Or, my zig zag journey through the guitar signal chain,,,
Introduction
When I returned to serious guitar playing about 5 years ago, I was almost exclusively devoted to acoustic guitar playing, so when I sauntered through my local guitar shop and observed the glass cases full of smallish, multi-colored, knobbed-up, rectangular metal boxes (i.e. pedals), I was simultaneously curious and intimidated.
Though I’d played guitar, on and off for many years, it was straight up, non-amplified acoustic music. It was only after I returned to serious playing that I decided to purchase an amplifier for the first time by acquiring a nice new Fishman Loudbox Artist. Even then the onboard “effects” such as reverb and chorus were a mystery to me, so I did not deploy them.
It was not until I decided that I wanted to experience playing an electric guitar, that I first considered acquiring an effects pedal. Without giving the initial guitar purchase the deeper thought and consideration it deserved, (a common theme for me), I acquired a Gretsch Silver Falcon, which was a very showy guitar that was way outside my capabilities, but I eventually adjusted to playing it. I never could shake the fact that I felt a poseur owning it and never could get the instrument to not sound thin and reedy to my ears. It was not the amp, because I played it through a Fender Princeton Black Face reissue.
After consultation with my guitar teacher, I followed his recommendation and purchased my first pedal to “fatten-up” the Falcon’s sound. Consequently, the first pedal I owned was an Electro-Harmonix Soul Food overdrive, which was, as explained to me, a clone (copy) of one of the most famous overdrives ever made called the Klon Centaur. People pay big bucks to acquire an original Klon, but a clone was fine with me as it was relatively inexpensive. The purchase of this pedal is a good example of me failing to do my own due diligence and research the Soul Food pedal before acquiring it. My reliance on others to recommend pedals because of their mysterious nature has led me to frequently buy, trade and replace them, which is not the low cost means of building a pedal board! On the other hand, my experience with pedals is that you really must live with one in your signal chain for an extended period before concluding their true value and worth to your music.
I used the Soul Food lightly and judiciously, meaning that I did not crank the key drive effect up as the sound it produced from the guitar was pretty distorted and did not suit my sensibilities. At heart I am a “clean” player being influenced largely by my years of playing acoustic guitar, straight up, with no sound effects. A metal, head banger I am not nor will I ever be. So, for quite a while I was satisfied with owning a single overdrive pedal and using it in the most subtle fashion..
Then, one Friday night at an Open Mic Night at our local coffee shop (Cup of Joe), I listened to one of the performers who’d been sitting with me at my table and was fascinated by the sound modulation of his guitar, which I subsequently figured out was tremolo. When he sat down after performing, I asked him what in the world he’d done to get that sound. He said he’d used a pedal! I’d heard tremolo on records before like the bridge section (see below) of the Rollings Stones’, Exile on Main Street tune, Rocks Off, or Tommy James’s Crimson and Clover, but I was unaware you could do the same thing in the Coffee Shop (naive me)…
Jumpin’ In With Both Feet
As a result of attending the aforementioned Open Mic session, it finally occurred to me that pedals can offer an interesting opportunity to alter the tonalities of a guitar. Being so new to electric guitar playing, I was totally unaware of these possibilities! Consequently, at my next lesson, I spent a session with my guitar teacher specking out a pedal board.
To begin with, a physical platform to mount the pedals is not entirely necessary, as one can simply link the pedals together on the floor to create a signal train from the guitar output cable through the pedals and finally into the amp. A board, typically metal, to mount the pedals is much more elegant, stable, and portable solution.
I learned quickly that to create a series of connected pedals frequently referred to as signal chain, you must have the following:
- A line out from the guitar that connects to the first pedal in series (there are more complicated arrays that can include “effects loops” with single and multiple amps or noise suppressors, but I like keep it pretty simple, which enhances portability and field set-up).
- Connectors lines between pedals referred to as patch cables. There are many types of patch cables to choose from ranging in appearance, connective quality and price. In my judgment, quality signal transfer is paramount, given the investment in guitar, amp and pedals themselves… the wrong place to economize is with patch cables. The guys in my local shop swear by the George L patch cable system, so that’s what I went with. They’re pricey but very flexible particularly in terms of desired patch cable length between pedals..
