LucSulla Posted July 22, 2020 Share Posted July 22, 2020 I was sitting here thinking that if I knew how overdrive pedals worked better at the time, I would have never sold that Sock Monkey I had. And it's funny because I honestly have done a lot of stuff as a guitarist - one of those things where I'd say I've gotten to do more things than probably 85% of people who pick up a guitar and get in a band (that last 15% having done way more than I've even sniffed to be sure). But there are these basic things I just never got into because it just never came up. I had a TSL JCM 2000 for like 12 years, and that's what I could afford. I didn't really understand loops until I was in my 30s because for the longest time all I had was an EQ, and MXR Phase 90, and a wah pedal. (Song with that rig - board mix, and you can still hear all the bad vocal notes and stuff that never got fixed and so on, but it's that rig without much bullshit done yet) That was all the rig I could afford, so that's what I made work. That never came up either until I bought an H&K Tubemeister 15, needed a reverb pedal, and had to figure out why it sounded like shit out front. I never got ODs until I was 40, haha. Now I have three on my board - an EP Boost that is always on, an Eternity Drive I use for boosting leads on the dirty channels, and a OCD for boosting the clean channel when I want to lead on it. I bought Budda because I wanted more dirt, but really, I liked the Sock Monkey more in general. If I'd had things a bit more worked out, even sans loop I would have stuck with it. Y'all got any late finds of basic stuff like that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobB Posted July 22, 2020 Share Posted July 22, 2020 It was more of a factor of having an amp with an FX loop that was compatible with pedals. The Splawn SS combo worked great with reverb pedals on BOTH channels. I've hacked down my board to 3 pedals now, so I'm happy to have purchased a VAC25 head with reverb. Now it's just phase, delay, chorus (thru a loop pedal) into amp input. Wah and Peterson tuner in front. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crunchee Posted July 23, 2020 Share Posted July 23, 2020 I tried to get into pedals years ago, but I didn't like doing the "pedal dance", having to tweak them and switch them in/out constantly in pursuit of "that sound". This is also why I never got into gear that required much more than volume and tone knob twisting. As a result, I'm allergic to anything that looks like it came from Mission Control at NASA. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dutchman Posted July 23, 2020 Share Posted July 23, 2020 I played for years with out any pedals, just a channel switcher and reverb off and on to my Boogie Mark llB. My first delay was a simple rack mount and things progressed from there to an Intelifex and other rack stuff that ran thru a midi switcher and a midi octopus. All that is gone and pedals seem to be in constant rotation with a few that never leave. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thundersteel Posted July 23, 2020 Share Posted July 23, 2020 I've had many amps and several pedals, along with too many guitars. Now I'm happy with my signal chain: Hamer Guitar --> Orange amplifier. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Disturber Posted July 23, 2020 Share Posted July 23, 2020 I bought my first electric guitar in 1983, when I was 14. And I still don't know how to play. Beat that! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LucSulla Posted July 24, 2020 Author Share Posted July 24, 2020 For a hot minute, I was playing in an originals band, a sort of Judas Priest/Iron Maiden cover band, and a country band all at the same time. I needed a little of this and that for all three, and that spice cabinet ended up all on the same pedal board. Then I started finding uses for all of it in all of it. At the moment, my favorite lead tone is seems to be Guitar -> EP Boost (always on anyway) -> Deja Vibe -> Supa Trem (Soft, 50% mix) -> Eternity Boost (volume maxed, only an tad of gain) -> MXR Carbon Copy -> Channel 2 or 3 Friedman BE-50 with a HoF in the loop for a tad of verb. I get that sorta spooky Gilmour/Trower warble thing I like but with enough articulation to be able to shred without it all turning into mush. It's fucking annoying to deal with all that until I start soloing, and then I'm like, "Yep, this is definitely my thing." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diablo175 Posted July 24, 2020 Share Posted July 24, 2020 I've always been behind the curve in guitar tech. Never really had the patience (or the ear) for learning how to find the sound via 15 pedals. If I couldn't get where I wanted to be with delay, distortion and a wah, well, then I didn't get there. And rack gear? Shit. Couldn't afford it and didn't know how to connect everything, let alone find the correct parameters & settings. Then I started a cover band and bought a Roland ME 50 from somebody on here. While I made greater use of the ME 50 via compression, noise gates, EQ and some nifty add-ins like harmonizer, never really fully utilized that, either. Blaming that more on my inability to master the rudiments of sound engineering. With the Fractal Axe FX3, a lot of that shit is already available /done for you in the factory presets that approximate iconic guitar/amp sounds. And from that I can scavenge parts (preset settings) to find my own sound. Still don't know shit about the intricacies of sound engineering but with the help of more experienced users like @DBraz I get damn close with a combination of his expertise and cherrypicking settings from other presets. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DBraz Posted July 24, 2020 Share Posted July 24, 2020 It’s all to do with familiarity. With amps and processors it’s soooo easy to fall down the rabbit hole and before you know it your ears are tired. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rugby1970 Posted July 26, 2020 Share Posted July 26, 2020 I think that I'm the epitome of late bloomers in the guitar playing realm. I started when I was maybe 47 years old? I took it up just as a stress relief/bucket list kind of thing. After I learned enough to even contemplate an amp and subsequently effects pedals, I could never deal with rack effects, too much to carry and too complicated. Pedals? I'm okay with a 3-4 but each one can't have more than 4 knobs. My amps need to be simple, no pulling this knob, two channels at most. Right now the amps are a Deluxe Reverb reissue or a Sock Monkey. My board has Guyatone reverb and trem pedals for the Sock Monkey and either a Twimble or Mojo Mojo for some drive with either. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr. Bear Posted July 28, 2020 Share Posted July 28, 2020 My first gig: 1965, playing a $40 guitar thru a $40 amp, both purchased in Times Square by my father. He figured that if the instrument was unplayable and the amp in usable I’d give up. Wrong. Over the years I probably owned 100 pedals. Never learned how to use any of them properly. Once owned [more accurately: was owned by] a gazillion dollar Mesa/Boogie. Never figured it out. Just didn’t have the wits or the ears. I was so dreadful with gear that I want tracked all the guitar parts for an album just using a Rockman plugged into a pair of tiny self-powered speakers. (No one but the engineer ever figured that out.) I retired from touring in 2013 after surviving for decades on the kindness of other musicians and techs who actually understood pedals and amps. And then I found “my” rig: a Hamer semi-hollow -> long discontinued Tech 21 compressor/distortion pedal (with the distortion rolled almost completely off) -> Vibro Champ (or Quilter dialed as close to the VC as I can get). I wouldn’t recommend this rig to anyone else but I really enjoy reading the posts by all of you who are truly sonic explorers. Geez, I’m still trying to nail the perfect strap for my several 25th Anniversary Hamers. An afterthought: I kept at $40 amp because I discovered that if you plugged a Twin or a Bassman into the little guy it would wobble until it walked across the stage. Unhappily, I forgot I had it so configured at a gig at Yale in 1974 that I walked the little guy clear off the stage. My bad. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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