less is more sometimes, especially when you have a difficult load in... or a crowded stage... or you're
part of a multi-performer lineup.
Here's the one I use for electric guitars played into my Orange Micro Terror (which has no f/x of its own).
from Right to Left: Boss TU-2 tuner, EQ pedal, Blues Driver, TC Electronic "hall of Fame" reverb, Radial Pro D.I.
Sometimes I like the reverb before the overdrive, and that works fine. But I usually don't use both at the same time.
This little board fits in a small carrying bag, like a gym bag, along with some cables and its power supply.
Here's the one I use for my acoustic guitars:
From right to left: Boss TU-3 tuner, TC Electronic Hall of Fame Reverb, Boss Chorus CE-5, Fishman Pro EQ which includes
an XLR out (so I don't need a D.I. box, just plug into the snake with an XLR cable).
This goes to the P.A. You can see I've got all my starting
points painted on with white craft paint, so I can quickly scan the board, set all those controls at the starting points,
and get a sound I recognize without fuss. If I've got a good sound person, I'll usually leave the controls alone and let
them do their job, figuring that they know the room. I can tweak the gain or the output volume in consultation with
the sound guys. I have fallen in love with the HOF reverb.
And yes, these are real boards. *grins ...Pedals are stuck on with velcro, which works fine
mostly. Velcro tends to
melt its glue when the sun hits the stage in midsummer. Then you can kick a pedal and feel it slide slowly... EEEEWWWW!
So check this out:
My Vox VT-30 is such a cool amp. It's a modeling amp that has lots of features and models I'll never use. But they
sell these world wide, to musicians of many stripes. I've had lots of fun playing with this thing, but when it's time to
get serious, there are only a couple of presets that I use. This amp conveniently saves them, and this honking big
pedal conveniently enables me to hit them with one stomp. I've messed around and created more than four different
paddle boards for this rig, and ended up scrapping them all and saving my fave amp tone as a preset, so I can keep it simple
and use only this big stumbling block. I actually like that a lot. Too many choices onstage tends to make me
crazy, and performance suffers. I modded the pedal and the amp, so the pedal now has LEDs to tell me where the frack I am.
and the amp has a high quality Neutrik input jack and several out put options which work well with a P.A. and central board.
