Thanks for this video, you're helping many guitarist to be more practical in their tone journey. Can you also make a video dedicated to the best minimalist pedalboard that you can build?
In my minimalist mind I only would need 4 pedals ever... reverb,chorus,delay,distortion,overdrive,wah,volume pedals....oh crap those are more than 4 LoL
The Boss BD-2, OD-3, and ST-2 are my favorite OD pedals. Great minds think alike! Edit: I bought a EHX The Worm. It's bad quality, don't buy it. There's a lot of noise. The tremolo and vibrato features are unusable because of it.
Yeah I'm really getting into the ST-2 at the moment for some rock stuff I'm doing. It's working well but needs to be used with a noise gate at the higher gain settings.
The best advice for building small pedalboards is to stop building pedalboards out of "fear of missing out". People often think, "oh, but what if someday I might want to use this type of effect", without regard to whether or not that effect is actually necessary or appropriate for the actual music they are playing. For those of us who play primarily our own original music, this is much easier, as we are not trying to cop the tones of other musicians, the way musicians in cover bands often seem to believe they need to do, rather than developing their own individual sound. Without being so trite as to say "tone is in the fingers", just try to bear in mind that just because you can add effects, doesn't mean you necessarily should. A lot of really great music has been made with just an instrument, an amp, and a lead, especially if the amp also has built in reverb and tremolo, vibrato, or chorus and two preamp channels. My first amp had two channels, stereo chorus, and spring reverb, and just adding a delay pedal and tremolo pedal to that was all that was really necessary for my music and my sound.
this is so true, my biggest influence is Nirvana and Kurt for the most part just used 2 pedals (except on the In Utero tour where he used 4) and Krist just used one, I'm building a board right now and only has three pedals, an OD, a FUZZ and a Chorus and honestly that is pretty much all I need lol
another thing other builders don't mention is, Don't use any time based effects .... you don't need pedals like that. get / use plugins in your DAW environment, and let your venue's natural ambiance be your reverb....( some people would argue that.. i of course understand, but i don't )
@@RulgertGhostalker to be fair a good audio engineer will make the driest sounding band sound huge and wide with the correct amount of global/individual processing But if you are at your own, probably at least a reverb might help haha
yeah, what the guys have at the desk varies ... but honestly, venues have been getting more well equipped, and more often than not could pick that up..@@Fernando-ry5qt
even when i am just practicing, i don't like time based stuff on my guitar....maybe it's just me, but i just like to hear my guitar sound.@@Fernando-ry5qt
Fewer, not less. Less is for non count noun. Less water, less pudding, less sex. Fewer is for count nouns. Fewer pedals, fewer grammar comments. Great playing. Cheers
The TC Electronics Flashback 2 delay is super versatile. It has 3 extra toneprint slots. In there, you can load delay, flanger and chorus effects. Along with the looper this is definitely a multi pedal. Plus you can get awesome feedback repeat space sounds with the mash/whammy footswitch!
You have the best guitar channel on RUclips, I have learned more from you than any of the other channels put together. I hope you get 3 million viewers. You are a great teacher.
Sure I have a small pedalboard...that I've connected to a small pedalboard that's hooked up to another smallish pedalboard and, well, you get the idea: Minimalist.
Dude, your knowledge of guitar fx and the simplicity with wich you transmit it, has improve my sound by a mile , and also empty my wallet. alongside with the jhs channel, this is probably the best fx channel on youtube. bravo 👏
Nice one Michael! I have been using a small board a lot lately and it's been such fun trying to optimize it. If you are able to see two gain stages in the board, I love having one at the front and one at the end allowing the modulations and such in the middle to glue together. I also find that you can get a lot more dynamic sound from an echo when it's earlier in the chain or before a drive especially - but it can get intense or harder to use traditionally so it's logical to push the delay toward the end especially for a verb impression. For a small rig to capture ideas I love having a looper and some small but mighty effects that can be coaxed into a wide range of sounds but take time and attention to do so. My large board is where I can afford the space and each effect is specialized like a preset button, and my little board is specifically for endless tweaking. In a gig situation I need to stay off my knees. I love using flangers for multiple effects but in some styles they can be over the top still. I have been using the Wilson haze to get univibe and subtle vibrato as well as a handy clean gain stage - having a couple volume options in a live show is important but not very fun in a small "explore a board" rig. Sorry to ramble but love your videos man. Thanks for sharing tips.
Write down diff settings for diff songs on an index card or something and leave it under ur board or somewhere accessible. So between songs u can change settings and not need to worry about getting the right by memory
9:14 the Ampero Mini is great for this. I still use my pitchfork and switch out a couple overdrives depending on how I'm feeling, but then all delays and modulation into the Ampero.
