Baxter and Jonathan discuss how many pedals and what kind you need on your pedal board. Is it 0 or is it 10 or is it three pedal boards like John Mayer.
Pray Baxter never discovers Chase Bliss. If he shouts at clouds now, he'd never recover from that shock. He'd retire to his man cave permanently with a 5 string banjo.
200+ pedals in the quiver, 5-8 pedals on the board at any slice of time. I’m always looking though and as such adding pedals every week. I love collecting them.
Just built my first pedalboard, been playing 52 years. So much fun! As a jazz player used to just use a tuner. I now have 17 pedals all hooked up. So cool, a fantasy that I will probably never leave the house with. Taking them all on a gig would end up in ridicule and laughter. But then again doing a gig with a tuner so many times ended up with ridicule and laughter. Story of my life!😆🤣😄😛😁😃🤣 Oh well.
I have 16 pedals on my board. I play heavy psychedelic rock. I also have a Vox hybrid modelling amp. My favourite manufacturer are Tone City. However, there are a couple of iconic pedals that I hang onto: my DS-1, my Big Muff Pi, and my Keeley Dyno-My-Roto.
It is not about the pedals or even the end product. It is about the process which is so much fun. I have 10 pedals which includes a tuner and wah. But in reality only use 3 of them 😅
I use 12 pedals, but i do use all of them very often. Wah - tuner - compressor - sd1 - light od - heavy od - boost - vibrato - chorus - delay - reverb/tremolo - looper I play a somewhat large variety of music so i may not use all of them for certain gigs, but theyre all used commonly for practice. I do think they’re all necessary besides maybe the chorus… anr maybe the wah? But you always need a wah
I think of guitar pedals are like crayons some people only need the 8 crayon box and color the music beautiful I like the 120 crayon box I like the big palette and love to scribble out of the lines to each their own!
In my experience you only need no more than 5 pedals,but that also depends on the kind of music you play.On my board right now I have a looper,overdrive,a couple modulation pedals,and a wah pedal.The rest of the effects are built into my amp(reverb,etc).
For most of my 50+ year gigging career I used 0 pedals, but once tuners were invented then I added a tuner pedal. Otherwise guitar straight into a tube amp; for rock, blues, country, swing, pop, Americana or whatever. However about 15 years ago a band I was working with required me to add a delay and chorus to get the sound they wanted. And a current variety band has required me to add a few more pedals to get specific sounds. I will oblige them for now, but otherwise I greatly prefer the honest sound of just guitar & amp.
Church musician here. All I need is 2 drives, one low gain, one high gain, a good delay and a good reverb. And of course a tuner and volume pedal which is actually a MUST. Of course I have much more than, but it's all I actually NEED
Church musician here and you are correct : A Big Sky and maybe a digital delay (maybe not). That's about all I can imagine ever needing with what I do.
From Leo: I have 50 or 60 bought over many years, I use just four of them 95% of the time. OD, Reverb, Delay and Acoustic Simulator. Almost all my Guitars have Three or more pickup voices and tone controls, so that is a lot of variation added to the amp controls. I do have one old Tube amplifier that needs an EQ pedal so I have an EQ pedal velcro'ed to the top of that head.
Looper + Delay + Overdive You can obviously add in a tuner pedal and the trusty old Boss EQ pedal too and the list can go on and on but those three to me are the essentials, especially if you’re using a clean type amp 🤙
I know I don't NEED to have a eqd data corrupter, but it's a ton of fun and I'm glad I have it! same thing with my uni-vibe. Playing weird pedals gets me out of ruts, and helps my creativity. There's a group of necessary pedals you guys went over, then there are the fun/novelty/niche pedals that I'm glad I own!
I like to keep it rather small. If I can't get the sound through my amp, then I'll use a pedal, Octave, Fuzz, Reverb, Wah, Delay, Phaser, Noise Suppressor/Gate, & always a Tuner.
i just got my first pedal last week, a Behringer Superfuzz, only $40. it's a clone of the Univox Superfuzz, but also has gain knob and a boost mode. The boost sounds rather Klon-esque, it naturally breaks up my Hiwatt without needing to crank the amp, and the fuzz (when dialed right) sounds badass, especially on lead. That said, i'm eyeing to get a Boss Tremolo, besides that, I'm not in a massive rush for any other pedals.
I found my perfect solution. The TC Electronic Plethora X.3. Now I have a small, very portable board with three soft to hard drive pedals and a world of modulation and time based options (with built-in, tuner and looper as a bonus). there is very little I can’t do with it. I do my church gig on Sunday morning and play with my “edge of metal” rock band at night using one small board.
