Musician Gear & Tech Discussion

Looking into effects again. Had some difficulty with my BOSS delay pedal while in studio this weekend. Was making my whole volume fluctuate ?? May have been a power source issue, don't know. Nor did I have time to figure it out so I just unplugged it.

So which effects do you prefer to bring your solo work to life ??
Favorite brands ??

Any suggestions will be appreciated.

I guess it depends what you are going for...
I personally love the rockabilly sounds so I like a nice slap back echo on my gtr. (think johnny cash's gtr player on "the wreck of ol' 97")

I guess the 'must have' effect would probably be compression... if you toss it up front in the chain it can do a lot of things for you... eliminate picking noises for recording, give you long sustain, tighten up a rhythm track, give you a volume boost for that solo...

Really don't know. That's why I'm seeking input / ideas. I was liking the sound I was getting with the delay. Finally got her tweaked to sound good through the effects loop on my amp. Then two days latter in studio it wants to act a dang fool
I mean my whole amp volume was cycling up and down ??
Leads me to think it may have been an inadequate voltage issue.
Not taken an opportunity to reassess here at home where I have a dedicated 15amp circuit in my METALSHOP. A little boost would be cool. Though I have become fairly adept at working the volume pot on my axe as JW taught me. Tried the volume pedal I have as Billy suggested but it just did not really work for me.
And my amp / guitar will sustain for eternity just as they are.

Now that I think about it I can play with the effects on the PA some to get some ideas. Never even considered compression.
I will have to investigate that further.

Thanks for the input!

roger that... you may just try running the delay on a battery...
I think that delay (dd7?) has a swell feature... may be you turned it on?
if it is the dd7 that delay is great and can do a lot but has a rather confusing interface IMO...

the best thing to do to get a feel for what you might like is to go and waste some time at the local music store.
just tell a sales guy that you want to try a number of things and I'm sure he'll set you up with a few possibles...

good luck!

I like to have delay on my solo's I turn it on during almost every solo. It will thicken your solos up if you have it set right. I have a Boss DD? I set it for about an 1/8 note delay to where it ecoh's about 3 times with the actual played note the loudest and the volume decaying quickly. I have found this setting works best if you play fast or slow. With the Boss digital pedals and my delay set this way it really sounds more like a high quality reverb unit.

I use two things for my lead channel.


First is a BB Preamp. I cannot recommend this pedal enough. It's a gain pedal with absolutely awesome tone. Andy Timmons has a great video of the BB Preamp on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiW22O914Cg

The other thing I do is a dual delay. I have a TC Electronics G-Major and what I use is a double delay. I have two settings depending on what I want to do. For faster leads, where I'll be playing a lot of notes, I use delays of 250 and 500 ms. For leads where I'll be using longer sustained notes, I run at 400 and 800 ms.

The result is a really full sound. I am going to post some audio this week. I recorded a snippet of me shredding and playing some leads with the BB Preamp on and it was such a great tone... so I'll put something up tonight or tomorrow so you can hear it.

Since I know almost nothing about effects...I'll ask you guys. My old rig was a Crate half-stack and the singer of the band had me get a rack unit for it in order to get a better sound from the amp. It has a power conditioner, dual 15-band EQ, BBE, and a compressor.

When I bought my new Peavey 6505+ I hooked the rack unit to it and I was really not impressed. The sound of the amp itself sounded better than having the rack unit through it's effects loop.

I see that Mike reccomends a compressor pedal. The compressor unit in my rack also has a gate, but when you turn the gate up to get rid of feedback, I can't use my clean channel because the gate cuts it out. A few dudes at the local music store told me that now that I'm back into tube amps rather than solid state amps, I should ditch the rack and just use pedals.

Like I said before...I'm a noob at pedals and such. I only have a Boss NS-2 in front of the amp to kill feedback, but it still struggles. I've heard that the Decimator G-string pedal would cure the issues.

What would be a nice set-up (pedals) that I could use for everything from clean blues to distorted death metal?

Any information would be greatly appreciated.

Actually my Delay is the older DD-3
Running a 200ms delay setting with the fed back on minimum and the effect level on about 1/3.
I had a battery on board but when it started jacking with my amp I just jerked it out of the loop BAM !!!


Thanks for the input gents.

