Current Pedalboard Rig

My pedalboard for the recent Summer Music Project gig was a a bit of a compromise.  I couldn’t fit the JamMan Delay on the pedal board so it was hanging off to one side, and I had no space for my fuzz and chorus.

I’ve been planning to build a new larger PedalTrain-inspired pedalboard, and make some new correct-length cables.

Meanwhile, some of this pedal order is dependent on the short cables I had on hand. I would prefer to wire the tuner before the volume pedal, and the compressor before the wah, but that will have to wait for the redo. 

The pedal chain I settled on for the gig was:

• Ernie Ball Volume Pedal (early 90’s model)
• Planet Waves Tru-Strobe tuner
• Dunlop JH1 Hendrix wah (late 80’s model)- with my mods
• My Under Pressure compressor (based on a Ross compressor)
• My Speed Racer overdrive (based on a Fulltone OCD)
• VOX Ice 9 overdrive
• Rocktron Hush noise reduction pedal (early 90’s model)
• Digitech JamMan delay
• SKB PS-25 pedalboard (early 90’s model)

I received the VOX Ice 9 just before the gig, so I haven’t fully explored its voicing yet, but it sounds really nice.  It has an overall darker sound that my Speed Racer, so I’m initially using it as a very mellow overdrive/boost, and using my Speed Racer for more bright aggressive drive.   I wasn’t doing any live looping with the JamMan Delay- I was just using the delays, and loving that tap tempo switch.

I had tried to remove the Hush from the rig, to free up some space, but realized how much I depend on it for my higher gain overdriven sounds.  It can get really noisy without the downward expander in the chain, especially at gigging levels.

This rig is plugged into the top boost high gain input of my VOX AC15HW1, with the channel volume at about 40%, bass down a bit and treble up a bit.   I still haven’t built my A/B pedal so I’m only using the one channel and relying on outboard boosts and overdrives to switch between clean and crunch sounds.

More news when I build the new pedalboard and A/B pedal.