I bought a hotone Xtomp for the same reason as the Plethora. The Xtomp can be almost any type of pedal that I don't have, which means I can have unlimited pedals sounds in the size of a regular pedal.
I only have one pedal. A Morley WVB, it’s got a wah wah, volume pedal and boost pedal all in one. My Clapton Strat into this then into a tweed ‘57 reissue Champ has been my rig for years. I can play every genre I’m capable of playing (not much!), and it always sound great. I now put my money into strings only. It’s quite freeing since I used to own hundreds of pedals! Sold them all to buy the amp.
With an ampless rig via the Iridium, you need to load up a solid board for gain, modulation, delay, and reverb. With synth/Dream pop stuff, even more emphasis is on texture and space. But if you’ve got a perfect guitar/amp combo, can’t go wrong.
I blame Josh Scott for my pedal obsession. Because of him, I'm even saving the boxes. Joking aside, I am a bedroom player and like to try and replicate the tones I hear on my favorite records. I also like to collect the more obscure pedals like the Rush Pep Box. I'm a big Univibe fan and have 5 or 6 of those.
I like gain. One boost, one eq, one distortion and a channel switcher. Tuner, noise gate , phaser and delay. I don't keep adding or switching pedals. I have good ones and now I have a good board.
Currently I have a Looper Pedal, a Rat (fuzz/overdrive), Ibanez Tube Screamer, Noise Gate, a chorus, and a Wah Pedal. I find myself wanting a compressor and a delay pedal and not much if anything after that. I think 10 is about the max of what someone would need. 10 fits on a pedalboard easily and can be tailored to personal playstyle, taste, etc.
Was on the highway to the danger zone, loggin’ with Loggins, cruisin’ like a top gun slingin’ maverick when I was saved by a Monarch. Now Benson is my tone butler and I’m never goin’ back.
Setting aside the tuner/vol and my acoustic direct box, I have 4 on my board - Supro Drive, Keeley 1962x, Supro Tremolo, Strymon Flint... Both of the Supros and the Strymon have expressions.
As a jazz player I never got into pedals until I started playing more blues. It started with a Boss Blues Driver (still love it) and now I'm hosting a Hendrix themed jam session at the store I teach at. So now I have a Fuzz, a Univibe, an Octave Fuzz, and a Wah pedal. I must admit this is a fun and addicting habit, almost as bad as my record collecting twitch.
More practically: a tuner, a boost, a vibrato/trem, an OD (if your amp is super clean and hi wattage), a reverb (if your amp doesn’t have it), and delay. So 3 to 5 “ideally” :).
Baxter is right, the audience doesn't notice or care - they just hear 'guitar quiet/guitar loud'. I used to love using fancy overdrives, and several of them...turns out all you need is a venerable Boss Blues Driver and it gets the job done.
Overdrive and EQ in front of the amp. My reverb and delay come from the Boss Waza TAE. That's all I need. I do have a multi-effects pedal on the pedalboard, but really only use the tuner.
My pedal board currently consists of 8* pedals. And I'd deem pretty much all but 1 as necessary for my use. Volume pedal split into a tuner and compressor, into OD1, OD2, Plumes OD, Fender Tre-Verb, HX Stomp (where I use it for phaser and delay if I'm running into an amp and amp sim if I'm running DI). The one I'd cut if I had to choose one would be my 2nd OD. But I also run two different guitars for sets, so I have different configurations for each guitar. Though I have been relishing in the simplicity of running straight into the amp and getting OD from there and then backing off the volume to clean it up more.
the same rules apply as for guitars - there's no such thing as too many pedals. of course, if you're talking about a pedal board to carry around to gigs and stuff - that's different. if you have to carry your own stuff (like a mere mortal), fewer is usually better. for me it would be: tuner + 2 different overdrives + delay/reverb.
Okay, that's hilarious synergy. Right when Baxter says how many more [pedals] do you really need?, RU-vid interrupts with a Sweetwater commercial. Someone get that RU-vid algorithm a raise.😆
My last live rig was a 50 watt tube head, 2 Boogie Road Ready 4-12 cabs, a TS9, Cry Baby and an old SPX-90 in the loop for a single 360 ms delay and that was for a cover band playing 50-60 songs a night.
I have 5 pedal boards for 5 different amp/cab setups. The boards have from 5 to 9 pedals on each. I also have about 10 pedals that sometimes get swapped on the boards. I don't see a problem.
