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Pedalboard assembly

T

T89Rex

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The last of my gear finally made it back from the UK yesterday so I've finally got the pedalboard fully populated. The board itself is a Pedaltrain Classic Pro.

GAAjYar.jpg


I still need to make all the patch cables. Signal chain will be as follows:

TC Electronic Polytune 2 Mini > EHX Cathedral >
Loop-Master Loop 1:
Zvex Fuzz Factory > BYOC Large Beaver (still needs to be built) > Boss HM-2 > Marshall Shredmaster > ProCo Rat 2 (Keeley mod) > The Toad (BYOC Scrambled Octave) > BYOC Classic Overdrive >
Loop-Master Loop 2:
Boss BD-2 (Keeley mod) > Keeley Compressor > Ernie Ball Volume Pedal Jr >
Loop-Master Loop 3:
Zvex Sonar > EHX Freeze > Dwarfcraft ARF > Boss DD-7 > Digitech Polara >
> Pigtronix Infinity Looper

Exciting times ahead!  :turtle:
 
Damn that looks awesome. So many pedals.

Now, lets see how pretty it looks once you've had to put all the patch cables in... :laughing7:
 
"... and for the solo I'll just kick in the ... hmm, Blues Driver ... no, wait ... hmm, the Shredmaster ... no, wait ... hmm ... ... hmm, the BYOC Classic Overdrive ... and, wait, let's see ... hmm ... I'm forgetting something ... oh, yeah, the delay as well of course.
What, the solo's over?
Wait, what ..?"

:toothy12: :toothy12: :toothy12:
 
Simple is good. However, he who dies with the most toys wins. Says so right on your Man card, lest you forget.
 
Wait so are you guys suggesting you can get by with less than eight distortion/overdrive/fuzz circuits?
 
I get by with a looper and a tremolo pedal...and Guitar Rig 5.  :icon_biggrin:
 
Noice!  Lot's of cats are running drives into the compressor these days.  Some good tones to be had on that board for sure!
 
*sniff* I miss my RAT *sniff*. Took me ages to find a replacement pedal after gifting that away when I had a tax bill to pay. ( I sold a guitar but the buyer wouldn't buy it for the price I wanted, unless I threw in the RAT)

Finally found a decent replacement for it, the JRAD Archer Icon (Gold). Not so much distortion but sweeter into distortion than the RAT.
 
you know, in this age of 10 billion boutique overdrive pedals the good old RAT is very underrated.  I still think it's the best pedal out there.
 
Mayfly said:
you know, in this age of 10 billion boutique overdrive pedals the good old RAT is very underrated.  I still think it's the best pedal out there.
Click to expand...

Mine was an early 1980s version and did quite well but it was brutish for it's time. I did know a guy who had an electronics geek install some sort of extra filter on his RAT and the damn thing was a monster. No idea what itwas or how it worked, just knew that Tony's sounded a step beyond mine.
 
Re-Pete said:
Mine was an early 1980s version and did quite well but it was brutish for it's time.
Click to expand...

I never owned one for that reason. Back then when I first heard one, I thought it sounded ridiculous. Never gave them another chance. I liked overdrive, but I preferred something that just overdrove the front end of an amp without coloring anything or requiring keeping a fire extingquisher close at hand. Just a small gain stage, really.

Of course, I don't have much room to talk. The two things I used back in the '70s (due to the lack of master volume amps and before the RAT even existed) were E-H's "LPB-1", which was a super-inexpensive little rascal that just added a few dB to your guitar's output. Wasn't a pedal back then, it was a little series box you plugged directly into the input of the amp...

00001424.jpg

They were $25 back then (the vintage guys are asking as much as $175 now), and we thought that was a ripoff since there's almost nothing inside. You could build one yourself for less than $5, and in fact we did build a few inside of amps just to get rid of the boxes, which had a tendecy to get their plugs broken off.

The other was a little dingus called an "Ice Cube", which was a feedback loop shaped like an ice cube that you plugged into the reverb send/return RCA jacks on Fender amps...

DSCN4739-1-1-1.jpg

It basically took the output of the 12AX7 that drove the reverb tank and tied it to the input of the 12AX7 that amplified the output of the reverb tank. So, again you were simply adding a gain stage, but this time it was tube-based. The reverb control on the front of the amp then became a "distortion" level control, and you could turn it on/off with the reverb footswitch. It worked, and only cost $20, which I suspect allowed for about an $18 profit. All it was was a resistor connecting the in to the out. Wasn't the greatest sounding mod, but it was cheap and better than nothing

Then they came out with the Muff Pi, and I thought all the world's problems were solved  :laughing7:
 
Aye, I do love the Rat. It's probably the most versatile distortion/fuzz circuit I've got on there. This one has three different voicings added by Robert Keeley, one of which really expands the range of the distortion knob. The additions at the lower end I don't find transparent enough to be useful compared to my other OD pedals but the extra gain at the top is great.

The real revelation for me on this board though is the Shredmaster. I bought it just before I left the UK so haven't had a chance to get acquainted with it till now. It just absolutely kills the crunchy Marshall-style tone. I have no idea why they don't make them anymore, or why they haven't acquired the sort of cult status that inspires endless boutique clones. Mine is very noisy at high gain - I don't know if that's a feature of the circuit or if mine is just old - but if a boutique company sold a similar pedal without the hiss, I'd buy one in a heartbeat.
 
Cagey said:
Re-Pete said:
Mine was an early 1980s version and did quite well but it was brutish for it's time.
Click to expand...

I never owned one for that reason. Back then when I first heard one, I thought it sounded ridiculous. Never gave them another chance. I liked overdrive, but I preferred something that just overdrove the front end of an amp without coloring anything or requiring keeping a fire extingquisher close at hand. Just a small gain stage, really.

Of course, I don't have much room to talk. The two things I used back in the '70s (due to the lack of master volume amps and before the RAT even existed) were E-H's "LPB-1", which was a super-inexpensive little rascal that just added a few dB to your guitar's output. Wasn't a pedal back then, it was a little series box you plugged directly into the input of the amp...

00001424.jpg

They were $25 back then (the vintage guys are asking as much as $175 now), and we thought that was a ripoff since there's almost nothing inside. You could build one yourself for less than $5, and in fact we did build a few inside of amps just to get rid of the boxes, which had a tendecy to get their plugs broken off.

The other was a little dingus called an "Ice Cube", which was a feedback loop shaped like an ice cube that you plugged into the reverb send/return RCA jacks on Fender amps...

DSCN4739-1-1-1.jpg

It basically took the output of the 12AX7 that drove the reverb tank and tied it to the input of the 12AX7 that amplified the output of the reverb tank. So, again you were simply adding a gain stage, but this time it was tube-based. The reverb control on the front of the amp then became a "distortion" level control, and you could turn it on/off with the reverb footswitch. It worked, and only cost $20, which I suspect allowed for about an $18 profit. All it was was a resistor connecting the in to the out. Wasn't the greatest sounding mod, but it was cheap and better than nothing

Then they came out with the Muff Pi, and I thought all the world's problems were solved  :laughing7:
Click to expand...

I had one of these!!!, Used it in the front end of my Scholz Rockman back in the early 80's!
 
They were a neat trick for those old non-master volume amps, especially the Fenders we all seemed to end up with somehow. E-H still makes them, they just put them in a pedal now. Still pretty inexpensive at $40.
 
I had the small EH one. Put it in front of my Twin (that did have a master) and it allowed me to get some awesome tones at bedroom levels.
 
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