Top-mounted jacks in most cases do not actually save any space, because pedal switches still need to be a certain minimum distance apart, center-to-center, to allow for stepping on only the desired switch in the middle of a song. For bedroom-only players, you can probably get away with packing them in like sardines, but I promise you, those of us who have played live gigs, especially those of us who need to negotiate a vocal mic and maintain eye contact with an audience can tell you that ideally, pedal switches should be about 100 mm or 4" on center to allow you to confidently switch pedals on the fly in the heat of the moment. This is, in fact, the on-center spacing of Boss' BCB-3, BCB-6, BCB-30, and BCB-60 pedal boxes. I promise you that Boss has done a lot more thinking about musicians' actual needs than most companies, and these products have been highly successful for four decades.
I'm in the process of making a semi small board with my Pod Go, SY200, EQ20, Drop Pedal and an Octaver. I got all of the pedals running through the Pod's FX Loop, and hook it all together in 4CM. 5 pedals, but I can do just about anything
I'm going with 3 pedals for minimalism boss digital delay for (delay,echo,reverb) boss flanger for (chorus,phaser,tremolo) boss blues driver for (overdrive,distortion) That's it.
I love my huge pedal board but the HX Stomp has slowly begun to supercede it. I have some stereo modulation and time effects in the effects loop for quick access plus a compressor and a couple of dirt pedals in front. Line 6's modelling is good enough that I could get rid of most of those too but configuring effects on a tiny screen and assigning them to one of 5 switches sounds like purgatory.
Less is more - focus on the music. I bought my amps for their drive tone, makes no sense to kill it with 4 overdrives. A single multifunctional boost is more than enough. Your compressor can act as a secondary booster, so can your volume knob. EQD dispatch master or a neunaber inspire will you all the delay and reverbs that you practically need. I love pedals as much as the next person, but other than the 4 living on my board, everything else just comes out as needed.
Thanks for the video! I now use a small Pedalboard. 5 Boss and a tiny tuner. The last pedal I bought was because of another video from you - a Flanger. I just hooked up the Wah and on the floor as you recommended. Your videos are very helpful for me as almost a beginner. Thanks again 🙏👍.
the rat is perfect for any type of drive, it's a shame it doesn't clean up with the guitar's volume knob, obviously at low gain levels it does but entering the medium gain and above it just kills the volume knob dynamics,the blues driver is great but lacks gain to cover more territory, i don't know what simple driver could i use in that spot, i don't even like stacking gain pedals, i just need one because it's a pain in the ass to use the effects loop of an amp even if it has a great od channel
I'm glad you mentioned TC Electronics. Lots of great sounds in a standard form factor. Source Audio pedals are great sounding digital pedals. I'm a huge fan and you can get a lot of great sounds from a regular sized pedal. Pedals like the JHS Bonsai and Muffuletta pack a lot of sounds into one regular sized analog pedal. Drunk Beaver pedals follow a similar idea, and they sound amazing.
Great video, i agree with everything you said. I would also recommend having an eq pedal on your pedalboard. It makes your pedals more versatile and changes the dynamics of your pedalboard. I would also recommend they watch your eq pedal videos, i learned a couple of tricks from them 😀
I'm on my way to simplify my pedalboard. So, I'd like to remain with: Fuzz+OD+Mod+Delay. That's all. So....I'd go with: Fjord Fuzz Odin + Cornerstone Gladio + Fjord Fuzz Löke + Walrus Audio ARP87. And I really think that I can do A LOT of sounds out of these 4 pedals.
I'm a huge fan of 1-3 pedal pedalboards. My old board was Delay, Tremolo, and Reverb. Now I have an amp with Tremolo and Reverb built in so I'm rocking just a Delay Pedal. I may add a boost or transparent overdrive later but for how diming the amp volume for tube breakup and using the guitar Master Volume to tame the volume. It probably comes down to what genres you play... I stick to 1950s-1960s RnR, Blues, Country, and Rockabilly so no need for any other FX I don't have already.
Bought and setting up a new mini pedalboard as an alternative to my primary which is full size and bulky after I rediscovered what a PITA several Velcro backed individual pedals are floating around on carpet. Your pancake backed connectors tip proved useful, notably when two pedals without offset output-input are necessarily adjacent. Swapped from conventional cables. Can now fit a size mix of five pedals mini, std, std+ comfortably without additional solid straight through connectors (no flex) or spacing compromise. Six Minis would fit easily. A perfect size board for home.