I am an OD stacker with a compresor :TU2 tuner.--> SP compressor --> EP Booster-->Pantheon-->Tumnus Deluxe -->The Dude -->SL Drive for tha Marshall with a Carbon Copy (effects loop) and a Wah (off board).
I once went nuts with pedals, which was considered out of the ordinary in London back in the late ‘00s for a bass player. Once I got a Mu-Tron III envelope filter, I stopped taking pedals other than a tuner and a Little Lehle for bypass. A few years ago, for one song I needed a fuzz on the bass at the singer’s insistence. Sounded great. I don’t mind when guitarists go nuts on pedals - as long as they know how to set them all up and plug them all in properly, and how to bypass them all on the fly if it all goes wrong! My favourite guitar tone is Les Paul Jr straight into a Tweed Deluxe though.
Jr. Into a Model-T. She’s a Mississippi queen, you know what I mean? Edit to add: it’s ok if you don’t know what I mean. It’s been decades and I still don’t know what it means.
Years ago I started with the Danelectro summer of love set, then got big time and got a digitech rp100 that lasted for 15 years, I never used it. Now I have a cry baby, fuzz, trem, delay and a high gain. I still use the digitech when I travel for headphones. I need to put a tuner in maybe a flanger.
Compression,Wah, overdrive, distortion, boost, volume, phaser , rotary, delay, reverb, noise gate , tuner. I rarely have more than 1 or 2 on at a time other than the always ons like compression and NG .but I play in 3 theater shows and the occasional bar gig.
Once again, very entertaining guys. Personally, I have 3 sounds. Clean, slight crunch and heavy crunch/ distorted. I use a wah on 1 or 2 songs per gig. I use a Chorus on one song, if we choose to play it. I use a boost and sometimes a tube screamer. So that’s 4 pedals. Only occasionally do I use the fifth element, I mean pedal. That being a clone of a Klon. Clean and crunch sounds come from an Egnater rebel 30 mk1 combo or I get everything from a modeller if it’s a rehearsal/ small venue. The Ampero by Hotone straight into the desk and out to the FOH, on stage it’s either iem’s or a headrush for monitoring.
I'm in the Yngwie J. Malmsteem camp. "How can less be more? More is MORE!!!" My board is: Big Muff Triangle, Mythos Golden Fleece, Wah, Timmy, Sugar Drive, Distortion (Danelectro Roebuck, or DS-1), Boss - TR2 Tremolo (always on), FX Loop: MXR Carbon Copy Analog Deluxe, Wampler Ethereal, JHS 3 Hall Reverb, Earthquaker Afterneath and finally a Ditto looper. If I had more room on my board i would probably add more modulation pedals.
So I play primarily Telecasters through a tweed Deluxe (no reverb or tremolo). I have five pedals on my board: 1. poly tune 3 tuner 2. Kelley Oxblood overdrive (has multiple settings and clippings) 3. Kelley Monterey (2 channel pedal: fuzz on the right side and my choice of rotary, univibe or harmonic wah on the left side) 4. Kelley Hydra (2 channel pedal: tremolo on the left, reverb on the right) and 5. TC ditto looper. Just don't need much more than that (even though I have 24 other pedals sitting around). Also helps to live down the street from Robert Kelley's shop. I just go visit him if I need more!
Yeah 5 is perfectly acceptable. I use five (not including tuner) and I can cover most styles. Any more and you end up tap dancing through your gig. It's even more of a nightmare if you're also the singer.
That's where a pedal switcher comes in handy. You can turn off the 3 or 4 you have on, and turn on another 3 (or 4) with the press of one button. I don't have one, but I can see the efficiency of them.
For years now, I have only had 5 plus a crybaby pedals on my board. An old Ibanez delay, an old Boss reverb, an old Tube Screamer, a CAE overdrive, an old H&K rotary and my CAE whammy.
Great topic guys! I built a pedal board to complete my Mid life crisis. I only have ten effects on my board but it makes for an incredible tonal palate work with. My next pedal will be a slicer just to explore what you can do with sound.
I wish I had the knowledge and funds to put my ultimate pedal into production. Four effects, solid build quality....the only pedal I would ever need. I don't understand the obsession with having hundreds of different sounds.
I have a lot of pedals. I only use five at a time on my board. I look at it like making a good dinner... you can use different ingredients for different flavors.
3 years ago... I had a Reverb, Octafuzz, OCD Fulltone and a TS mini.... Now I have a bass board, two guitar boards and a 3rd travel/viola/acoustic board... 40+ pedals now, but done for the foreseeable future.
