I became a bedroom/recording guitarist for about six or seven years, and had a huge board. Literally -- a giant two-by-three sandbox to mix and match a huge number of pedals. I hung things up a few years ago. My recording rig crapped out, leaving me like a painter without a canvas. Compounded with depression/anxiety, I just boxed everything up and didn’t play a note on an instrument for two and a half years. So now, with a bunch of years woodshedding under my belt (excepting the last two+), we’re going to get back to where we left off but at a technical and sonic advantage. We’re basically going from The Gories/White Stripes to a two-piece (early) Spacemen 3 kind of thing. Primitive tom-thumping under reverbed fuzz-drone riffs.
It’s exciting being able to jump back on the horse, and I’ve been pulling everything out and seeing what I can do.
The first thing I noticed is that after all these years, I have all the gear I could really ever want. The time away largely cured me of “pedal fever”. But I got so used to having a huge board that I’m now looking to come up with something leaner that I can actually take to practice.
And I’ve narrowed it down to... twelve pedals?!?
It’s basically two rows, with the Supersonic Fuzz Gun patched in before the tuner. That spot’s for what I like to call my “kaboom fuzz"... something to stomp on and blow everything up in a giant explosion.
It’s basically a matter of picking my fuzz/dirt on the first row. A Shin-Ei FY-2 clone, a Superfuzz, or a Rat. Also, that “Boss distortion” sound from my teenage years, if I get a wild hair.
In addition to the “standard” sounds (distortion into reverb, fuzz into flanger... into reverb), I’ll have a lot of ground to cover as the only non-drummer. For the record, I play through a nicely-serviced Silverface Bassman Ten -- a 4x10 closed-back with a lot of punch and beefiness. This rig offers:
- A Mooer knockoff for “Reverb into Rat” (instant Raveonettes/Vandelles/surfy post-punk)
- The placement of the Mooer clone also allows me to put flanging before or after dirt.
- The tuner after the Supersonic Fuzz Gun lets me tune/set the oscillation tone
- Two reverbs = super-long spooky reverb trails, clean or dirty
- Double Rat Madness!
- The Super Feedbacker is (usually) set low so I can set up a drone and then soak it in high-gain distortion like a violin.
- The delay is almost never used, except for one critical song that’s built entirely around a DD-5 specifically. That said, it’s nice to have it there for tranced-out riff grooves.
- No matter what else I do, the RV-2 at the end ensures I can drench everything in plate ambience
I’ve been having trouble deciding on my flanger. Since this is my all-purpose board to lug to practice and gigs, I can’t bring myself to put my 18V Electric Mistress on there, even putting aside the real estate it would chew up. The Mooer knockoff flanger gets me enough of the way there for high-volume practice and gig and it's tiny. But I also love the BF-2... maybe it's from wht’s got maybe even a little more variety, but I’m still undecided. Plus the “Electric Mistress” gives me the Filter Matrix mode for extra sonic flavor. I keep flipping back and forth, and remain wracked with indecision. Anyone care to offer any vote in favor of one or the other?
Same with the “kaboom fuzz”. I love the Supersonic Fuzz Gun, but I’ve got a vintage-modded Fender Blender that’s the only pedal I have that actually kinda scares me to activate in boost mode. The Fuzz Gun’s versatile, and there’s a ton of great sounds in it, but it can be a little thin, despite its huge potential for chaos generation. The Blender's more limited in it's scope, but I've never heard a more gnashing, roaring sound than its boosted mode. A drawback for the Blender is that it's HUGE on a board like this. Same question -- what do y'all think?
Frankly, I wish the whole thing were sleeker, and while I could probably drop the DF-2 and maaaaaaybe the FY-2, it’s about as tight as I can get it for spaced out heavy-psych garage. And while I rarely use the Pulsar, it more than does the trick if I want some square wave machine-gun trem blasts, and I wouldn’t necessarily want to be without it.
I’m also planning on building a new board itself, with tiers. The middle row will be up on an additional 1” plank, and the back corner for the rotating explode-o-fuzz will be double-stacked, with enough space behind that for a power strip. It’s going to look like a level from Crystal Castles or something.
Now I just need to figure out how I’m going to get my Jag finished, and I’ll have my ideal rig for this band -- something I wouldn’t have dreamt of nine years ago.
