Wicked Awesome Wednesday!

Why is it wicked awesome you ask? Because tomorrow is Thanksgiving and I'm done with work for the week

Well at least at my job, a cord of wood is on it's way and it's not going to stack itself. The good news is most of the prep for winter is done now. Swept the chimney, raked the leaves, new gaskets on the wood stove, all that is left is cleaning the gutters and the boiler. Enough about that though on to...

LUNCH!

Lunch today is leftovers. I made a lovely beef roast the other night with carrots, potato, onions, mushrooms and some jus. Wouldn't want that to go to waste, plus I need to make room for Thanksgiving leftovers.

OFF TOPIC

Pedal boards. I don't have much in the way of pedals, just a TS-7 tube screamer that I tinkered with, a Danelectro chorus that I hardly ever use, a Crybaby that I'm terrible with, and a Zoom 1010 multi effects that sounds really really cheesy.
I tried to trade in Zoom towards something else but they only offered me $10 and won't take it without a 9v adapter. Since the 9v adapter is worth more than that, and works on other pedals, I've kept it.
I accumulated that stuff about 10-11 years ago and as soon as I started gigging they all fell apart, with the exception of the Crybaby. The TS-7's switch is going, the chorus only works when it wants to, the wah... that thing would survive a nuclear meltdown (and looks like it has) but I just don't use it anymore, and finally the Zoom 1010, it's plastic, need I say more.
I've really only been using the ts-7 and the tremolo on my amp, at this point the tremolo stopped working and I have to stand on the ts-7 for it to stay on....so...

What are you guys using out there that you really love? and what has stood up to the abuse you put it through?


G&L TOPIC

Continuing with the theme...
There has been a lot of talk/buzz about the G&L pedals (Buckshot and Double Barrel) lately, with them being officially up on the website and all. I'm hoping some sound clips will follow. I've been seeing questions on where these fit in with the existing BBE lineup of pedals, if either of them is a crossover from the BBE lineup, and if you think they'll integrate the BBE pedals into the G&L lineup.

My take on it is this. The BBE pedals are, for the most part, high quality reproductions of existing circuits (i.e.- Green Screamer = Tube Screamer, Two Timer = DM-2, Soul Vibe = Uni-vibe, etc.) From what I've read it doesn't sound like either of the G&L pedals crossover into that BBE lineup. And if I had to guess, it will probably stay that way, G&L being the "boutique" pedal line with more unique circuits and BBE remaining as quality reproductions of classic circuits at a great price.

**Disclaimer: this is just my opinion, sometimes I have no idea what I'm talking about**

Discuss!

I am an individual pedals kind of guy. I currently have a Polytune, Strymon El Capitstan and OB.1 and a Morley Bad Horsie 2 Wah. The strymon pedals are peerless, the OB.1 is a compressor with a boost function, very nice, doesn't squash just levels off, little to no noise (the little noise is diming compression). Very nice for chicken picking. The El Capistan is the best delay pedal on the market, no contest, a convincing tape echo sim. The wah is switchless, step on it engages, step off it turns off. All optical no moving parts with a contour control to hone in on certain frequency sweeps. Polytune is a nice tool, albeit it does poorly on the low E (in poly mode) on my guitar, it tunes my 5 string bass peerlessly in poly mode though.

I am interested in the double barrel. The BBE pedals so far don't much appeal to me. The Sonic stomp does nothing audible to my boogie, but jives well with my bass amp (solid state, Fender BXR). I have not been recording though so haven't tried to use it to help not losing low end on fast passages.

I am out of here at 1:30pm today courtesy of President Obama - whoopie.

Lunch, I got my daughter with me so it will be Mickey D's. Whomever it was who came up with the Happy Meal did not get paid enough.

Pedals - I don't need no stinkin' pedals. OK, I do like a little bit o' slapback echo. For me the best FX you can have is a tube rectifier.

But just to prove you can teach an old dog new tricks, I have been exploring using some FX with my lap steel. While that string through pickup in my lap steel is about the nastiest single coil ever invented (this is the pickup Ry Cooder slapped in the bridge of his Coodercaster) I was almost able to coax out something akin to David Lindley's sound on "Running On Empty" sound with a mid-power amp and the BBE Green Screamer. For alot of lap steel players this is the Holy Grail of sound.