- A board to mount the pedals. Boards can be homemade or store bought. They’re made flat or inclined and in varying sizes, depending on how many pedals you wish to mount. In my case, I bought a Pedaltrain board constructed of welded steel (I think), mostly because that’s what my shop sold at the time. The board was big enough to hold 4 vertically arrayed single purpose “standard sized” pedals. Buying such a small board was a huge mistake… I did not think “big” enough at the time and soon found myself wanting to add to the board and having no room, so I had to reorient two pedals to the horizontal position to squeeze another on. I’ve seen pedals mounted using zip ties, but I prefer the velcro approach that Pedaltrain recommends. In that case, you put pressure sensitive adhering strips of the fuzzy stuff on the board and the grippy hooked stuff on the bottom of the pedal. It helps to remove any rubber “feet” from the bottom of the pedal before applying the grippy velcro.. The pedals hold like glue onto the board! It can be a pain to move pedals around because the velcro works so well.
- Pedals require a power source. In most cases, but not always, pedals can be powered by a 9v battery. Sadly, batteries die at the most inopportune time and they sometimes leak making a mess where they’re installed. For that reason, I like to use an external power source. For a small board, like my first one, it was easy to power it with a daisy chain apparatus that powers all the pedals with a single wire and wall plug in. My guitar shop offers the Trutone One Spot.
- Finally, a line from the pedal board to the amp, usually a guitar cable.
With my teacher’s advice I added the following pedals to complement my Soul Food overdrive:
- A Boss CH-1 Super Chorus, which splits your dry (original) guitar signal into multiple slightly moderated pitched signals and feeds them back into the output with the dry signal, creating an effect similar to voices in a chorus. This is often considered a basic must-have if you’re interested in signal modulation. Listen to Boston’s famously chorused guitars:
- An Electro-Harmonix Memory Toy, which is a delay pedal. As defined by Reverb, “Delay is a time-based effect that copies your incoming signal and plays it back one or multiple times after a period of time.” To me, a delay is an essential almost always on effect that creates depth and expansiveness to your guitar tone. Listen carefully (best with headphones) to the “slap-back” effect in opening guitar riffs which is created by delay!
- I myself specified a Looper pedal because I thought it might enhance my practices by allowing me to prerecord a rhythm pattern and play along with it. In retrospect, it’s nice to have but not essential.
- Shortly, after my initial build I added a Boss TU-3 Chromatic Tuner, which is a heavily used and essential pedal to have on any board. I cannot tune by ear, and clip-on tuners can be a real trial to use sometimes because they’ll refuse to recognize the guitar string. It was the purchase of this pedal that led me to realize that my board was too small and subsequently had to rearrange the board in an unorthodox method so that all would fit.
Note: the original pedal purchases were all acquired at my local shop, so their inventory and the store owner’s and my teacher’s predilections had huge impact on my purchasing decisions. Over time, I dumped the Electro-Harmonix Soul Food, the Memory Toy Delay and the Boss Chorus because I found pedals that perform the same function in a more satisfactory way to my taste.
In sum, I really enjoyed using my first pedal board. I was particularly delighted with the delay effects combined with the chorus. I used them to great effect at Open Mic nights at our local Coffee Shop. Further, the small board packed into a nice fabric enclosure and was so portable and easy to deal with when moving gear around. As you can see on the left, I was not embarrassed to show up for my 15 minute gig with two axes, a guitar stand and the pedal board. Having a smallish board made life that much easier.
I Finally Think Big (Sort of)
It wasn’t too long after I completed building my first pedalboard that I became more and more curious about the array of tonal variations that you could create with additional pedals. I began spending a lot of time staring down into the pedal display class case at my local shop and asking questions about what the various devices do. As a result, I wanted to add more pedals to “complete” a new list of “must haves” that I now had in mind.