I went from +15 down to 8 and I could get by with 3. Need fuzzface, clean boost (or comp used as clean boost), and delay. Amp has to have reverb and trem.
I usually just plug in directly into the amp, but I love to buy and try out pedals. I just don’t use them for playing out. I have a turner on my phone, so I need much else.
Gotta have dual delays, but simplicity is nice, something like the boss DD500 is nice. Drives/distortions are easy to change out. Two reverbs, one always on and one over the top. Phaser is the only modulation I own. Multi effects pedals like the Boss MS3 makes my small board so easy. The helix is my main board and I run the Tonex plugin.
I think now with the advances in signal capture one big pedal like a neural or helix does the job just fine. That an some sort of expression pedal, a tuner, and maybe a volume/eq pedal depending on if its to gig or not.
I’ve redused my board down to four pedals. Tuner > Phaser > Boss NS-2 (4 cable method) > Revv G3. Easy to bring around to gigs, quiet, and everything I need. I just found that stepping on pedals disturbed my playing.
I mostly go by what songs/ music I'm doing. Love the flanger, tremolo then chorus for rhythm. I like overdrive and then a heavy sustain. I'm still struggling with delays,one pedal for short delay one for long.the wah comes and goes..so basically 7. Maybe 8. I use a volume pedal if that Counts...pechk
Since my main two outlets for playing are church and a cover band, my board has a variety of pedals on it. Two-three options of overdrive, delay and reverb get the job done on Sundays and in my cover band, due to the changes in the songs that I’m playing in both of those contexts. Sometimes on a Sunday morning I can get by with just three pedals. Totally depends on the songs we are doing.
What drive pedals are you using? My typical chain goes fallout cloud fuzz>Duke of Tone>Timmy>Earthquaker astral destiny>Julia>Carbon Copy/Re-2 Space echo>Archer Ikon That thorpy fallout cloud is like a big muff with an EQ, it’s really nice. I set the Duke of Tone in the boost setting. But the real star of the show is the Timmy stacked into the Archer. Such a sweet tone. It works with my strat and my 335/LP. I have a vibrolux with tremolo and reverb pedal, so I use that too.
One of each basic type. You're covered for every effect. Whether you care for or actually use them is another issue. But one of each, just in case. And you have to be able use any two (or more) at once, in any order. For everyday jamming, these days I'm using EQ, Fuzz, Delay, and Looper.
I say the minimum is 6. Three flavours of drive, all separate & stackable, can be similar but to my mind it's Fuzz, overdrive, boost. At least one flavour of delay (with variable time) though 2 delays stacked is great. Reverb that isn't amp-like, anything from a simple plate to any weird ass shit you can find. And a wildcard pedal, any modulation, pitch shifting, filtering, tremolo, granular, looping...whatever floats your boat that becomes a signature sound of yours.
I agree wholeheartedly based on my experience--at home, pedals on the floor. A Cali76 stacked compressor is my sixth pedal. Will swap in tremelo or vibrato in the delay or reverb space.
I feel it mainly depends on the genre of music you are playing as well as the amplifier and guitar. If you are playing with high out put pickups( like humbuckers, P90) etc and you are driving the amp then in terms of gain you just need an Overdrive and 1 fuzz/distortion. If it’s lower output pickups like vintage single coils and you are playing a high headroom clean amplifier (like a twin) then you need multiple dirt and boost pedals because at that point you are in a way crafting your own gain channel and the pedals will do that for you. And in this way your delays and reverbs will be more pristine and clear.
Depends, what amp, kind of music. In cover bands sometimes you need more, a fuzz and a distortion.. I always have wah. octavia, univibe and tuner as a default because I dig Hendrix.. but depending on the amp, I like specific fuzzes and also my marshalls dont have reverb so thats another one =) I usually have 7.
