Who Uses A 'Fixed' Pedalboard In The Studio

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For years in the studio, unless I was visiting somewhere else, I would just have shelves of pedals and pick what I needed when it was required.  Then about two years ago after having built several hundred pedalboards for other people I thought I would lay everything out and hopefully it would make work quicker and neater.

As we aren't currently gigging I am now thinking I am at the point of wanting to pull them apart again and go back to the ways of old to -
  1. Cut down on possible noise - although I'm not really noticing any.
  2. Maybe make me a little bit creative with effect order etc.
  3. Maybe eliminate the snobbery of sticking with a certain pedal rather than experimenting with others that just sit on the shelf but I obviously like too much to get rid of.
Do you have or use a pedalboard in the studio or do you risk the life threatening trip hazard hooking up on the fly?
My muse is not a horse and art is not a race.
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Comments

  • I usually go on the fly personally unless I am feeling lazy then I will use my full board.

    The Bigsby was the first successful design of what is now called a whammy bar or tremolo arm, although vibrato is the technically correct term for the musical effect it produces. In standard usage, tremolo is a rapid fluctuation of the volume of a note, while vibrato is a fluctuation in pitch. The origin of this nonstandard usage of the term by electric guitarists is attributed to Leo Fender, who also used the term “vibrato” to refer to what is really a tremolo effect.
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  • CirrusCirrus Frets: 8481
    It depends. If it's a session where I want to be creative and haven't finalised parts I like to pull my board apart and have a pile of pedals I plug in as and when I feel like it - it forces me to evaluate what I want for the sound. When my gigging board is at my feet I'll have go to pedals for certain parts - which isn't always a bad thing but it does feel a bit more constrained.
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  • Drew_TNBDDrew_TNBD Frets: 22445
    For me, I hate having sounds in the studio that I cannot truly replicate live.
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  • Drew_fx said:
    For me, I hate having sounds in the studio that I cannot truly replicate live.
    That was a massive part of my reasoning for going with a fixed board as it's all good working on the fly but then you seem to spend an age trying to replicate what you did at the time.

    I think the confusion for me hinges around the fact that whereas in full bands I played exact parts and very much tried to make recordings completely repeatable, we are now in a position where after years of being fed up with the flakiness of others we are very much playing alternate or stripped down versions live.
    My muse is not a horse and art is not a race.
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  • darcymdarcym Frets: 1297
    I use what I need in the studio, then have a live pedal board that includes the sounds I need for that gig/tour/session whatever.

    I often drop some studio sounds live.

    I sometimes use my blues trio pedal board in the studio because it's pretty basic and covers a lot of the sounds I use a lot of the time.
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  • Have you got a looper for the pedals? That way you can at least take things out of the loop for recording, although it doesn't address the issue of swapping order. Having them separate makes it a ball ache to transport them without risk of damage, hence I keep it all together on a board.
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  • Have you got a looper for the pedals? That way you can at least take things out of the loop for recording, although it doesn't address the issue of swapping order. Having them separate makes it a ball ache to transport them without risk of damage, hence I keep it all together on a board.
    Yeah, to be honest I'm not really noticing any excessive noise as anything with a crap buffer has been either modded or looped.  We were in the studio for about 4 hours today and rather than go through the board of my 'best' pedals I hooked up a couple off the shelf (Boss DD-20 & Original RotoVibe) and it sounded great.  Thing is i don't want to ditch anything from my board, I don't want to expand it and if it wasn't for them being separate I probably wouldn't have bothered to use them.

    I love the instant accessibility of a studio board, but then I wonder if it makes me lazy in looking for new sounds.  
    My muse is not a horse and art is not a race.
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  • LastMantraLastMantra Frets: 3822
    edited November 2014
    Hmm I was thinking about this earlier with the pedalboard thread in the FX bit. 

    I don't gig but I can kind of get what Drew is saying if you wanted to stick to specific sounds for a band situation. To me it's still just unnecessarily restrictive. I like to build sounds from scratch for different parts. I'll have a rough idea with a sound in my head but then I'll go through my gear and figure out the best way to get there. Nothing that's not needed.

    If Angus Young turned up at the studio with a whammy and a fuzz factory they might not go for it so I don't know.
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  • It's a difficult one isn't it. I was tempted to have an insert point added to my board especially for patching occasional pedals in. Either way it's all a pain in the arse ;-)
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  • If Angus Young turned up at the studio with a whammy and a fuzz factory they might not go for it so I don't know.
    From now on Angus is doing whatever Phil Rudd tells him.... don't wanna go upsetting that dude.
    My muse is not a horse and art is not a race.
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  • joeyowenjoeyowen Frets: 4025
    I don't have enough pedals to vary too much so it is mostly set as it is.
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  • @LastMantra - Just build a huge board!
    Where ever I lay my pedals, that's my board. :D

    If Angus Young turned up at the studio with a whammy and a fuzz factory they might not go for it so I don't know.
    From now on Angus is doing whatever Phil Rudd tells him.... don't wanna go upsetting that dude.
    >:D<
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