😂 I just realized that Jag players tend to use less I'm guilty of that too. When I rock out with my '70s Jag I tend to use more of the modulation/time effects so, its good time down grade my board cool video Mike. You keep rocking 😎😬👍
I love the Beetronics Zzombee. Four levels of gain (five if you count clean). Glitchy octave down. Trem and cross trem (fading back and forth between the guitar signal and the octave down) with a wave form that fades between sine and square. Volume ramping for the guitar signal or octave down. Filter ramping with control over the high and low points of the filter. LFO control for the filter. Step sequencing for the filter with over 65 k different patterns. Tap tempo. You can control the filter and volume ramping with a footswitch on the pedal or an expression pedal. All the sound processing is analog with digital controls. And it has 5 presets. Another neat feature is you can hold the bypass button down when the pedal is off to momentarily activate the pedal. You throw that on a pedal board with a multi fx for flange, chorus etc and maybe a compressor and job done. And all that in a pedal that is just a smidge bigger than a standard boss pedal. I also like the dual drive pedal as an option for a small board. Bigger? Yep. But you get four gain levels out of that, eliminate a patch cable and a power supply connection and you also no pedal board space between those two gain stages. Of course, now you have the Line 6 Pod Express as an option, too. 7 Amp and cab sounds, 4 distortions, 4 modulations, 4 delays, 4 reverbs, a tuner, a looper and a noise gate all in one box that will fit in your gig bag. Long as you're a sound snob and not so much an analog snob you can get a lot of use out of that. Plus it has 21 presets you can save on it.
So-called "isolated" power supply bricks (many of which aren't even actually isolated) aren't necessary for the vast majority of pedalboards, especially not for small jam session boards, but the industry has engaged in so much misinformation on this topic that many musicians do not even realize they are being taken for a ride and sold a bill of goods. Provided a pedal's circuitry is properly designed, there is no need for ground isolation on a pedalboard, and daisy chain power is perfectly silent. I have been building pedalboards for over 30 years with nothing but daisy chain power, and I have never had a problem with noise, because I only use pedals from companies that properly engineer their pedals.
People should understand that so-called "true bypass loop switchers" often degrade signal quality through adding excess capacitance, comparing to plugging pedals directly in linear fashion. Think about it: for every loop, you are potentially adding a half-metre to a full metre of excess cable, just to patch each pedal to the loop switcher, plus all the internal wiring of the switcher itself, compared to a 100 mm patch cable between two pedals. If you put 6 pedals into 6 loops, you could easily have an additional 10 metres of cable and wiring (twelve 300 to 500 mm patch cables just to connect six pedals to the individual loops, plus the internal wiring of the switcher itself), compared to a mere half metre of five patch cables if you connected the pedals in linear fashion. I'm not trying to say that loop switchers aren't sometimes the appropriate tool, but it's a lot less often than many musicians realize. For each loop you switch off, you remove a substantial amount of cabling, but switching a true bypass pedal off that is in the middle of a signal chain only changes the length of the signal path by a very small amount. Think very carefully about how you actually use your pedals in your music, before deciding whether or not a loop switcher is something you really need to invest in, or whether you have been conditioned to believe your pedalboard isn't "pro" without one.
Hi! It is being a while since I started to follow your work here... It is amazing How flexible I got Just following your tips! Please make a video showing some examples of modulations on the Zoom MS50G. It hase controls that i found some trouble understanding and get a Fine tone, like the Uni-vibe... Thanks a Lot! Best wishes!
Great video for novice players. Maybe you have done before but similar idea for type of amps and guitars for their best type of music would be great. Thanks.
Yes but what sucks about Gibsons is that they don't have a Master Volume knob! I love both positions mixed, and sometimes I like to roll back one of them a little bit. Also the knobs are less accessible then eg at a Fender. Gretsch has a Master Volume knob, but they really should place it where the neck position knob is. With both it's better to have a volume pedal, which of course will affect your tone...
I can definitely speak for the latest version of the TC Electronic SCF. Super versatile. For drive sounds I'm using the T-Rex Mudhoney ll. It's probably the best OD/Distortion I've ever used. Two independent channels that are identical and can go from edge from break up all the way to fuzz.
Just watched your recommended video on Gibson Guitar tones. Any chance you could do a similar video on Gibson tones using only the gain on the amp - no pedals at all?
Shortly after the Zoom G3n was released I benefited in getting one really cheap off a chap that bought it for his pedal board (for its modulation effects) but he decided to go with discrete pedals. It continues to serve me well. I've gigged it loads, sounds significantly better than its predecessor, the G3 I recently went on cheap pedal buying spree and when my Boss LS-2 arrives I will be AB-ing the G3n against the pedals it's emulating. I've been thinking about minimal pedal boards, so this video is timely and very helpful- thank you! First steps will be to take 3 pedals along to a jam session!
