24 different approaches to pedals and the order they go in! Hey! Want to support my channel? : www.buymeacoffee.com/benmcleo... Fund my coffee addiction and keep me awake during video editing :)
Seeing this after a few months but I still want to say thanks for the TIME you put into this. I have a large collection of pedals, all of which have been used on different projects. What you did here is a boon to someone starting out. So many of my students have been told what order their pedals should be in and I keep telling them to experiment until they find the sound they want to use. Your effort here makes a great lesson on being open to experimenting the gear you have rather than chasing the (seemingly) latest and greatest thing.
I like the " psychedelic" effect of a late stage Drive for certain things, and the way I dealt with this is to have a Tape style delay pre Drive; at one stage, I had a second ( spring) reverb up front as well, but the board was getting stupid crazy.If you like Spring reverb, the Grail is classic, though I have to say that I preferred both the Topanga and True Spring.Recently, I acquired a Surfybear Compact, which is big footprint, - but also unbeatable. Because I use two small boards instead of one big one, I move the Wah and Volume pedal from front to middle as desired. People sometimes like to claim that one pedal is similar to another , and that may be true by itself, but it's more really how the different effects interact, - and that's where specifics matter. If you want to push mids, I'd go with a Germanium Treble Booster before a TS circuit every time.
Ben, you're the man!! I absolutely love Tube Screamer into Blues Driver. I've always used them separately with Fuzz pedals -- but this is now my primary pedal arrangement with a bit of Reverb. Thanks!
I stack my blues blues driver with a epoch boost. It really brings out the mids in a way that sounds awesome with my strat. The epoch boost is magic on a Ds1 also. It’s tames all the bad out and it makes me just want to use the ds1 all the time.
Verb into an OD with a low gain is pure bliss. I used the Holygrail in spring going in the BD2 with gain at 10/11AM, lovely sound, gives a lot of volume. As Kevin Parker said, it's like "an explosion in a box".
Big fan of OD into Octave, when the octave takes expression (like the Pitchfork by EHX) Latching makes this absolutely evil, dive bomby thing happen that sets my furniture on fire.
Thanks for the tip on how to make a vibrato pedal out from chorus! Such a cool trick. I am not a chorus fan, but I enjoy a bit of vibrato here and there.
vibrato i find is a bit easier on the ears than any “regular” modulation. you can’t leave a chorus or a phaser on all the time (unless you’re Johnny Marr but even he doesn’t anymore), but you can leave just a touch of vibrato on all the time and it not get tiring.
About octave and od, I personally run micro pog into bd2 and maaan!!!! Massive. The other way around it may be softer and mellow but none of them 2 pedals really shine. ......and I really love delay after verb. More organic and most important that's how in nature it really happens
Try a Fuzz Face into a tube screamer or vice versa. Cool octave effect when you do a pinch harmonic and bend at the same time. Do more videos like these!!!!
I put my Warm Audio Foxy Tone Box (Foxx) into my BD2 and hot DAMN its good stuff. I also have a screamer type in between the two for extra fun. The fuzz will sometimes pick up RF interference, so I'll run that through a Carbon Copy, Verb, and looper, then have fun with it.
I like to put a SD-1 as my very last pedal so it’s acting like a preamp. I don’t always have it on but it’s a boss pedal so it has a buffer last in the chain. It’s nice to get those weird overdriven delay and reverb sounds sometimes. I don’t use the FX loop so it’s all straight to the front of the amp. My chain goes guitar, wah, fuzz, tuner, Phase 90, TS, Rat, PH-3 Phaser, Multi effect modulation pedal (chorus/flanger/rotary, etc.), delay, reverb, SD-1. If you have an extra OD, try it as the last thing so you can do almost all these combinations on the fly. As you can tell, I really like phaser. It’s my favorite effect so I like to have a phase 90 before my gain stages, and then the PH-3 after.
Very nice job! I just wanted to check a few things on how I have my pedalboard, well, it turns out that it's exactly the same as yours, except for the volume pedal, don't have one and don't need it.Thankx for the info!
My tip: Volume pedal => Long Reverb => Long/high feedback delay for volume swells and almost synth pad sounds. Throw the chorus in there for extra oniric tone points. Also, get a fuzz that works well with that octave pedal before for monstrous elephant stomp kinda of riffage. Also last tip for the TS into BD, use like the metalheads: no gain but all the volume for chugga chugga distortion. Great video.
Hey Ben, a Blues Driver combo’d with a Univibe is something I’d love to hear/see in ATW. I feel like it matches the vibe(no pun intended haha). Not that it’s entirely separate from a phaser but JHS puts out one hell of a univibe with tap tempo.
Great video, thank you sooo much Ben ! Your phaser experiment makes me wonder when ATW will tour with King Buffalo ? (you were both in Europe recently...) ...it would be a killer tour when you combine Slift + ATW + King buffalo
Thanks, Ben! Aren't you worried that your lead riffs won't be heard live (with a full band set up)if you put fuzz first before an overdrive due to lack of midrange?
As a new guiratist, I learned that putting a delay before reverb will thinken the tone. I now place these in the effects loop of a Peavey Classic 20 with the BD2 running into the amp from a strat. I just need to bump either the level or gain or both to get right amount of breakup, or I can switch to the gain channel of the amp...Thanks for putting this together!
Trying to figure out what exactly was used on the Voodoo Chile cover. My guess is voodoo microvibe> fuzzface or bd-2> dd-3> fender twin with the reverb way up?
Just found your channel by accident, but I’ve listened to your band and really love the sound. Your KEXP shows are fantastic. Would love to catch you live sometime! I also love the BD-2 with the Tube Screamer. For Octave, I use the Boss Oc-2 before wah and my envelope filter - running into my gain stages. It sounds great and you can get some pseudo synth sounds. Thanks for your time and for the music Ben!
I started with the EHX Pitchfork, tried just about everything else, and recently returned to it.For the sounds I use it for, it remains the best; the very functional exp pedal out gives it much more flexibility than most.Octave and pitch pedals all seem to have innately different sounds.
If you get the opportunity, check out the RMC wahs; most are old school circuits, and are a world apart from most common builds.When I came across one used at the local GC, the shredder kid salesman actually talked it down, saying how much better the standard stuff was.But I've been playing for decades, and I know gold when I hear it .
Depends on the delay, as well.Some of the analog gets very mushy, but the digital generally stays together.Tape and Oil Can delays are also both different, but it all depends on what you're trying to achieve.
It's a boutique straight up Germanium Fuzzface; very simple circuit with a few key components.None of the decent builders are cheap anymore, but many possibilities are available.I'd look for Analogman, Jam, or something like the discontinued EQD Dream Crusher. The Zvex Fuzz Factory is essentially the same with two extra controls that enable some wilder sounds.
Wow. You're creatively using intelligence and "Common Sense" here. How refreshing! Just one thing AS USUAL that happens ALL the time? Could you fix your Levels so that we can hear YOU at all and then NOT be DEAFENED by the viciously LOUD!!!! BLAST of music? That always makes me want to quit watching altogether just to save my eardrums and then I would have missed out BIG TIME on your extremely useful and gregarious help here, alright?
Too much talk in between pedal position changes - the ears need to hear the two sounds DIRECTLY after each other for a real, non-biased A/B comparison. Talk about the changes AFTER the comparison!