Jonathan hit the nail right on the head. Its all personal preference. Some people are happy with a Squire and a Blues Jr and no pedals, Some people want a Two Rock, A Fender Custom Shop and 99 pedals all from Strymon or Chase Bliss. All it means is you will be more jazzed and inspired to play. I have a ton of pedals. Do I use them all at once? Hell no. Does it give me variety when I put a pedal board together? Yep. Again, its no different to a guitar or an amp. How many amps do you need? Well, it depends, Fender? Vox? Marshall? Some variation on the theme? Why do people spend thousands on a Dumble or a Two Rock? They're just modded Fenders right? Same with Guitars. Why A Strat, Tele AND a Les Paul? Again, its variety. Plus I think it has to do with where you are as a guitar player. Some guitar players are just all about that 1-1 connection. The guitar and the amp. It inspires them like nothing else. Some are like me, all about the sounds. They want to play on the sonic landscape. That Tube Screamer is not like that Klon is not like that Blues Driver is not like that Big Muff. Each one brings out something new...stack em like Jonathan said and you have a whole different landscape. They're, as Tom Petty and Mike Campbell have said...paints. They'er colors on the canvas. Its why you dont have 5 crayons in a crayon box. Well, unless its a dollar store box. The answer to "How many pedals do you need is the same as the answer for guitars and amps.....just one more. >:)
I have a board with 7 pedals, another one with 11. Both are used regularly, and I have them set up for specific things. At home, I usually just grab a pedal or two from the ones on the shelves.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again- the only pedal I use is a TS9DX on +. That’s it. I have many more pedals in a box in my closet from my post rock days, but they seldom are used live. Of course, I have a stash of awesome teles and a handful of old school amps.
I have 46 pedals I use 9 of them on my pedal board with maybe 5 on rotation. I got the QC so now I can just go with the QC and I like to use external Overdrives + a Tuner and a super clean buffer (sometimes)
I have a big, chunky, hand built Plexiglass pedal board that can hold 10 pedals. I call it my "invisible" board. All my pedals won't fit because I have about 40 of them. Not sure of the exact number because I haven't done an inventory lately. I do have multiples of boost/drive/distortion and at least a half dozen tremolo pedals. I like tremolo. I have a few each of delay and reverb but only singles of chorus, compression, octave and other odd stuff. I don't gig, I just experiment with the pedals. Pedals are what I buy when I want a guitar but can't afford one at the time. Over half of them are used and/or very cheap.
Does my Helix count as 1 or 100? My presets generally have a compressor and overdrive in front of the amp and a modulation effect of some sort, delay, and reverb after the amp. The compressor, overdrive, and modulation pedals are usually off, so the signal chain is guitar -> amp -> (subtle) delay and reverb. It's a pretty dry sound. I use snapshots to change gain rather than pedals.
2-3 drive 2-3 wobbly 1-2 time All based on what your amp is. Personally I have: shifter Octave 4 drive (1 OD, 3 Fuzz-no I don't have a problem. You do) 3 wobbly (flanger, Chorus, tremolo) 2 time (reverb & delay) Boost Perfect.
5 on the small solid state amp with 1 x 12 ext. cabinet. None on the Vox tube oh I mean Valve AC10. Six on the Hot rod deluxe fitted on a monoprice board.. I will add an "inexpensive" Attenuator as well ( soon) to the HRD.... mostly these are Behringer and Fender Hammertone pedals. These were my breaking my cherry pedals and they are just plain fun : Noise Reducer, Tube amp modulator, Reverb , Fuzz, Delay................. P.S. I like Radiohead! and the OD stack idea...... So I call it a tie, whatever trips one's trigger or blows a fuse ( trips the breaker) i s OKAY by me.
Just get a good low gain drive like a bluesbreaker style, run that into a higher gain drive like a tube screamer or a Klon clone, get a fuzz face or a muff, run it into a modulation effect of your choice (probably chourus is most versatile), and then reverb (you can skip if you have it on your amp), and then a basic delay preferably with a tap tempo option. Those are the essentials if you want to run a pedal setup in my opinion and then you can experiment with other stuff like wah, compression, vibrato/tremolo etc. Idk, you can go as deep as you want with pedals.
For me I like to have at least one of everything. Tuner(I guess doesn’t count haha.) Wah,Compressor,Octave,Envelope Filter,EQ,Boost,Od(2),Distortion,Fuzz(3 a spitty fuzz, a wall of fuzz and an octave fuzz),Tremolo,Vibrato,Chorus,Phaser,Flanger,UniVibe,Leslie,Delay,Reverb and a looper. This is not exactly the order I put em in but pretty close. I also like having single effects on single pedals instead of multi effects so I can use say flanger chorus and envelope filter simultaneously instead of having say an H9 where you can at max use 2 effects(sometimes depending on the two you want to use you can’t due to not enough processing power. Just my opinion and way I like to do it.
Got to have a Looper. Need a reverb and tremolo if your amp doesn't have it. An overdrive if your amp has to be turned up too loud for it to break up at home. I would like to have a Vibroverb.
I have roughly 18 on my board, I do rock n hard rock covers 5 overdrive/boost 5 wobblys 2 delays (1/4&1/8time) digital reverb eq preamp wah tuner decimator, if not for covers I'd be down bout 5 or 6