Excellent advice here as always. I might give the reverb on a delay pedal a try. You flanger video I saw a few weeks ago was cool and definitely a space saver. My board is like the Starship Enterprise, and if I was looking to recue it It would be for a compact set-up for gigs. I recently picked up that same Zoom pedal to expand my delay and modulation options. Some of the OD/Distortion are a bit fizzy, but a few are quite good. I have a bunch of pedals for that anyway and I'm not looking to replace those. The amp and cab sim can be a useful function if you're looking for tone shaping options. Be aware for gigging that the stomp button is not all that it seems - you don't really have an off switch unless you hold it down for the tuner/bypass.
I have taken to keeping my pedal tuner separate from my pedalboards, mainly because this allows me to use my tuners separately from my pedalboards, but also because it saves a spot on my pedalboard. I leave one plug on my daisy chain to power the tuner from the board, when playing, but keep a battery in the pedal to use it separately.
Totally agree with the zoom stuff, generally I think they sound pretty dire with drive or amp modelling, although with an analogue EQ it can improve to useable. But as you say the effects, delays, reverb etc can be excellent and extremely versatile.
Highly recommend the Empress Zoia, it can fill in almost any gap, sort of a high end alternative to the zoom products. It has two inputs and two outputs, so you can use it to make a send/effect loop, or fork your signal chain. Its considerably smaller than most other things that can do anything comparable. Downsides are the cost and the fact that its hard to see the screen and utilize the controls if you use it on the floor.
i use an HX stomp as part of my board. it really takes it to the next level. i keep my favorite drives in front of it and favorite modulation in the fx loop. the stomp is for when i want an effect from a pedal i don’t have or want to go direct to FOH with an amp emulation. it takes regular pedals very well!
awesome production man! I love your channel as well as JHS. Always to the point, always helpful, always avoiding anything that could extend any video from 10 minutes to 1 hours. Keep it coming! I learned a damn lot from this channel. Good player buy the way!
Less face-time, more (much more) pedal-board time! :P (In the viddy, I mean) [Awesome content; pacing. Great face, too, I'd just rather be ogling boards, while listening to your knowledge.]
Reformed mothership enjoyer. Been absolutely loving my 4 pedals + tuner board and doesn't limit my noisy and post-ambient sounds that I gravitate to
Why use fewer pedals?
🤘👍🏿Thumbs up for the MS-50G. Also the Alexander Wavelength is a great multi-modulation pedal for small boards.
Thanks for this video, you're helping many guitarist to be more practical in their tone journey.
Can you also make a video dedicated to the best minimalist pedalboard that you can build?
Yes! I was thinking of doing a short video on my own small practice pedalboard where I use a lot of this stuff. I've put it on the list
@@MichaelBanfieldGuitar Thanks for the notice Michael! Will definitely watchout for it 🎸🎶
This was great advice! Thanks!
don't recommend the mod 11, some of the mod effects drop in db level
Fuzzlord effects also have top mount connections
Love your vids, but IT"S FEWER!! :D
Its "you're vids"
Thanks Stannis Baratheon.
@@joehoppard814 incorrect
@@Andyanddiana467 "uncorrect"
@@joehoppard814 Darnit. 😞
In my minimalist mind I only would need 4 pedals ever... reverb,chorus,delay,distortion,overdrive,wah,volume pedals....oh crap those are more than 4 LoL
Avoid big pedals!?!
**Picks up OG DMM and Big Muff and walks out of the room**
The short delay reverb trick sounds incredible placed before any kind of distortion. One of my favourite sounds.
We all need to remember to use the word "less" less.
In this case, it should have been "How to use FEWER pedals".
The Boss BD-2, OD-3, and ST-2 are my favorite OD pedals. Great minds think alike!
Edit: I bought a EHX The Worm. It's bad quality, don't buy it. There's a lot of noise. The tremolo and vibrato features are unusable because of it.
Yeah I'm really getting into the ST-2 at the moment for some rock stuff I'm doing. It's working well but needs to be used with a noise gate at the higher gain settings.
The best advice for building small pedalboards is to stop building pedalboards out of "fear of missing out". People often think, "oh, but what if someday I might want to use this type of effect", without regard to whether or not that effect is actually necessary or appropriate for the actual music they are playing. For those of us who play primarily our own original music, this is much easier, as we are not trying to cop the tones of other musicians, the way musicians in cover bands often seem to believe they need to do, rather than developing their own individual sound.
