Hi All,
I've been thinking of putting together a little mini pedal board for the TFB jams. Nothing fancy, probably some mini-pedals stuck to a plank of wood, but enough to give a few options. I've got a little fuzz, compressor and flanger (the latter might not make it as fun as it is) and would need a drive (TS mini) and a tuner, maybe a delay to finish it off?
I was quite impressed by
@Modellista s teeny portable board at the last Hudds.
It also occurred given that I've gotten by so far with very little FX, maybe a simple OD and boost like Thorpy's new "The Dane" Pete Honore sig pedal might do the job. I'm fully aware though I could do a whole board for less than the cost of one of those.
What are everyone else's thoughts?
You are the dreamer, and the dream...
Comments
JM build | Pedalboard plans
Playing style nearly always makes it's mark more prominently than a set sound.
Ymmv and all that
The jams are about plugging in and playing - the focus is on the song and the joint effort to play it.
Surely, to be able to find "your" sound, you'd need to be playing, tweaking some settings, playing some more, tweaking some more, playing some more, ad infinitum.
Now, you can do all of that in one of the separate rooms, no problem at all.
But then you bring your pedal board into the main playing room and the acoustics are different. The amp that you plug into is probably different. Even if you could bring the amp too (and we're not changing backlines!), the sound that you've just crafted in the separate room now has to interact with all the other instruments/amps in the room.
Oh, and then the sound engineer completely changes your sound anyway when they're mixing all the tracks together when they mould the different frequencies so that they fit together, add/subtract a few dbs to/from this or that track (or even at different parts of a track), hit the compression button, etc, etc.
And what the mic hears is different to what you ears hear anyways ...
That's one of the reasons why I sceptical about people worrying about bringing their own pedal boards with their carefully defined settings. OK, so for some effects, it's necessary, I accept that.
But for things like varying boost/gain on your part of a song, isn't that what the p'up selector and vol/tone controls for? Plus the way that you play the different parts - tone is in the fingers!
For full disclosure, I'll also admit that I'm not a massive user of pedals. All of the 4/5 that I've got spend most of their lives in their boxes.
Discuss ...
You won't get a 'regular' sound because you're walking in to someone else's amp with someone else's settings, and no time to piss about.
The only time I really felt the lack was on ITGWO where I hadn't been planning on doing a solo, so could have done with drive+delay to cover some of the ropey bits.
I have put together a mini board to.cover that eventuality in future, bit I'm also using it elsewhere when a Novo 32 takes up too much space. So it's not just for the jam.
I've opted for cheap/secondhand kit. Tuner, compressor I already had and won't use much, mini-Tube Screamer, cheapo overdrive (so can use OD for crunch and TS to boost), mini-delay, mini-reverb. Frankly the TS and the delay would really be enough, but I got carried away
I can get pretty close to the sound I need for a song even if I want to use a few different effects in one patch and it's one easy box to navigate without taking up too much space.
But.
On a couple of the songs i did it would have come in very useful to have it there. The main reason i didn't use it was the faff of plugging it in etc, so i'm looking at getting a rechargeable psu (wanted one for a while, this is a great excuse) and potentially a wireless system for guitar to cut down cable pluggings and what not. I'm all about simplicity me
This is something I wouldn't agree with.
I agree we don't want people messing about a lot, but part of the jam is to enjoy the performance and the experience. At the Water Rats jam I did a song with someone who was encouraged to use the p'up selector and volume control and it didn't work (it wasn't his fault), the reasons you cite above come into play.
You're taking someone in a stressful/new situation, getting them to plug into an amp they don't know at all, and in 10/30 seconds set the amp up for their part and guitar, and in such a way that they can get a clean, crunch and lead sound? That's not going to happen - so what will happen is either the gain or volume will be wrong at some part of the song, and that can easily spoil the song not only for the player but also for the whole band.
Additionally, a boost pedal isn't always about making things louder - one of the reason a TS works so well is the mid-hump, so kick it in for a solo, you drive the amp harder and also boost the mids, which makes it stand out more and also changes the harmonics etc - yes if you set the amp for that sound to start with and turn the guitar down you can get close - but only if you know the amp.
I'm all Fractal now, but I used to hire rehearsal rooms quite a bit - so I could turn it up a bit - and the most reliable setup I had was a clean amp, basically all controls on noon - and then everything from a pedal board, the amp just makes things louder and the pedals are things I'm familiar with work for me, and if the amp is clean - I honestly never had to fiddle, it's only when you introduce amp drive things get harder.
One of my great joys in preparing for the Water Rats was working out the sounds, I played a variety of songs and certainly for two of them I could have gone straight into amp, but for two I absolutely couldn't have done.
If I was doing a small pedalboard, I'd have a mini wah, tuner, TS Mini, MXR Phase 95, Angry Charlie, Carbon Copy/Ibanez Mini Delay (or clones of the above) and I reckon you could set up in well under a minute and have everything you'd ever need - consistently and predictably.
Someone (ahem) at Hudd had this issue, because they lashed up a small board with what they had available. Rendered the whole exercise pointless
For what it's worth, the rig I've gone for is:
- Mooer mini-tuner: so far seems fine, nice and clear display, appears accurate compared to my TU-2
- Ibanez TS-mini: lovely, simple, just works
- Mooer Blues Mood mini overdrive: it's "OK" and will do the job, but I'm not massively impressed. Could see me swapping it out for something a bit better in time as it very shows its price point. But ... when I used it for reals rather than in the house, it actually sounded pretty good. So, jury's out.
- Ibanez Analog mini-delay: for fiddling at home it seems a bit limited. In a real world situation, it turned out to be bang on. Have half an eye out for a TC electronric flashback mini as an alternative
- TC Electronic HOF mini: very nice, but you'll lose hours playing with the toneprint software trying to get just what you want!
All of that is on a Pedaltrain Nano+ powered by a Cioks DC5. The latter rather changed the costings for the project (half the pedals were secondhand), but not getting a decent PSU just renders the whole exercise pointless, I decided.
Setup time is plugging in the mains and two jack leads.
If pushed I could ditch the HOF and the Blues Mood and roll with just the rest, frankly.