Your Ideal Pedalboard

[Dru Edwards]

What's your ideal pedalboard look like? I'm not taking visually (although pics are welcome) but what pedals would you include and what order. Include bare bones and extended.

I'm happy with an 'always on' overdrive (Soul Food) into the front of a moderate gain Marshall with a clean boost (MXR Micro Amp) and a Delay (TC nova repeater) for soloing in the FX loop. I have other pedals on my board but those are the ones I use almost exclusively.

How about you?

[rockabilly69]

my ideal pedal board for electric guitar will always have these components...

Volume Pedal, Tuner, EQ, Overdrive, Tremolo, Delay, Reverb. In that particular order. With this setup, I can pretty much pick the amp I'm using for a gig by wattage. I have amps that range from 5 watts to 35 watts, I never use anything bigger than that.

For acoustic guitar boards I like it a bit simpler. Volume pedal, tuner, Grace preamp, delay, reverb. I specifically said Grace preamp (Felix or Alix), because they do everything I need a preamp to do, and that is, clean gain, great EQ - notch filtering, routing. Somebody would have to come up with something light years ahead of it before I would consider a change, no one pedal brand on any board of mine is as important to me.

[redir]

I have not changed mine in many years and that was after years of buying and or making pedals almost monthly.

My chain goes:

Univox super fuzz clone -> Sarno Steel Guitar Blackbox (Polytune tuner off of that) -> Teeze Wha -> Boss CS3 Compressor (modded) -> Digitech Whammy (Thinking of getting rid of this one actually) -> Rams HEad Violet Big Muff Clone -> Ibenez Ts9 Tube Screamer -> EHX Q-Tron -> Boss Mt-2 (modded) -> Boss CS2 Chorus -> Boss PH-2 Phaser -> Line 6 DL6 Delay -> Wampler Plexi-Drive -> Boss DD-2 Delay -> into the amp.

The distortion boxes are wrapped in a EHX Silencer which is a noise gate.

So ideal for me really is various overdrives and fuzz with delay. I like gain stacking pedals. I do like the chorus too but could probably live without phaser, Whammy, Compression and even the noise gate.

[Chickee]

As with all things in life a lot of the time the grass always seems greener on the other side. It turns out that’s how it is with pedal boards and me right now.

No sooner do I finish up laying out my main board with a 3way splitter box, tuner, clean boost, compressor, drive, noise gate, chorus 1, chorus 2, reverb, delay pedal, I start to really enjoy playing into an amp(a very hot rodded Super Champ X2) and just using the effects on the amp. No muss, no fuss.

Then I get a fart in my brain to do an annex tribute board to the main board for my guitar heroes. That board in progress has a gorgeous Fulltone PlimSoul drive, Dunlop Jerry Cantrell Wah, reissue DejaVibe, a beautiful new Fender Drive pedal. That board is for Trower, Clapton, Jimi, Frampton, Beck, Johnson flavored stuff.

Fun to build, but a lot to carry around. I just love it though!

[TeleBluesMan]

I have pretty much mainstream stuff: Keeley 4-knob compressor, Fulltone OCD, EH Big Muff Pi Nano, Neo MiniVent (great Leslie simulation), MXR Carbon Copy.

[Steve DeRosa]

If the amp doesn't have built-in trem I plug in a Cool Cat - other than that I'm a guitar-cable-amp kinda guy...

[pieterh]

Mine goes:

Boss Volume pedal - TC Polytune tuner - Wampler Ego compressor - Digitech Mosaic (12-string simulator) - Boss flanger or Tonebone Vienna chorus (depending on gig or show) - Boss Blues Driver - Tonebone Trimode Classic - TC Flashback x4 - TC Hall of Fame. There is also a Cioks DC10, one of the only power supplies that can power Tonebone pedals.


I would like to get a bigger board at some point and add back the chorus, the Boss tremolo (but tremolo effect is built in to my Fender DRRI so I can leave it off for now) and even the Carl Martin compressor (it’s more transparent than the Wampler). I also use a Radial JDX Reactor for sensitive gigs where an amp isn’t always an option and that doesn’t live on the board either.

[Don W]

I use a pedal train for the platform (really nice...came with an anvil case...unreal). On it, I have a Voodoo pedal power supply, a 535Q Dunlop Wah, A Boss chromatic tuner, a Tube screamer, Super chorus, Echo park, Zen drive, Tremelo pedal, Boss reverb pedal. I saw Johnny A in concert couple times and looked at his pedal board. Mine is loosely based on that. He also used a compression pedal. He now has a computerized system and doesn't use traditional pedals.

[Dru Edwards]

Nice board, Pieter. How do you use the Boss volume pedal? Do you 'set it and forget it' or add a little more when you need it then back it off?

Originally Posted by pieterh

Mine goes:

Boss Volume pedal - TC Polytune tuner - Wampler Ego compressor - Digitech Mosaic (12-string simulator) - Boss flanger or Tonebone Vienna chorus (depending on gig or show) - Boss Blues Driver - Tonebone Trimode Classic - TC Flashback x4 - TC Hall of Fame. There is also a Cioks DC10, one of the only power supplies that can power Tonebone pedals.


I would like to get a bigger board at some point and add back the chorus, the Boss tremolo (but tremolo effect is built in to my Fender DRRI so I can leave it off for now) and even the Carl Martin compressor (it’s more transparent than the Wampler). I also use a Radial JDX Reactor for sensitive gigs where an amp isn’t always an option and that doesn’t live on the board either.

[pieterh]

Originally Posted by Dru Edwards

Nice board, Pieter. How do you use the Boss volume pedal? Do you 'set it and forget it' or add a little more when you need it then back it off?

Hi Dru!

I actually use the Wampler for boosting for solos etc. The volume pedal is mainly used for volume swells (like the middle section of La Villa Strangiato which I can more or less play ok). The motivation to finally buy one was our tribute to Abbey Road show we did last year and earlier this year (just prior to the **** really hitting the fan). There’s a section of Come Together where there is a guitar volume swell (after the final chorus before the play-out licks). The swelling/violin effect is more effective with the pedal than with guitar volume - depending on the guitar of course: with a Tele or Strat it would be easier but I used my 335 studio on Come Together!

I’m a bit too inexperienced with it still to want to use it all the time; Mark Knopfler uses his almost all of the time and more or less has his foot on it constantly. I’m sure it would be a useful tool but to be honest I’m more used to using the volume control on the guitar if I need to back off a little.

[RoyBoy]

I play praise and worship but get by with a much more spartan rig than most:
Polytune tuner, Wampler Ego compressor, Wampler Euphoria OD, volume pedal, TC Corona chorus, Strymon El Capistan tape delay, TC Hall of Fame. There's also an Xotic booster on there I use with a strat, but it doesn't get used in church.

[nitram]

All of those pedals are the reason I got out of electric and went acoustic. It's mind-boggling how complicated things can get just to play some music.

[jay7347]

I play electric in our worship band so my setup is usually guitar>pedalboard>into the house. It's primarily a Strymon board as they've been the most consistent and reliable that I've encountered. I've also stacked a couple of tube screamers, both at low gain for a strong yet clean signal.

-jay

[M Sarad]

With a Tweed Deluxe,it's a Boss '63 Reverb.

With a Deluxe Reverb, it's a zendrive.

If it's lots of grateful dead the EHX Qtron and Boss DD5 get added.

[roylor4]

I have not put together my ideal board yet. When I do it must have:

Soul Food OD
Tremolo
Reverb
Chorus