Without being so trite as to say "tone is in the fingers", just try to bear in mind that just because you can add effects, doesn't mean you necessarily should. A lot of really great music has been made with just an instrument, an amp, and a lead, especially if the amp also has built in reverb and tremolo, vibrato, or chorus and two preamp channels. My first amp had two channels, stereo chorus, and spring reverb, and just adding a delay pedal and tremolo pedal to that was all that was really necessary for my music and my sound.
this is so true, my biggest influence is Nirvana and Kurt for the most part just used 2 pedals (except on the In Utero tour where he used 4) and Krist just used one, I'm building a board right now and only has three pedals, an OD, a FUZZ and a Chorus and honestly that is pretty much all I need lol
another thing other builders don't mention is, Don't use any time based effects .... you don't need pedals like that.
get / use plugins in your DAW environment, and let your venue's natural ambiance be your reverb....( some people would argue that.. i of course understand, but i don't )
@@RulgertGhostalker to be fair a good audio engineer will make the driest sounding band sound huge and wide with the correct amount of global/individual processing
But if you are at your own, probably at least a reverb might help haha
yeah, what the guys have at the desk varies ... but honestly, venues have been getting more well equipped, and more often than not could pick that up..@@Fernando-ry5qt
even when i am just practicing, i don't like time based stuff on my guitar....maybe it's just me, but i just like to hear my guitar sound.@@Fernando-ry5qt
Fewer, not less. Less is for non count noun. Less water, less pudding, less sex.
Fewer is for count nouns. Fewer pedals, fewer grammar comments.
Great playing.
Cheers
The TC Electronics Flashback 2 delay is super versatile. It has 3 extra toneprint slots. In there, you can load delay, flanger and chorus effects. Along with the looper this is definitely a multi pedal. Plus you can get awesome feedback repeat space sounds with the mash/whammy footswitch!
You have the best guitar channel on RUclips, I have learned more from you than any of the other channels put together. I hope you get 3 million viewers. You are a great teacher.
Excellent as usual. The tidbit about delay times and what they emulate was super helpful.
Sure I have a small pedalboard...that I've connected to a small pedalboard that's hooked up to another smallish pedalboard and, well, you get the idea: Minimalist.
Dude, your knowledge of guitar fx and the simplicity with wich you transmit it, has improve my sound by a mile , and also empty my wallet. alongside with the jhs channel, this is probably the best fx channel on youtube. bravo 👏
Wow, thanks!
I absolutely go along with that. This and the JHS channel are invaluable when it comes to effect pedals and getting the best out of those you have.
Nice one Michael!
I have been using a small board a lot lately and it's been such fun trying to optimize it.
If you are able to see two gain stages in the board, I love having one at the front and one at the end allowing the modulations and such in the middle to glue together. I also find that you can get a lot more dynamic sound from an echo when it's earlier in the chain or before a drive especially - but it can get intense or harder to use traditionally so it's logical to push the delay toward the end especially for a verb impression.
For a small rig to capture ideas I love having a looper and some small but mighty effects that can be coaxed into a wide range of sounds but take time and attention to do so. My large board is where I can afford the space and each effect is specialized like a preset button, and my little board is specifically for endless tweaking. In a gig situation I need to stay off my knees.
I love using flangers for multiple effects but in some styles they can be over the top still. I have been using the Wilson haze to get univibe and subtle vibrato as well as a handy clean gain stage - having a couple volume options in a live show is important but not very fun in a small "explore a board" rig.
Sorry to ramble but love your videos man. Thanks for sharing tips.
The Electro harmonix Oceans 11 reverb is also very versatile with chorus, tremelo, and flanger onboard.
How to use FEWER pedals.
Hello Michael,
I am a new subscriber. ❤
How do you call it when more than one pedal is your favorite?
The Proco RAT is imho hard to beat, but so is the Muff and a good wah 😂
Write down diff settings for diff songs on an index card or something and leave it under ur board or somewhere accessible. So between songs u can change settings and not need to worry about getting the right by memory
So go rooting around in the dark to replicate settings that likely won't work in a completly different room
_*fewer pedals_ 😉
9:14 the Ampero Mini is great for this. I still use my pitchfork and switch out a couple overdrives depending on how I'm feeling, but then all delays and modulation into the Ampero.
Tuner, distortion and delay are all I need.
