I’m not above clickbait blog titles. There’s no such thing as an ultimate pedal board of any type, because there are thousands of pedals out there, and no one is going to agree on the four best pedals (of more, if you use mini-pedals.) This is actually about my own pedal board, and the four pedals I personally chose (and why.) And also why I’m eventually going to need a bigger pedal board.
If you could only pick 4 pedals, what would you pick? For my needs, I chose:
- A compressor (Keeley 4 Knob)
- Delay (TC Electronics Flashback)
- Distortion/Overdrive (Wampler Pinnacle)
- Reverb (TC Electronics Hall of Fame)
The Keeley 4 Knob compressor has been very popular for a long time, for good reason – it’s fantastic. I’d had experience with the BOSS CS-3 Compressor/Sustainer, and while I liked it, the price you paid was having the low end of your guitar sound ripped away from you. The Keeley is simply a higher quality circuit – more similar to a rack mount studio compressor. There are other great compressors, but I got this one used for a great price.
The TC Electronics Flashback (original version) is on my board because my delay needs are pretty simple – tap tempo and a really good sound. I like the other features, but I only mess around with them. TC Electronics has dominated delays and reverbs for a long time for good reason – their pedals are fairly inexpensive and they sound fantastic.
When I was learning how to play rock guitar, we didn’t talk about crunch, dirt, fuzz, distortion, overdrive, etc and so on… we called everything distortion. But nowadays people get all pissy if you say overdrive when you mean distortion. Whatevs. I need a pedal to make a rock guitar sound. And I wanted something that could range from barely distorted to Van Halen 1. So I chose the Wampler Pinnacle. I have a Wampler Plexi-Drive, which I like, but the Pinnacle has much more range. There are tons of great dirt pedals to choose from nowadays – things are infinitely better than the bad old days when your choices were a Big Muff or a Rat.
And finally, some amp makers think it’s perfectly fine to put out an amp with no reverb. Which I’ve never understood. It’s THE most popular guitar effect. I mean, I get saving money, but every guitarist who has owned an amp without reverb has at least once wished for reverb. I feel the same way about effects loops and speaker outputs on amps – don’t make an amp without those things. Sadly companies do, and I bought a Marshal DSL 15 watt tube amp head for next to nothing in spite of the lack of verb. I think I paid like $225 for it, and it was brand new. So one of my fave guitar sounds now is the Pinnacle into the TC Electronics Hall of Fame into the Marshall. It’s not the famous Van Halen brown sound, but it’s pretty damn close.
There’s one thing that is missing from my board, and it’s maybe the most important pedal you can have – a tuning pedal. I don’t own one. I do own a keyboard, and I do own software with tuners built in, so I haven’t felt the need for one. But lately I’ve been realizing how stupid I’ve been and how convenient it’d be to have one, so now I’m on the hunt for a used tuning pedal. With the Orlando International Guitar Convention coming up in a few weeks, I’ll likely wait. And once I get one, I’ll either need a bigger board, or I’ll need to lose a pedal. The funny thing is that my main amp setup right now is my Fender Bassbreaker 15 combo, with the internal speaker off and an external Orange single 12 cab with a Vintage 30 speaker. And with that setup, I don’t need the Pinnacle and I don’t need the reverb.
At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter much. I don’t do live gigs any more – I’m strictly a studio guy who plays my own music and every blue moon I go out and put down some tracks on some other people’s recordings. If I were doing gigs I’d likely get a bigger pedal board with some type of switching.
One thing that you’ll notice is that I have no modulation pedals of any kind. Yes, chorus kind of went out with the 80’s, but the real reason I don’t do mod pedals is that I’m more likely to use the mod effects inside of Logic Pro X when I’m recording. BUT for those rare days when I’m playing outside of my own studio, I kinda wouldn’t mind having a mod pedal. I’d love a mod pedal that could do it all – chorus, phaser, flanger, etc. I have all of that in my old Line 6 Floor Pod Plus, but I don’t consider that old thing worthy of being in my signal chain except to play around with. I would also like to have a Wah pedal at some point. The Floor Pod Plus has one, but again, it’s not up to my standards. It used to be. But the older I get, the more picky I get about tone.
Well, anyway, thanks for reading this big long piece. I haven’t been bitten by the pedal bug as much as a lot of people I know, but I would like to get more pedals. I think a bigger pedal board with some type of switching is likely in my future, even though I don’t really “need” one.
