Help me with my pedal board!

[Ryan Slowey]

So, I have a cool little effects rig happening, BUT I'm having issues with the pedals all playing nice with each other.

Here's a run down of what I have, and the order it's all in:

Boss TU2 tuner
EH Small Stone
Voodoo Labs Microvibe
Boss Tremolo
Fulltone OCD
Earthquaker Devices Tusk Fuzz
Dwarfcraft Devices The Great Destroyer Fuzz (thing is insane)
Malekko Heavy Industries 616 Ekko delay

Here's a couple issues I'm running into: OCD tone darkens when followed by non-true bypass pedals, and the Dwarfcraft pedal is not responding to volume/tone adjustments on my guitar (by itself, it's THE most interactive pedal I own, and have ever heard).

Everything other than the 2 boss pedals is true-bypass. The Malekko actually allows you to switch between buffered, and TB. I keep it on TB, because the OCD sounds like shit if I don't, but I like the sound of the repeats in non-TB mode a lot, so that kinda sucks sometimes.

Anyways... any ideas how YOU would set this up? Do I need to go so far as to ditch the Boss things, and go all TB?

Really driving me nuts.

[Tomasz]

Ryan... What guitar/amplifier setup are you using? Do you have an FX loop on the amp?

As to the Boss no true bypass: they do wreck the tone in my opinion,. I am a purist so to speak and use NO pedals, however we all need to be in tune. I will not even leave my boss TU2 tuner in the chain. ever for any reason.. Yhe tone thievery is extremely audible IMO. I choose to plug and unplug it when tuning is necessary..
give a few more details on your setup, and help should ensue!

[pauly]

don't hate me for this

www.thegigrig.com

[Zachg]

Here's a couple issues I'm running into: OCD tone darkens when followed by non-true bypass pedals, and the Dwarfcraft pedal is not responding to volume/tone adjustments on my guitar (by itself, it's THE most interactive pedal I own, and have ever heard).


I've heard that pedals that buffer the sound (ie Boss pedals, i think) can mess with the dynamics of a fuzz pedal quite a bit. So, can you put the Dwarfcraft fuzz first in the chain? that might help get the interactivity with the volume knob back.

Hope this helps,
Zach

Pauly, the gigrig stuff actually looks kinda cool...If i understand right there like a Bradshaw-esque MIDI thing but for pedals, without needing to use MIDI?

[Ryan Slowey]

Thanks so much for the thoughts here guys. I'm really excited to be learning more about this stuff. I think it will come in handy, not just in my rig, but in the studio when guys bring in crazy pedal boards.

I had my friend, who is an EXTREME pedal junky come by last night and we took my board apart... started from scratch. Ended up with the following:

Dwarfcraft Great Destroyer - Voodoo Labs Vibe - Earthquaker Tusk Fuzz - OCD - Boss Tremolo - Malekko Ekko (in TB mode) - EH LPB-1

Everything sounded great at practice last night. The Dwarfcraft fuzz is doing exactly what it should be, the Tusk sounds crisper and more defined, the OCD sounds great.... Really stoked. I nix'd the Small Stone so that I could spread the bottom row out a bit to make things more ergonomic on stage, and fig'd out that the biggest issue, is the Boss tuner. It was really clouding things up. I tried a couple different spots in the chain, and no matter where I had it, it made my OCD sound worse.

So I guess the next best thing to do, is get myself a better tuner that has TB. Maybe the Korg Pitchblack?


Ryan... What guitar/amplifier setup are you using? Do you have an FX loop on the amp?

1982 Gibson SG/1980 Marshall JMP 50w Master Volume/Marshall 1960A 4x12, no FX loop, tho that is something I'm going to look further into.

I will not even leave my boss TU2 tuner in the chain. ever for any reason.. Yhe tone thievery is extremely audible IMO. I choose to plug and unplug it when tuning is necessary..
give a few more details on your setup, and help should ensue!

