Pedalboard Class, One-On-One
The first pedals/pedalboards/amps and TONE class was held Saturday, April 25, down here in the basement and was a great success! We divided the time between an overview of pedal order, reliable cabling, and physical layout, and a hands-on dialing-in of my student Andy’s particular setup.
For the overview, I brought in my larger board, seen in the photo above. Before anyone piles on, I switch certain pedals in and out, and am aware that my cabling isn’t OCD neat. The red cable is from a George L’s kit, which sounds great, is very reliable once you get the solderless connection thing down, and has nice low profile plugs, which help when I need to squeeze just one more pedal on before a gig.
That board is a Pedaltrain 2, with a Voodoo Labs Pedal Power 2 supply underneath. It’ll run nine 9V pedals, so there’s only one battery on the board, in a pedal that still works with a dead battery. I’ve had no issues with that foundation at all, and as pedals come and go, I don’t have to worry about things working. Nice to have that peace of mind!
Andy’s jam camp rig is a Tele (from our building classes), a T-Rex Yellow Drive pedal, and a Vox AC-4 tube amp. First we tweaked the amp’s tone knobs, explored the interaction between the gain and master volume knobs, and found a beautiful clean tone that sounds great all by itself.
We moved on to the pedal, which has two selectable channels, each with its own gain, level, and tone controls. It presents lots of options but can also seem a little confusing if you aren’t a veteran knob-spinner. We were able to quickly find pedal settings that pulled lots of great sounds from the whole rig, again without compromising a great clean sound. The right settings are easy to control from the guitar, or by switching channels on the pedal, and everything works great!
Playing is much more fun when your gear works predictably and consistently, and inspires you to play your best stuff. And messing with the gear is a good time, too!