First off, I wanted to add a compressor, which is often recommended to “smooth-out” the sound of a finger-style player by altering the dynamics of a musical performance, making the quiet parts louder and the loud parts quieter. The guys in my shop all loved the JangleBox, which was relatively pricey acquisition, but nothing wrong with trying to get the best (sadly, it was not, and it eventually joined a long line of pedals I off loaded). Secondly, I purchased an ABY pedal so I could easily switch my guitar between an acoustic and tube driven amp. My shop had a nice Orange brand.
With new pedals acquired, I needed more space on my pedal board. You can see in the image above I purchased a larger Pedaltrain platform. As a result of my own timidity, I had one of the guitar shop guys make the transfer from the small board to the larger, and add the two new pedals into the array. That was the last time I would pay anyone to set-up my board, because I finally realized it can be done relatively easily, and it’s fun. Further, the shop guy cajoled me into trading the small board in as partial payment for the set-up job labor. I was stupid to agree because I was given a pittance for a practically new (used) board, and I actually could have used that small board later on. I am still irritated about that and I won’t get fooled again.
In very short order, I went on a tear and filled the new larger board with new “must-have” pedals and replaced two of my original acquisitions. Here’s a brief summary of what I did:
- Added a Boss TR-2 Tremolo because that’s the tone effect that sent me down the pedal board rabbit hole in the first place.
- Added a Boss VB-2w Waza Craft Vibrato. Vibrato and tremolo work and sound differently but both create a warbling, variable tone affect. I thought I should have one, but am still not sure I really did. Below is a Beatles tune that makes use of guitar vibrato effect.
- Added a Boss RV-6 Reverb, which is an essential pedal to create expansiveness and depth in your guitar tone. The RV-6 can simulate varying room sizes and varying reverb technologies. Well designed reverb pedals offer so many variables, it can be a bit overwhelming to select one. Below is a great example of Pink Floyd applying heavy reverb in a recording:
- Added a Boss Super Octave OC-3 because I like the way it can thicken the tone by adding additional octaves created off the dry signal. The pedal can also create a abruptness in the tone which is interesting. This pedal is fun but should be used judiciously. Jeff Beck’s Come Dancing below is a great example of Octave tonality on a guitar. Bass players frequently use this effect too.
- Added a Boss GE-7 Equalizer because I thought I was supposed to have one… in retrospect, I did not really need one… many of my other pedals had onboard tone controls, which are easier to use so I hardly deployed its capabilities. Further, this box created a great deal of signal noise at the high end if it was used to adjust those particular frequencies. I’ve seen a JHS video discussing how equalizers are important and can be used, in addition to sound frequency tone control to create distortion, but in the end, this pedal lasted for only a while on my board before I pulled it and sold it on consignment at my local shop. I am embedding the JHS video below because it did influence my purchase.
In fact, you may notice on my second generation board pictured earlier above, that it is dominated by Boss pedals. This is largely because my local shop had a huge inventory of them, they are reasonably priced, are built to withstand an apocalyptic event, equipped with relatively easy control features, and are solid middle of the road performers. In fact, if you take the time to review the following JHS video, you’ll note how important Boss was in terms of originating pedal technology and circuits. This video had great influence on my purchase choices when I built my second generation board:
In addition to the new Boss Pedals, I also replaced:
- My original Electro Harmonix Memory Toy Delay with a Dunlop Echoplex Delay. I decided after a time that the Memory Toy was just a muddy-sounding delay, so in a panicky mood the afternoon before I planned to perform at Open Mic Night, I ran to my guitar shop and auditioned several other delay pedals and landed on the Echoplex, which electronically simulates one of the original tape-based delays used decades ago. I loved its crystalline clarity, ease of control and the ability to simulate worn tape sounds, if I wished. I traded the Memory Toy and never looked back. The Echoplex is still on my board today.
- My original Electro Harmonix Soul Food with a Mesa Tone Burst, I finally decided that I do not need an overdrive like the Soul Food. Instead, the Tone Burst is a much more subtle minimalist application of overdrive, with excellent tone controls and a nice clean boost to the signal if needed. This substitution made sense to me as I am not an advocate of distortion created by strong overdrive.
