any circuitry you install would have to be compact and well-designed – and that’s difficult for a DIY guitarist to achieve (speaking from personal experience).
Even a Tubescreamer, which is a relatively simple distortion pedal, has 13 or so components, and that’s not easy getting all that on to a small board that will fit in a guitar cavity *with* a battery, *with* your various pots and whatnot *and* still be well shielded and grounded etc…. And a Tubescreamer is only one gain stage, not the three or four that a higher gain distortion pedal would need (ie Big Muff, Metal Zone, etc).
Anyways, I guess what I’m saying is that putting an active component like this may be the best thing you can do – it’s got some versatility, so if you want a cleaner but still active sound you can do that, or you can go for the high-gain thing right off the bat if that’s what you want.
I think that if you really want a great distorted tone that you should focus on getting a good tone out of your guitar, a nice hot chunky signal, and use other components in your signal chain (where space, power, EMI interference, etc isn’t an issue) to generate your actual distorted sounds.
Something I’ve actually thought of doing is strapping a pedal or two right on to my belt – like down my leg or something. I would want to rehouse the pedal(s), but one of those carpenter tool belt things would do the trick as far as holding them nearby. Distortion could be achieved as simply as putting a distortion pedal and speaker emulator right there and calling it good.
Ie Guitar with onboard preamp -> Metal Zone etc -> SansAmp GT-2 -> rest of signal chain
This kind of a setup could go directly into a mixer or PA and sound great. Still not cheap, but a speaker emulator itself wouldn’t be that difficult to build.
If you are really into DIY projects, there are a number of good resources out there, and building distortion pedals is much easier than most other types of pedals. Look up the Dr Boogie, for instance – I’ve heard clips, and its an awesome pedal, and not that difficult compared to, say, a delay or chorus pedal!
That’s my 2 cents. If you have any questions, feel free to email me, this is an interesting concept… I hope you don’t take it too far, though, and be hell-bent on something that may not be practical to achieve… Good luck!
Saul
Donna asks…
Guitar FX Pedal Board Signal Chain Question?
Im am currently building a pedal board and have multiple questions.
The equipment i have is a Boss CS-3 Compressor, Boss TU-2 Tuner, Digitech Delay, Boss NS-2 Noise Suppressor and Crybaby 535Q.
The first question is what would be the best order for me to put these FX in a signal chain to obtain the best sound?
The second question is i am powering all of my units (including my US bought 18V crybaby) with nothin but a daisey chain and old phone adapter and there doesnt seem to be a problem. I understand the other FX working but how would an 18V crybaby unit work off a 9V thats is already powering 4 other pedals. Is this going to damage any of my equipment?
Would it be better for me to ue the 18V adapter through the daisy chain?
I know theres a lot but hopefully someone can help me out.
Thanks
NydiaMccartney answers:
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