I play without pedals and it can sound dry at times but my reason for playing this way is because it teaches me how to play clean, accuracy and smooth.
70's guys rarely used pedals... Well... they didn't had what we have today thou. Hendrix used like 4 pedals and it was considered a lot... The fact is: they are distractions in gigs.... I tried building pedalboards 4 TIMES and it always ended the same way: I sold the pedals cause don't have the patience to deal with noises, parameters between songs and all. Now i'm with a multi fx pedal. It's unbeatable to make things simpler on stage (the hard work its done at home) but now i'm feeling that my tone suffers.... I have a JCM 2000, TSL 100 as main amp. I have 3 channels of pure Marshall heaven tone behind me. Does not make sense to use a floor modeler if I have the real deal there... I agree with you. Pedals can be addictive. We have to quit that addiction and focus on playing.
Every guitarist should see this. I know joe bon got crap for pedals comment, but I really like getting to use just the guitar and amp and find all the tones in between before you need pedals.
Agree, more gear = more to worry & more to go wrong on live gigs. Audience doesn't know the difference . They just want to hear a good band with good music. We play straight into a Yamaha Stagepas600BT and that's it. The mixer on this unit has a nice reverb that we use and that's about it. Easy set up / tear down and having more fun playing & getting repeat gigs. Less is more . IMO🎸🎸🎸
Great recommendations JJ! If I was going to trim down my board, the only pedal I would want is a compressor pedal. If I set my amp with a good amount of gain, with a compressor pedal you can dial back your guitar volume to clean up the sound while not losing volume. When you do want less volume, just turn off the compressor.
Great topic! More people should talk about this topic and you're the only one I saw on YT that talks about this subject. Subbed! I'm close to using just guitar -> amp (minus tuner pedal). I've removed my drive pedals and use the 2 channels on my dual terror; one for rhythm, one for lead. I also use my guitar volume knob to go clean sometimes. Besides that, I have a Boss dd-20 and phase90, but I use those to color or add character to certain parts of songs. I know it's not just guitar to amp but meh, 2 pedals aren't too bad. Maybe one day I can see about removing those 2 as well.
Great video!! I'm a singer/guitarist as well. Struggeled with this issue for a couple of years. Had this giant pedalboard but now I only have a tuner and a boost in the FX loop for solos. Just use one basic sound with a little grit. So when I play soft it cleans up and when I dig in it gives me som punch. It's all I really need. I don't have time for tap dancing anymore =)
I get what you mean, but I'm not sure it works for everyone like that. I love guitar pedals, and they make me feel more inspired. Whenever I'm playing and I'm not enjoying my tone there is a certain lack of enthusiasm I feel, but when the tone is great i feel so much more inspired and enjoy the whole thing a lot more. I think everyone knows that the audience does not care about the gear, they just want a good show, but if the gear makes you play better and enjoy everything more you will be able to give them a better performance. But yeah, if it works for you that's great, i think people should try this, but it's not for everyone. P. S. I think you should make more videos like this one. I like hearing advice from gigging musicians! Cheers!
Just ditched my pedal board about month ago. Use different guitars into a 70's boogie mkI. My playing has improved and the guys in the band always compliment me on my tone.
I don't see how anyone needs more than 5 pedals. I can definitely see the benefit of no pedals when all of them have different volumes. When I look at monster pedal boards I get a headache looking at them. All the things that can wrong with them. I would still want one or two pedals.
I gave up on pedals 22 years ago when we moved to Portland, Oregon. I'd been using pedals, but not very many really. The Portland blues jam hosts weren't using ANY pedals and their tones just blew me away. Eventually at one jam, they called me back up and I had no time to set the pedals up again, so went without. It was the best tone I ever got! I never went back again. I bought an old '73 Deluxe Reverb for cheap and found the best tone of my life. Pedals take things away, they homogenize your tone. I saw a pretty well known guitar teacher on stage when his pedal died while he was playing. He literally could not play without it, really embarrasing and he walked off the stage after being unable to play at all. Everyone loves Page, Clapton, Beck, Bloomfield etc. and none of those guys really used pedals, so why would YOU?
I thought I was the only lone ranger not using multieffects pedals. Nice to hear someone thinking similarly. They are great inspiring and fun but take lots precious time to tweak tones and volumes.and sometimes headache at gigs. Some people are great at pre tweaking and can work pedals blindfolded smooth as butter...that's a skill talent patience a college of study I failed at. Simple plug and play is my current way but who knows maybe one day I will study a great way to play pedals.
I been thinking of doing just this, then I stumbled across this great vid. I sing and play guitar in a trio, I'd rather focus on singing and not on stomp boxes. Gonna give it a shot to see how it works out. If it works it'll be like lifting a weight off my shoulders. The trick will be setting the gain just right so I can get soft/mellow/clean passages with the vol knob rolled back and a gritty blues/rock tone at full guitar volume. Hmmm...
Same here! I play in a trio too, lead vocal and guitar. Man... I was playing with 10 pedals or so and that thing is like playing a third instrument! I was suffering cause I was unnable to focus in what matters! Now I use two amps, one solid state with lots of effects and one raw tube amp. Both with 2 channels. I only have footswitches now in front of me. One to change amps, and to change channels of the amps. Now I can have 1) All clean channel of solid state amp 2) Clean with effects of solid state amp. Changing to tube: 3) Little distorted channel for bases and 4) High gain tube distortion for killing solos. Much better now!!!!
Some really good points here. Personally & as a drummer, I like the sounds of pedals BUT ONLY if the player is really really familiar & skilled in using them. I understand the fun & experiment of it, but a lot of guitar players just overdo it and the core of the song & the idea behind it gets lost in an ocean of effects OR (worst case): they don't know how the handle their gear properly. Rehearsals in a familiar setting might be fine, but on stage, when time is little & conditions very different, for many reasons, they're lost with their pedal board. After the gig they blame it on the "crappy technique" or the "shitty soundguy" and in both cases they already made their next shopping list of "finally some decent pedals" instead of learning their lesson :-) On the other hand, whenever I played with someone using no pedals at all (maybe 1 or max 2 for certain songs), it was just so much fun them just plugging their amps, check the volume level and then be like "OK, I'm ready/let's rock"
I'm going to also tell the drummer to use less Tom's and cymbals. He only really needs a snare, hi hat and bass drum. Bass players shouldn't use a Pic or anything more than 1 15" speaker and singers don't really need a mic if they learn to project. Ya know what ? Let's just bring a juke box.