Top-mounted jacks in most cases do not actually save any space, because pedal switches still need to be a certain minimum distance apart, center-to-center, to allow for stepping on only the desired switch in the middle of a song. For bedroom-only players, you can probably get away with packing them in like sardines, but I promise you, those of us who have played live gigs, especially those of us who need to negotiate a vocal mic and maintain eye contact with an audience can tell you that ideally, pedal switches should be about 100 mm or 4" on center to allow you to confidently switch pedals on the fly in the heat of the moment. This is, in fact, the on-center spacing of Boss' BCB-3, BCB-6, BCB-30, and BCB-60 pedal boxes. I promise you that Boss has done a lot more thinking about musicians' actual needs than most companies, and these products have been highly successful for four decades.
American pedal brand DOD is pronounced like the letters spelled out "Dee Oh Dee", not like a word "Dawd" jfyi. Cheers.
- old American guitar player
I'm in the process of making a semi small board with my Pod Go, SY200, EQ20, Drop Pedal and an Octaver. I got all of the pedals running through the Pod's FX Loop, and hook it all together in 4CM. 5 pedals, but I can do just about anything
Fewer, not less!
I'm going with 3 pedals for minimalism
boss digital delay for (delay,echo,reverb)
boss flanger for (chorus,phaser,tremolo)
boss blues driver for (overdrive,distortion)
That's it.
Fewer pedals
Great video. Thank you! Also do check out the Boss / JHS collab “Angry Driver”. A nice OD plus Marshall dist sound.
I love my huge pedal board but the HX Stomp has slowly begun to supercede it. I have some stereo modulation and time effects in the effects loop for quick access plus a compressor and a couple of dirt pedals in front. Line 6's modelling is good enough that I could get rid of most of those too but configuring effects on a tiny screen and assigning them to one of 5 switches sounds like purgatory.
*Fewer
Less is more - focus on the music. I bought my amps for their drive tone, makes no sense to kill it with 4 overdrives. A single multifunctional boost is more than enough. Your compressor can act as a secondary booster, so can your volume knob. EQD dispatch master or a neunaber inspire will you all the delay and reverbs that you practically need. I love pedals as much as the next person, but other than the 4 living on my board, everything else just comes out as needed.
Thanks for the video! I now use a small Pedalboard. 5 Boss and a tiny tuner. The last pedal I bought was because of another video from you - a Flanger. I just hooked up the Wah and on the floor as you recommended. Your videos are very helpful for me as almost a beginner. Thanks again 🙏👍.
Fewer.
Fewer.
*fewer
the rat is perfect for any type of drive, it's a shame it doesn't clean up with the guitar's volume knob, obviously at low gain levels it does but entering the medium gain and above it just kills the volume knob dynamics,the blues driver is great but lacks gain to cover more territory, i don't know what simple driver could i use in that spot, i don't even like stacking gain pedals, i just need one because it's a pain in the ass to use the effects loop of an amp even if it has a great od channel
Fewer
I'm glad you mentioned TC Electronics. Lots of great sounds in a standard form factor. Source Audio pedals are great sounding digital pedals. I'm a huge fan and you can get a lot of great sounds from a regular sized pedal. Pedals like the JHS Bonsai and Muffuletta pack a lot of sounds into one regular sized analog pedal. Drunk Beaver pedals follow a similar idea, and they sound amazing.
Deco works really well for a small board, speaking from experience
Line 6 Pod express, acoustic simulator, and a tuner.
Great video, i agree with everything you said. I would also recommend having an eq pedal on your pedalboard. It makes your pedals more versatile and changes the dynamics of your pedalboard. I would also recommend they watch your eq pedal videos, i learned a couple of tricks from them 😀
Just a small question on most of the boards there’s no tuners 😂😂😂
Your videos are so good. The production value is fantastic as well as the content is very helpful and creative. Keep on keeping on!
How to use FEWER pedals.
Great video, Michael! These tips are very helpful.
push the amp and toss the drive pedals
I use zoom ms-50g for this as well!
Incredible video, cheers gent 👍
I'm on my way to simplify my pedalboard. So, I'd like to remain with:
Fuzz+OD+Mod+Delay.
That's all. So....I'd go with:
Fjord Fuzz Odin + Cornerstone Gladio + Fjord Fuzz Löke + Walrus Audio ARP87.
And I really think that I can do A LOT of sounds out of these 4 pedals.
WHAT?!?
Less pedals?!?!??!
I'm a huge fan of 1-3 pedal pedalboards. My old board was Delay, Tremolo, and Reverb. Now I have an amp with Tremolo and Reverb built in so I'm rocking just a Delay Pedal. I may add a boost or transparent overdrive later but for how diming the amp volume for tube breakup and using the guitar Master Volume to tame the volume. It probably comes down to what genres you play... I stick to 1950s-1960s RnR, Blues, Country, and Rockabilly so no need for any other FX I don't have already.