I have no opinion as to where BBE might go with pedals and such. I think they give a box with a great build quaility and that works as it should at a very fair price. Suckers are built like little tanks.

For the last year or so I've only had one pedal between my guitar and my amp. I had (still have) a Fulltone Fulldrive2 as an overdrive, but a year ago I bought a custom made Tube Screamer variety called a Zonkin' Yellow Screamer. Starting with a Tube Screamer kit the builder made it into a pedal with a separate boost and overdrive effects. The boost is just a plain volume boost. The overdrive has 3 choices of overdrive electronics and 3 choices of bass EQ along with gain, output and tone. In addition he added a feature so that I can gang the boost before the overdrive, or the overdrive before the boost. It is actually very reasonably priced too. It is a great little pedal (physically about 2.5" by 5") and that is all I use now.

The builder was willing to do custom paint jobs, and so mine looks like this:



Here's a couple videos of a player demonstrating the pedal:

[youtube]YvYaErlz1fY[/youtube]

[youtube]Hd59URhPAWE[/youtube]

Last weekend I thought of the Dan Echo pedal that I bought several years ago. When I first got it I played with it a bit and then put it away. Over the weekend I decided I can use a delay for some things so I retrieve the Dan Echo from the cabinet and fiddled with it. I took it with me to band practice and it actually added a nice effect to some songs. I think I'll add it in my pedal chain for now.

I own several BBE pedals but I prefer my signal chain to be simple, so they only get used every once in a while. They are all pretty cool pedals though.

Kit

I've got a collection of mainly Boss overdrive, distortion, delay and EQ pedals, but since I bought this gizmo I never use them.



Yes, it's an all-in-one box that can trap you in preset hell if you let it, BUT you can bypass the amp sim, speaker emulation etc. and just use the effects the old fashioned intuitive way - by turning the knobs and using the stomp switches.

It's built like a tank and the effects (chorus/flange/phaser/compressor/delay/leslie sim/reverb) are superb - not at all digital and cheesy.

Pedals
I have a few. Here's my current pedal board:


Boss tuner - MI Audio Tube Zone - Durham Sex Drive - Mojo Hand Huckleberry fuzz - Mr. Springgy Reverb.

Five pedals and I love them. The reverb stays on all the time. No amp I own has a reverb that works, and my two main amps don't have reverb at all. This pedal sounds great, doesn't break and uses less power than inbuilt reverb. Yes, it's digital, but reliable and practically indestructible. The Tube Zone is a pedal with a lot of knobs, enabling you to tailor it to ANY amp. Again, two of my amps are single channel machines, so I use this to provide a bit more gain. It sounds fantastic and you can add a whole lot of volume with it. Sex Drive is a nice clean boost. If I use it before the fuzz I get a completely different response and tone out of the fuzz pedal, kind of like having an extra pedal. I'll add a tremolo to this if I'm not using my Ampeg J20 which has a wonderful tremolo built in.

I also have a few pedals I don't use very often. There's an EH Black Finger compressor (lovely compressor, but runs on AC and so requires a separate adaptor as well as a lot of space on the board.....), an old Boss Chorus (great, but not mush use for a chorus pedal), and a Crybaby classic wah (I was forbidden by the band leader to use a wah pedal, the bass player is forbidden to slap).

My biggest disappointment ever was the Way Huge Aqua Puss. I looked for one for ages that wasn't going to cost me $300, finally found one at half that figure, bought it, plugged it in and PFFFFFFT. Where's my high end gone? The delay isn't particularly good, they're expensive, they rob all your high end.... I'm trying to sell it.

I think you're right about the BBE/G&L pedals thing. I really want to try out a Buckshot.

Thanks for posting up your boards/effects! definitely some interesting stuff out there. Sorry to hear about the Aquapuss Jamie, I've always heard great things about it, good to know though. My plan is to get my tremolo repaired, the amp needs a servicing anyway just waiting for some new tubes to come in, replace the ts-7 with something similar (green screamer?), pick up a fuzz and a delay and go from there.

-Dave