You can see in the image to the left of my second generation board that I added so many pedals it became necessary to install an additional smaller board to the signal chain. What’s nice about this arrangement is that the main board can be easily detached and taken to performances. The pedals on the auxiliary mini-board never have to leave my house!
Opening a Can of Worms
When you move from a small pedal board to a larger one, there are consequences, which in my case were largely unanticipated:
- Pedal Order In the Signal Chain There are does and don’ts regarding how various types of pedals are ordered in the signal chain. There are many resources available that will suggest conventional wisdom for proper order. For example, it is good form to start a signal chain with a tuner pedal and to follow it immediately with a compressor. The tuner is a “neutral” pedal; however, the compressor cleans the guitar’s signal early before entering other effect transformations. Nevertheless, most resources suggest that pedal order is not written in stone, and leave the final decision up to the musician’s predelictions. In some rare cases there are no location recommendations for pedals like a synthesizer, so you’re left to your own devices. I try to follow best practices and will discuss this issue later when I speak to my third generation pedal board.
- Amp Noise and Independent Power Sourcing: This one really caught me off guard. I had no idea that when I started stacking pedals onto my board that I would be creating the possibilities for annoying hisses, hums, squeals, and tea kettle-like whistling! At the time that I built my second generation board I played my electric guitar(s) through a relatively new Fender Princeton Reverb (Black Face) reissue. A wonderful tuneful amp, but it simply did not play well with a full board of pedals. Worse, the noises that emanated were variable and came and went, particularly a tea kettle-like whistle. To tackle the noise, I took the recommended route of reducing the number of pedals that were daisy chained together. To do this I added an independent power source to limit the number pedals daisy chained together.
To the right, you can see the underside of my board where I (very neatly) attached a Pedaltrain Spark, which offered 5 independent power channels varying from 100 to 500 mV’s. In addition, I lassoed together the noisiest pedals, including the compressor, the octave, and any drive pedals into a separate circuit that passed through a Boss NS-2 Noise Suppressor.
Despite the aforementioned heroic actions, I still experienced occasional and random noise issues with the Princeton. Finally, fed up with the Princeton, I traded it in for a Mesa Boogie Filmore 50 which, beside being a superior and more powerful amp almost eliminated, but not completely, my pedal related noise issues.
I lived with this second generation board for quite a while, though I did make some minor changes here and there. For example, I exchanged the Boss Equalizer for a Mesa Flux Drive because I thought I needed more overdrive… I never really liked it, nor used it very much.
On the left you can see my basic second generation pedal board. It worked well enough, though I often wondered if I was too invested in Boss pedals. The Boss pedals are solid performers, but I came to the conclusion after months of working with them that they are like blunt instruments, beset with older generation electronics, and lacking in precision, subtlety with the tones they produced. And frankly, they are clunky and ugly too. The guys at the shop occasionally spoke of new circuitry being developed by the smaller boutique manufacturers that produce new soundscape magic. I ruminated about Boss versus boutique pedals for several months and then like a dam breaking, I just started replacing pedals wholesale to create a third generation board!
A Third Generation Pedal Board Materializes
Now this may seem contradictory. As I just previously discussed, I was feeling over-represented by Boss products on my board. Further, I was getting bored with the pedal array I had and was looking for some new tone possibilities. Consequently, one Saturday afternoon, I went to my local shop with two of my guitars (the Collings I-35 and the National Resolectric) plugged into a Mesa Boogie amp like I have at home and auditioned a Boss SY-1 Synthesizer Pedal. It was a great way to spend the afternoon. Using the synth to alter some of the tunes I regularly play blew away some of the guys in the shop because they viewed the synth pedal as a novelty and not particularly useful one. But as they listened to me play they realized that the synth could be very interesting sounding indeed. The Synth pedal is challenging in that it offers a broad array of possibilities, many useful and many not so useable. I traded the Mesa Boogie Flux Drive for the Synth and took it home. I still have yet to pull the potential from that pedal, but am committed to it longterm. Grabbing the Synth and replacing a pedal that I did not like was like pulling a finger from the dike. A slow trickle would become a flood of change.
