Do you hoard discontinued pedals that make up ''your'' sound?

[X-Ray Spex]

Something I've been thinking about a lot recently is that my live pedalboard setup (my home setup is another story, lots of loopers for writing but unnecessary and unwieldy for live use) has remained the same since I started playing 16 years ago.

As a consequence there's two or three rare-ish discontinued pedals that I rely on for ''my'' sound, and I tend to buy them whenever they pop up on Reverb etc.

Now I find myself with a ridiculous number of backups, 4-5 of each specific pedal not including the number 1 pedal that sits on the live board and number 2 that sits in the gigbag if things go haywire. But I can't bring myself to get rid of them just in case something happens, and they're discontinued so there's the ever present fear that once they're gone they're gone forever. Also there's the whole ''Klon effect'' price-creep issue with pedals that would make re-purchasing them difficult if I was to try to get them back.

I do have storage space for them and they do get swapped out regularly and maintained etc.

Does anyone else do this? At what point did you stop hoarding or did you ever stop to begin with?

[sal paradise]

After my 17th Shredmaster, I started to wonder if I had a problem…

[JSett]

I hoarded Ampeg Scramblers for a while. I had a couple of OG's, a couple of 90's reissues, and two Fredrik clones. The band I was in, that I used that as the core guitar sound in, broke up and I gradually sold all bar the clones off.

I keep a backup of every pedal on my gigging board now, which is very small. They're nothing special though so readily available and no need to hoard.

[burpgun]

Have loved the discontinued Line 6 Echo Park pedal for years and now have two, but I put them both to use: One on the guitar board and one on the bass board. If I saw EHX killing off the Super Ego I'd pick up another one to be safe. Not sure I'd ever go for triples of anything, although a wise man once said triples makes it safe.

[fuzzjunkie]

No.

My core sound mostly revolves around 3 different fuzz tones along with heavy tape echo and the occasional tremolo or phaser. As long as I can get a raspy mid ‘60s fuzz, a thicker late ‘60s fuzz, and a compressed, bass heavy ‘70s fuzz going into some sort of tape echo, I’m good. I don’t really care what the actual pedals are.

I like the pedals I have, but I’m not dependent on them. For example - I have 3 pedals that can do the raspy ‘60s fuzz. The easiest to dial in is on my pedalboard, but any of them will do, so no duplicates. If one died on me, I could do just fine with the other two. Same with the other core tones, except for the tremolo, and I can use the onboard AC-30 tremolo for that if I had to.

I do have some rare vintage pedals, like an A/DA Final Phase, and a few discontinued boutiques like a Lovetone RingStinger or Fairfield Four Eyes. Just no backups for them, because I can get the same basic sounds I use them for with other similar pedals.

[ctu]

I'm not using any special or difficult-to-replace pedals, but I wouldn't mind a "backup" Line 6 Pod 2.0 unit. There are much, much better units than this one, but for some reason I like Pod 2.0 the most.

[MayTheFuzzBeWithYou]

I never had enough money to hoard stuff - but I now do have a pretty rare Death By Audio Super Fuzz War and a Blackout Effectors Fuzz Bear (thanks Andy @ ProGuitarShop.com for hooking me up in 2015) ... I tend not to use both too much atm - but they were essential in my band's first album sound! ...

[burpgun]

I'm not using any special or difficult-to-replace pedals, but I wouldn't mind a "backup" Line 6 Pod 2.0 unit. There are much, much better units than this one, but for some reason I like Pod 2.0 the most.

The weird ass thing about Line 6 is that their effects don't necessarily get better when new versions came out. I loved my guitar and bass Pods and got so much use from them. Still love my Echo Parks. But subsequent versions of these devices always fell short. The M13 claimed to have the same delays as the Echo Park but it didn't sound the same. I think the Pods, while simpler, did a better sounding job than the HX Stomp/Helix Native stuff I've messed around with lately. I ended up giving my guitar Pod to an analog cork sniffer friend who usually was down on modelers and he loved it. Go figure.

[marqueemoon]

Not yet.

I think the only “must have” for my sound is a JFET clean boost with a lot of headroom (charge pump or can run at 18V).

I have my favorites, but good ones sound more or less the same.

[stevejamsecono]

Nah. I truly hope my sound isn't so dependent on specific gear to be impossible without it.

Closest I get to that is I prefer some things that supposedly 'sounded better' back in the day and therefore have to buy 'cork sniffery'/'vintage style' stuff, i.e. my Retrosonic Flanger vs an off the rack EHX Mistress.

[parry]

I have a few backup backups for my Malekko Spring Chicken(s)
I just can't imagine being without that sound. Even if it's only temporary. And yep, if another one comes up and the price isn't stupid - I'll buy it.

[redchapterjubilee]

Hoard, no. But I do like redundancy, or did when I gigged all the time so when the main pedal broke I had a reasonable backup. A dozen years ago I bought a Rat daydreamanalog built and it’s special (no other Rat I’ve played sounds just like it) and I’ve had it cloned so I have a backup for it. Heh, the backup is like 98% of it and I don’t like it as much as the original.

[MrShake]

A few years ago, yeah. I picked up backups for my Boss reverb/delay/flange/chorus stuff. They were still cheap, and I had a hard time finding something that did BF-2 or CE-3 (etc) the way I liked it, so dropped for another, when some retailers made no distinction between used and "vintage". I got a 1982 BF-2 for the same price as one from 2000.

Now? That'd be a hard sell, both with the market and the more widely available clones of everything.

[s_mcsleazy]

kinda. i leave my proper pedalboard at the practice space and a scaled down version (kinda) in my flat. the downside i've found is most proco rats sound different from each other and finding ones that sound like my favorite one have been an ongoing quest with no end in sight. no really, i've owned maybe about 25 different ones and none really come close to ol' fuckface. although, my lil rat is 90% similar so that's fine with me.

i think the other issue is so many of my pedals are kinda..... tailored to me. like half my board is pedals i've built or modded to get as close to the sound i want as possible. so if i buy backups for my alt board, i usually have to mod them to be like my main board.

although, i have noticed in recent years i keep buying 90's "metal" distortions to get that 90's skate-punk sound....... it's starting to become a problem since i don't even play in that kinda problem.

[JSett]

kinda. i leave my proper pedalboard at the practice space and a scaled down version (kinda) in my flat. the downside i've found is most proco rats sound different from each other and finding ones that sound like my favorite one have been an ongoing quest with no end in sight. no really, i've owned maybe about 25 different ones and none really come close to ol' fuckface. although, my lil rat is 90% similar so that's fine with me.

i think the other issue is so many of my pedals are kinda..... tailored to me. like half my board is pedals i've built or modded to get as close to the sound i want as possible. so if i buy backups for my alt board, i usually have to mod them to be like my main board.

although, i have noticed in recent years i keep buying 90's "metal" distortions to get that 90's skate-punk sound....... it's starting to become a problem since i don't even play in that kinda problem.

I've found recently that I can get way more sounds out of my venerable old HM-2 than they get credit for. I can get pretty close to a very gritty Blues Driver (which sounds like a cranked Bassman), extremely close to a Rat, a fat Mesa-style chugg, skatepunk distortion and thrashy Municipal Waste grind AND the shitty Norwegian sound. It's super versatile if you spend the time with it - probably thanks to its tone controls having such a monstrous range.

I've also struggled with the duplicate Rat thing. My one I've had since 1995 sounds different to every other one I've tried. I might try and build my own by taking measurements of all the components one day if I get really really bored (but probably won't).