Bought and setting up a new mini pedalboard as an alternative to my primary which is full size and bulky after I rediscovered what a PITA several Velcro backed individual pedals are floating around on carpet. Your pancake backed connectors tip proved useful, notably when two pedals without offset output-input are necessarily adjacent. Swapped from conventional cables. Can now fit a size mix of five pedals mini, std, std+ comfortably without additional solid straight through connectors (no flex) or spacing compromise. Six Minis would fit easily. A perfect size board for home.
A Boss DS2 Overdrive/Distortion + a BF2 Flanger and a RV3 Digital Reverb/Delay is all I need. Maybe something else for primary drive...
😂 I just realized that Jag players tend to use less I'm guilty of that too. When I rock out with my '70s Jag I tend to use more of the modulation/time effects so, its good time down grade my board cool video Mike. You keep rocking 😎😬👍
I love the Beetronics Zzombee. Four levels of gain (five if you count clean). Glitchy octave down. Trem and cross trem (fading back and forth between the guitar signal and the octave down) with a wave form that fades between sine and square. Volume ramping for the guitar signal or octave down. Filter ramping with control over the high and low points of the filter. LFO control for the filter. Step sequencing for the filter with over 65 k different patterns. Tap tempo. You can control the filter and volume ramping with a footswitch on the pedal or an expression pedal. All the sound processing is analog with digital controls. And it has 5 presets. Another neat feature is you can hold the bypass button down when the pedal is off to momentarily activate the pedal. You throw that on a pedal board with a multi fx for flange, chorus etc and maybe a compressor and job done. And all that in a pedal that is just a smidge bigger than a standard boss pedal.
I also like the dual drive pedal as an option for a small board. Bigger? Yep. But you get four gain levels out of that, eliminate a patch cable and a power supply connection and you also no pedal board space between those two gain stages.
Of course, now you have the Line 6 Pod Express as an option, too. 7 Amp and cab sounds, 4 distortions, 4 modulations, 4 delays, 4 reverbs, a tuner, a looper and a noise gate all in one box that will fit in your gig bag. Long as you're a sound snob and not so much an analog snob you can get a lot of use out of that. Plus it has 21 presets you can save on it.
Really cool and well explained video! Thank you sir, YOU JUST WON A SUBSCRIBER
So-called "isolated" power supply bricks (many of which aren't even actually isolated) aren't necessary for the vast majority of pedalboards, especially not for small jam session boards, but the industry has engaged in so much misinformation on this topic that many musicians do not even realize they are being taken for a ride and sold a bill of goods. Provided a pedal's circuitry is properly designed, there is no need for ground isolation on a pedalboard, and daisy chain power is perfectly silent. I have been building pedalboards for over 30 years with nothing but daisy chain power, and I have never had a problem with noise, because I only use pedals from companies that properly engineer their pedals.
People should understand that so-called "true bypass loop switchers" often degrade signal quality through adding excess capacitance, comparing to plugging pedals directly in linear fashion. Think about it: for every loop, you are potentially adding a half-metre to a full metre of excess cable, just to patch each pedal to the loop switcher, plus all the internal wiring of the switcher itself, compared to a 100 mm patch cable between two pedals. If you put 6 pedals into 6 loops, you could easily have an additional 10 metres of cable and wiring (twelve 300 to 500 mm patch cables just to connect six pedals to the individual loops, plus the internal wiring of the switcher itself), compared to a mere half metre of five patch cables if you connected the pedals in linear fashion.
I'm not trying to say that loop switchers aren't sometimes the appropriate tool, but it's a lot less often than many musicians realize. For each loop you switch off, you remove a substantial amount of cabling, but switching a true bypass pedal off that is in the middle of a signal chain only changes the length of the signal path by a very small amount. Think very carefully about how you actually use your pedals in your music, before deciding whether or not a loop switcher is something you really need to invest in, or whether you have been conditioned to believe your pedalboard isn't "pro" without one.
Hi! It is being a while since I started to follow your work here... It is amazing How flexible I got Just following your tips! Please make a video showing some examples of modulations on the Zoom MS50G. It hase controls that i found some trouble understanding and get a Fine tone, like the Uni-vibe... Thanks a Lot! Best wishes!
Great video for novice players. Maybe you have done before but similar idea for type of amps and guitars for their best type of music would be great. Thanks.
Yes but what sucks about Gibsons is that they don't have a Master Volume knob! I love both positions mixed, and sometimes I like to roll back one of them a little bit. Also the knobs are less accessible then eg at a Fender. Gretsch has a Master Volume knob, but they really should place it where the neck position knob is. With both it's better to have a volume pedal, which of course will affect your tone...