What truly broke the dike open was when my friend Grant started preening about a Keeley compressor that he’d recently acquired on the cheap from Reverb. It was at that point I really tumbled onto the fact that I wasted a pile of money on the Jangle Box compressor, which in my experienced judgement had far too limited control features with almost no documentation for how it should work, didn’t sound all that interesting either and it was noisy. I decided it should be replaced and went out into the marketplace looking for a seriously good compressor. This time I would do the necessary research before completing a purchase.
There is an incredible amount of information about pedals on the internet, particularly YouTube where reviewers of all sorts abound. In addition, there is printed literature, such as the huge coffee table book shown to the left. If you take the time, you can triangulate in a what to expect from a particular pedal. Since there is always someone, somewhere who will like any pedal, you should be thorough and consider multiple opinions.
I like to start with online rankings. For example, I start with a search engine phrase like, “rank the best guitar compressor pedals.” Several lists typically pop up and I will scroll through looking at the various choices they’ve selected. I will not necessarily choose the number one listed pedal, rather I will look over the pedal landscape and then dig into the individual choices that look most interesting to me. Companies with heavy marketing campaigns like Boss and Strymon will always show up on these lists, but its the ones I’ve never heard of that I’m looking for. Further, I am interested in standard sized pedal box enclosures. I don’t like mini pedals because they look under-engineered and have limited controls. On the other hand, I don’t like the larger, space intensive, over-complicated or multi-purpose pedals either. Size matters as it affects how much you can pack onto your board.
Following are the latest changes I’ve made, which now comprise my 3rd generation pedalboard:
- Compression: After due diligence, I decided to replace the Jangle Box with an Origin Effects Cali 76 Stacked Edition. Inside the Origin Effects stacked edition are two side-by-side paired compressors similar to what recording studios often use. Each compressor is individually controllable, and as seen on the left there is a golden knob to control the feed of the first compressor into the second. Further, the final output mix of dry signal and compressed signal is also adjustable, which was a feature sadly missing on the Jangle Box. Origin Effects offers several recommended fundamental set-ups and I’ve chosen to use the “always on” arrangement. The pedal enriches the sound of any guitar plugged into the signal chain. It’s quite lovely. In addition, like British textile manufacturing equipment I worked with in another lifetime before, the Cali76 is one of the most solidly built pedals I’ve ever owned! It’s a keeper.
- Phaser: For starters, I never really connected with my Boss Waza Craft Vibrato. A little bit of it went a very long way, and if overdone, it was disorienting to the listener… in fact, it could make you a bit seasick… seriously. Consequently, I used it ratcheted way down so it was barely sonically evident out of the amp. In sum, I disliked the effect and was underwhelmed with the new feature set included with the expensive Waza Craft version. To replace vibrato, I considered other modulation effects like a Univibe or Flanger, but finally settled on a Phaser. Phasing is an eerie SciFi-like but pleasant sound and is better explained here then I can do it. Here’s two great examples of phasing at work:
Searching for “the best” phaser led me down the Walrus rabbit hole. A fascinating pedal manufacturer that eventually sold me three different modulation pedals. The first one I purchased was the Lillian Phaser. In addition to functioning well, the pedal has great graphics. It’s named for one of the actual rare World War II woman aircraft pilots.
I am very pleased with the phaser effect. I’ve used it at Open Mic night and it adds a fat, eeriness to a tune that catches the attention of listeners, but it should probably be used judiciously.
Though I am not interested in doing so, it is possible to push the Lillian into vibrato if necessary.
- Chorus: The Boss Chorus pedal always sounded shrill to me on any of the guitars I played through it. I was about to give up on chorus effect until I discovered the Walrus Julia. To me, it is a richer, more subtle, and more refined Chorus when compared to the Boss version (including their latest Waza Craft edition). Again, great graphics on the box and perfectly intuitive control feature come with the pedal. As a bonus, my guitar teacher has ongoing fantasies about Julia when he sees the pedal. Finally, like the Lillian Phaser, this pedal can be pushed into vibrato mode.