Since I know almost nothing about effects...I'll ask you guys. My old rig was a Crate half-stack and the singer of the band had me get a rack unit for it in order to get a better sound from the amp. It has a power conditioner, dual 15-band EQ, BBE, and a compressor.

When I bought my new Peavey 6505+ I hooked the rack unit to it and I was really not impressed. The sound of the amp itself sounded better than having the rack unit through it's effects loop.

I see that Mike reccomends a compressor pedal. The compressor unit in my rack also has a gate, but when you turn the gate up to get rid of feedback, I can't use my clean channel because the gate cuts it out. A few dudes at the local music store told me that now that I'm back into tube amps rather than solid state amps, I should ditch the rack and just use pedals.

Like I said before...I'm a noob at pedals and such. I only have a Boss NS-2 in front of the amp to kill feedback, but it still struggles. I've heard that the Decimator G-string pedal would cure the issues.

What would be a nice set-up (pedals) that I could use for everything from clean blues to distorted death metal?

Any information would be greatly appreciated.

noise suppresion.
I hate it.

IMHO all gates suck because w one you can't let a note sustain naturally.

that said... if you want screaching death cryptic baby skull metal tone you are going to have to employ a gate.
I like my volume knob as a gate.

in your case, I'm guessing you put the gate in the fx loop, which means that the threshold of the input changes when you go to clean (drops down) and if you tossed this in front of the amp, you'd have a more consistent response. IMO compressor s/b right after any wah or fuzz and prior to anything else.

that said, most rack compressors aren't really made for gtr specifically. they are made to be very clean and work on ANYTHING - vocal/bass/drums/gtr

my favorite guitar compressors actually introduce distortion... just a mild amount of it (hello orange squeezer!!!!!!!!!!!).

for metal -the time tested combo is emg actives in a heavy mahogany body with a tube pre that is geared for metal... ie mesa/marshal/engl/halfler/diesel

for blues anything but emgs... and a boost pedal on a 65 fender twin!

so a nice compromise is to have an active preamp on a passive pickup. this will get you close to emg punch while being able to back off for blues.

so for pedals... I like a tubescreamer in front of a tube amp... it's a classic.
if you want metal on the same setup get a pro co rat (lotta folks don't know that metallica used this pedal for some crushing dist on a few albums - some hate it some love it)


eq... another hatred of mine.
you have a treble cut on your gtr,
you have some boost/cut features on your amp,
any pedal you toss in there will have eq boost or cut,
digital effects have boost and cut...

and cutting is ok but any time you boost you are boosting noise... so don't boost and cut like a maniac and then wonder why you have no definition and a lot of noise!

#1 rule of recording is that eq is for when you want to fix a mistake you made on the way in...

hopefully you will find some of this useful!

Thanks Mike!!! I have no idea how you are so knowledgeable about this stuff, but it's VERY IMPRESSIVE! I knew that the rack just didn't seem right with this amp. I'm going to try what you laid out there for sure, but I absolutely don't like EMG's anymore. As I got older as a player, I moved to the passive side. Preferrably Duncans, but the vintage Floyd Rose humbuckers in my model 2 sound nice and punchy, if not a little too much on the high end. I also have a model 4 with the hotter pickups in it and a swamp ash body rather than poplar so I may start trying to mess with that one some more as well.

Never thought of using a tube screamer in front of a tube amp. I don't know if you've tried one of these Peavey 6505+'s yet, but they're absolute monsters! Even with the vintage pickups, I still only run my pre-gain on the lead channel just below 6 and have the presence and resonance set around 3.5 each.

That being said...I'm good with working with the amps themselves to get the best out of them, but I've never used effects and stuff until recently. Thanks again! Looks like Musicians Friend is really gonna be my friend here in a bit, LOL!

George,

For me I use some delay sometimes on leads. Ive got a Line 6 Delay Modeler Pedal in my board and I use an analog delay setting with very tight repeats. This pedal has a tap tempo so I can adjust the amount of delays on the go depending on the song.

I probably kick in delay on a fifth of my leads.

I use the wah pedal a lot on leads just to change the tone and bring out more mids.

I dont guess I have one setting for leads. Being 3 piece most of the time i cna just cut over into whatever suits me at the time. I set up my tube amps in such a way that they compress the sound anyway. I sometimes set an amp with a dedicated lead channel and I will raise the mids and presence on this channel over my rythym setting to make it cut thru more. I guess thats the deal for me, I want my guitar to cut thru when I kick in a lead, and some effects jsut tend to water the sound down.