The tuner was most definitely the biggest factor in screwing my tone up. It was just dulling everything, no matter where in the path I put it.

One of those "I wish I thought of this sooner" moments when I pulled it from the board.

[Mixwell]

So, I have a cool little effects rig happening, BUT I'm having issues with the pedals all playing nice with each other.

Here's a run down of what I have, and the order it's all in:

Boss TU2 tuner
EH Small Stone
Voodoo Labs Microvibe
Boss Tremolo
Fulltone OCD
Earthquaker Devices Tusk Fuzz
Dwarfcraft Devices The Great Destroyer Fuzz (thing is insane)
Malekko Heavy Industries 616 Ekko delay

Here's a couple issues I'm running into: OCD tone darkens when followed by non-true bypass pedals, and the Dwarfcraft pedal is not responding to volume/tone adjustments on my guitar (by itself, it's THE most interactive pedal I own, and have ever heard).

Everything other than the 2 boss pedals is true-bypass. The Malekko actually allows you to switch between buffered, and TB. I keep it on TB, because the OCD sounds like shit if I don't, but I like the sound of the repeats in non-TB mode a lot, so that kinda sucks sometimes.

Anyways... any ideas how YOU would set this up? Do I need to go so far as to ditch the Boss things, and go all TB?

Really driving me nuts.

Hey Ryan,

The Shadow is working on the ultimate solution for pedals. I'm sure he'll chime in soon. He may have addressed some of your issues with it.

Sounds like to me you need a high quality switcher box, with a mult out to go to your tuner, so its not in the signal path. I would want a router switch box that can change inputs to outputs easily, of course w/ transformers inside.

[moose]

A little late to the game, but if anyone's looking for killer pedalboard router/switcher boxes this guys stuff is great. I've put 'em on several peoples boards & they're total bulletproof problem solvers...

http://loop-master.com/

[Halfway Competent]

The tuner was most definitely the biggest factor in screwing my tone up. It was just dulling everything, no matter where in the path I put it.

One of those "I wish I thought of this sooner" moments when I pulled it from the board.

Petersen Strobe tuners have a "true bypass"; that is to say, the pedal switch connects the input to either the tuner electronics, or directly to the output jack.

[moose]

Not all 'true bypass' pedals are actually 'true bypass' as some, like the planet waves tuner have negative voltage on their output which kills some top-end and smears the mids. At that point buffered is better!

About two years ago I was beta-testing a few stompers for a well-known company and one of 'em, an analog pedal with a digital brain was KILLING the sound in bypass even though they said it was "TB" the whole way.

The tone loss was really apparent when I stuck the pedal into the loop-master box with some 6" cables so I could do an instant A/B between the straight amp and having that bypassed FX box in-line. Night & day difference.

Turns out they had to install a capacitor across the input to comply with FCC regulations (since its digital) which isn't a big deal, but the value of the cap on that first revision was equivalent to something like 30-40 feet of cable!!! They ended up changing the circuit around so it'd be like having about 2 feet of cable in line while still doing what it needed to.

Honestly that shoeflypass stuff ain't all its cracked up to be anyway. If you have 8 TB pedals on your board, that's another 8 feet of cable and 16 connections that your signal has to go through.

If you've got a bunch of pedals at some point you need a buffer and/or a bypass looper especially if there's a long run, say 20 feet from guitar to board, and another 20 feet from board to amp. If that's all TB there's about 50' feet of cable and dozens of connections between the guitar & amp.

Then we plug right in and wonder why it sounds and feels so much better!!!

Not to mention that in that scenario, as soon as you turn on one pedal in the chain its acting as a buffer to everything else... so that really creates a tailspin if you're chasing tone.

[moose]

FWIW - the Fulltone OCD is notorious for sounding and acting like an entirely different box depending on where it is in the chain. That's why there's been four different versions of that box and they're all unique.

Its not alone in that... sort of like Fuzz Faces and their many clones.