So many awesome tips especially picking up space by putting the wah on the floor. Thanks for sharing.
Wow some grammar police here in the comments haha!
Keep up the good work! I always enjoy your videos!
New guy to pedals; great video! Thank you!!! I just got a Keeley Mag Echo that’s pretty easy to use & sounds bad ass, for what it’s worth…
The Walrus Audio M1 sounds incredible and is very pedalboard friendly
I can definitely speak for the latest version of the TC Electronic SCF. Super versatile. For drive sounds I'm using the T-Rex Mudhoney ll. It's probably the best OD/Distortion I've ever used. Two independent channels that are identical and can go from edge from break up all the way to fuzz.
Just watched your recommended video on Gibson Guitar tones. Any chance you could do a similar video on Gibson tones using only the gain on the amp - no pedals at all?
Shortly after the Zoom G3n was released I benefited in getting one really cheap off a chap that bought it for his pedal board (for its modulation effects) but he decided to go with discrete pedals.
It continues to serve me well. I've gigged it loads, sounds significantly better than its predecessor, the G3
I recently went on cheap pedal buying spree and when my Boss LS-2 arrives I will be AB-ing the G3n against the pedals it's emulating.
I've been thinking about minimal pedal boards, so this video is timely and very helpful- thank you!
First steps will be to take 3 pedals along to a jam session!
Excellent advice here as always. I might give the reverb on a delay pedal a try. You flanger video I saw a few weeks ago was cool and definitely a space saver. My board is like the Starship Enterprise, and if I was looking to recue it It would be for a compact set-up for gigs.
I recently picked up that same Zoom pedal to expand my delay and modulation options. Some of the OD/Distortion are a bit fizzy, but a few are quite good. I have a bunch of pedals for that anyway and I'm not looking to replace those. The amp and cab sim can be a useful function if you're looking for tone shaping options. Be aware for gigging that the stomp button is not all that it seems - you don't really have an off switch unless you hold it down for the tuner/bypass.
I have taken to keeping my pedal tuner separate from my pedalboards, mainly because this allows me to use my tuners separately from my pedalboards, but also because it saves a spot on my pedalboard. I leave one plug on my daisy chain to power the tuner from the board, when playing, but keep a battery in the pedal to use it separately.
great vid. not sure i'm ready to give up the behemoth but still some excellent notes in here.
Totally agree with the zoom stuff, generally I think they sound pretty dire with drive or amp modelling, although with an analogue EQ it can improve to useable. But as you say the effects, delays, reverb etc can be excellent and extremely versatile.
Highly recommend the Empress Zoia, it can fill in almost any gap, sort of a high end alternative to the zoom products. It has two inputs and two outputs, so you can use it to make a send/effect loop, or fork your signal chain. Its considerably smaller than most other things that can do anything comparable. Downsides are the cost and the fact that its hard to see the screen and utilize the controls if you use it on the floor.
An analog delay on a quarter note with the level set really low works for a reverb esque sound as well if you’re not playing staccato jabs
Good info, as always.
i use an HX stomp as part of my board. it really takes it to the next level. i keep my favorite drives in front of it and favorite modulation in the fx loop. the stomp is for when i want an effect from a pedal i don’t have or want to go direct to FOH with an amp emulation. it takes regular pedals very well!
I don't care about pedal boards. In the 80's no matter😅
Chorus as a Leslie example the Arion! I use on my small board.
You really wrapped up this topic well. I enjoyed hearing about your techniques to model modulation effects
when was the last time you did a gig under pressure?
What about the BOSS OC-3 SOUND???
awesome production man! I love your channel as well as JHS. Always to the point, always helpful, always avoiding anything that could extend any video from 10 minutes to 1 hours. Keep it coming! I learned a damn lot from this channel. Good player buy the way!
Glad I discovered You - vids are awesome!
Excellent channel ! What a great video
Excellent info here! Thanks!
Less face-time, more (much more) pedal-board time! :P (In the viddy, I mean)
[Awesome content; pacing. Great face, too, I'd just rather be ogling boards, while listening to your knowledge.]
Noted! I was feeling like I'd got a bit off balance with it so thanks for the feedback
Love your vids. Keep ‘em coming! :)
This is an excellent video
Thanks for the video! I subscribed to your channel because of this one! 👍🏻
Awesome! Thank you!
Great video! You have just earned a sub!😊
Yay! Thank you!
Love your content brother
Nice video man! :) what about SD 1?
Thanks. I love the SD-1, great mid focused overdrive, similar to the tube screamer sound