On my POD PRO I use a JCM 800 setting that has compression and delay in it. Not much, just enough to thicken it up.

hopefully you will find some of this useful!

And this is the reason that I asked the question here, rather than read the reviews at other websites. Everything that you mentioned looks good...and expensive, but it's cool. All the reviews bashed all 3 pedals for not being metal at all, but I use a very clean sound (most people can't hardly play on my rig/guitar because of this) anyway.

It seems that the "orange squeezer" (which is now Analogman Compressor) has a lot in common with the Ibanez tube screamer (the re-issue). As long as I can use the Deucetone Rat on the lead channel...that will work too, although I don't need anymore gain since I only use half of what the amp offers.

Not sure yet if I want to get into delay, chorus, ect. I used that on the Crate head for the clean channel only because the clean was horrible without it. This tube head is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better.

Thanks again Mike!!! Rock on brother!!!

A few dudes at the local music store told me that now that I'm back into tube amps rather than solid state amps, I should ditch the rack and just use pedals.

Bah. My entire unit is rack-mounted. I love it. They're just pedal snobs.

I've heard that the Decimator G-string pedal would cure the issues.

I do not have any personal experience with the Decimator pedal, but I do have the Decimator rack unit. And let me tell you: worth its weight in gold.

I have a Mesa Boogie. I run a 2:90 power amp and a Triaxis with a G-Major for effects and the BB Preamp for leads. I can get loads of feedback if I want.

The Decimator cuts it all out brilliantly WITHOUT the crappy way a gate does it. I only have two knobs to worry about. With the rack unit. you can run your signal through it twice. I run mine through it before the Triaxis and after it. I turn the knobs to knock down the feedback and it's perfect. Clean channels ring and I can go all-out on leads.

What would be a nice set-up (pedals) that I could use for everything from clean blues to distorted death metal?

I don't much care for pedals. Prefer rack gear. I have a pedal, and I might add one or two more to my rig, but I have a PatchMate to patch them with. That's the only way I find Pedals to be acceptable (so I'm a rack snob).

I think the trick is to figure out what you want to sound like and then seeek that equipment out.

To me, a rack is the best of both worlds. With something like a PatchMate, you can have a rack and still get the benefits of individual pedals.

But if you just go the pedal route, sh*t, you're hosed. You have pedals all over the floor, and you can't simultaneously switch them on or off. I hate that...

I know the feeling Colors. I do the dance all night long. I have all pedals on the floor. A freind has that TC Electronics G System that thing its self is $1500.00 and the patchmate system is what another $800.00 throw in a few pedals and you could have 3 Grand tied up in effects. But that is one hell of a sound top of the line stuff man. Hell Neal Shcon uses the G System SWEET!
Hell play a PRS Guitar thru a Mesa Tripple Rec and you could tie up 10 Grand in guitar gear.
If I hadn't spent 15 Grand on P.A. gear ( slaps forehead) I could have that kind of sound. Yeah that p.a. gear sounds real nice setting in my garage collecting dust LMAO! I guess thats what I get for trying to run a band!

Yeah Colors...that's what I was thinking too! Those same guys laughed at me when I bought all the rack stuff for my other rig, but that Crate GLX120H really needed it to give it some life. Those are also the same guys that tell me what pedals I need, but I hear something totally different here. I believe you guys though...that's why I asked. I've been playing for a lot of years, but I always let other people set up my sound for me, so I didn't learn that end of things...yet.

Now with the 6505+, I've got a whole different set of things to deal with. But I like it TONS better than my old Crate. But the 6505+ is a feedback monster on the lead channel and I only have the gain at a little less than 6 with vintage humbuckers...just ask anyone that owns one.

So you just kick the BB preamp on for leads, then switch it off when going back to rhythm, almost like a volume boost?

What I'm getting so far is that with my rack unit I should obviously keep the power conditioner, ditch the EQ, keep the BBE?, and ditch the compressor with the gate. Then get the G-major rack unit and the BB Preamp pedal.

If you guys only knew how much I appreciate your honest input, well...I owe ya a TON!!! I should have paid attention along the way, but I guess that I'm finally ready to learn and understand how everything works and why.

Thank you so much!!! I'm still listening...