Here’s another notable tune known for its use of chorus guitar effects:
- Tremolo: Well, after the acquisition of the Julia Chorus, I had the Walrus fever and decided after studying its specs and reviews that I would dump the prosaic Boss Tremolo for the Walrus Monument, which is a more sophisticated device, including, for example, tempo control and harmonic output.
I am very fond of tremolo and will use it whenever I think it’s appropriate. Tempo, rate and depth all have a major impact on the tonality produced.
Below I am including one of the more famous uses of tremolo effect by electric guitar pioneer Dick Dale:
- Reverb: After replacing the Tremolo pedal, I continued on my mission of dumping whatever Boss pedals I could. To that end, I’d reached the point where I thought that the three Walrus pedals, as good as they are, were enough of that brand for my board. In addition, I did not find a Walrus reverb that persuaded me to acquire it. So I went back out to review the lists of best pedals and eventually found the Neunaber company, named for it’s owner and chief creator.
My research suggested that the Neunaber Immerse Reverberator was cutting edge technology. Similar to the Boss RV-6, the Immerse offered a wide array of reverb selections, but their proprietary W3T (Wet v3) algorithm separated the pedal from the crowd. I just simply sounds great.
Unless there’s compelling reason not to, the Reverberator is an always on pedal because of the depth and expansiveness that the pedal brings to the guitar’s tonality.
After I acquired the Neunaber Reverberator, I thought I was done with my 3rd generation pedalboard renovations. As you can see above I used the board to support my playing during the June 2021 Open Mic Night at Cup of Joe. Further, I was delighted to have two of my young friends who work at my local guitar shop attend the activities and when I closed the night with some work on my National M1 Tricone they scrutinized me like Talmudic scholars.
When I was done, they were kind and congratulated me for my bottleneck slide playing and then they closely examined my pedalboard renovations. They knew I’d been up to something because I sold my old pedals on consignment at their store and occasionally asked their opinion on different pedals. In sum, they were impressed with the board except they thought I needed a more serious gain pedal. “You need more grit” was their consensus.
Well… I gave their critique (or encouragement) some thought and after a while I went out into the marketplace looking for some grit in the form of a gain pedal.
- Gain: There are so many gain/overdrive/distortion pedals in the marketplace it can be overwhelming trying to sort them out. I already bought and later disposed two of them (Soul Food & Flux Drive) so I was dubious about finding one I could like or use successfully. What I wanted was the ability to apply a subtle and gentle amount of grit depending on which of several guitars I own
In the end, I went back to Neunaber and after studying the pedal extensively, purchased the somewhat idiosyncratic Neuron Gain Intelligence pedal because of its deep control features it offered and the ability to save settings for various guitars, as well as the ability to use a tilt control to universally shift the pedal settings when moving from, for example an amp to a PA system.
Thus far, I am reasonably pleased with this pedal and am committed to sticking with it.
Summary
Shown above is the finished and completed renovation of my pedalboard. As I explained earlier, the lower mini-board is detachable so that I can transport the main board to playing engagements. As with the 2nd generation board, the Compressor, Octave, Tone Burst, and Neuron Gain boxes are electronically lassoed together to pass through the Boss Noise Suppressor located on the upper right. The ordered arrangement of the pedals in the signal chain reflects basic conventional wisdom. What’s missing in this final set-up is the Boss Synth SY-1 pedal, which may eventually replace the Tone Burst in the near future. Because of occasional pedal based noise issues, I am also giving some thought to replacing the Pedaltrain Spark power supply with a Walrus Phoenix power supply because it would completely eliminate any pedal daisy chaining.
The final addition to the board was the installation of 26 red George L. Stress Relief Jackets to the patch cable jacks to keep their screw-in connectors locked in place. They also look way cool.
If this posting was of interest to you, please see my follow-up post here.
