Why so many pedals?

[nosuch]

Originally Posted by 11 Gauge

I can't seem to locate it on my '71 Vibrolux Reverb...or my '79 Deluxe Reverb, for that matter. I guess I'm just not avant garde - what to do?

get some b jr. or crate or something like that.



just kidding.
Back to the OP's question: I think it is a question of style and context. As the edge has been mentioned, he could not have developed his style without all the pedals he utilized, U2 would not be U2 without that.
If you are playing blues or some other down home style you don't need any pedals if you use a nice tube amp which is adequate to the application. A question of context. I know a lot of "down home" players still use pedals, but not for all this is a blessing, sometimes it hurts the sound more than it helps. In the context of a band "more sustain" or a "warmer sound" is not always appropriate.
Speaking of me: If I play with my own amp 9 out of 10 gigs I use just my telly, cable and amp, set it on the edge of breakup and just play. I have no boutique amp, just a blues jr. with master, so I can set the volume according to the application. As I'm the singer in my band that's the easiest way for me, I don't have to care when to step on a pedal, using the guitars knobs is much more natural to me – maybe just because I am used to it. So I willingly abdicate the possibility to have a scope of sound in favour of just playing and performing for the audience which hopefully listens to the voice more than to my poor guitar wanking anyway. I know I am sacrificing a totally clean and sparkling sound as well as the roaring leads, but that way it just feels more natural for me: blending instead of switching.
BUT: I often play amps provided by the club or by fellow musicians e.g. on a festival. It suits me fine, I don't have to carry, changing times are short etc. But often, these are too much for the room (like a twin, holy jesus!) or they are not even tube. For that occasions I always carry a tiny overdrive pedal in my gigbag which allows me to compensate and approximate the sound I am getting from my own rig.
If I am playing someone elses gig I use whatever is needed to make the boss happy. In the 90s that could go over the top, but now taste seem to be more likely to my personal preference: a natural and rather clean tone.
All that said I am getting more and more to the opinion that hardware is indeed overated. Still an inspired performance on mediocre hardware sounds better to me than a mediocre performance on state-of-the-art gear. IMHO.

[JPark]

Originally Posted by ReIgnition

If you like the sound of a flanger, you either buy a flanger pedal - or make flanger noises with your mouth.

I do both.

But like mentioned before, the pedals I do use are there because:

1) My amp doesn't have it
2) Convenience





And now for a random flange. SHAAAAWOOOOOOOSH.

[Viceroy]

In the 80s, I was playing in a band that was doing a lot of covers, so I eventually got a Boogie, so I could switch on the fly in and out of clean and pushed. Then, I needed to get those contemporary effects - delay and chorus and flanging. About then, I felt like I was having to tap dance too much and I bought a big rack rig with a midi controlled pedal that included expression pedals for volume, or wah and every button and pedal on the thing was programable to affect any parameter of any effect. I soon found myself spending too much time tweaking parameters and programming the pedal rig to step through the set list, as I tried to cover mutlitple guitar sounds in one song, and then lots of songs which also had multiple guitar sounds.

I stopped playing for a while and then picked it up again not too long ago. I bought an old Vibrolux Reverb and a Tele and just played straight into that for a few years. Since then, I'm still using that rig, but I will stick a pedal or two in there, but I am loath to go back to the tweaking and tap dancing days again. I'm trying to keep it simple. That's my credo. I'm not playing in a band these days that is a human jukebox, we have "a sound" and we keep more or less to that, and that's fine with me. I have an overdrive pedal that I used judiciously, a delay for slapback rockabilly sounds, a delay for more spacious sounds, sometimes a compressor and that's about it. I bring an attenuator along a lot of times, because I can't get "that sound" in the small rooms I play with my amp.

I love all the possibilities of signal processing, but nowadays I mostly love having a basic sound that I really like and then focussing more on just playing. But the old tone quest seems to be never ending and eternally fraught with the peril of not having the right choices of sounds or having too many so that the rig is unwieldy.

[RomanS]

Originally Posted by backalleyblues

Roman, have you tried playing the lap steel with pick-and fingers, or just fingers? Speeds up the switch time (I play lap steel quite a bit myself) and I like the tone I'm getting...

Yes, tried that - but I'm so used to the picks that I really miss them when playing the LS with bare fingers (and for an authentic Don Helms/Hank Williams type of sound they are necessary, too..)
I have considered the opposite, instead: using my thumb- and finger-picks with my Tele, too, but that doesn't work for fast power chord rhythm strumming...

[nosuch]

roman, btw. I played a gig last saturday and my bassplayer brought someone to sit in on lap steel. This man turned out to be Matthias Keul who is a well known keyboard player round here. His style on the lapsteel was somehow humble but added a nice flavour and colour. maybe we'll form a band (my current band would be too big with a sixt man added). it may be interesting for you that he used a duesenberg with some levers operated with the right hand to get some pedal steel effects. nice!
For my personal ambitions on lap steel: It seems just get too much, so I'll concentrate on singing and playing the guitar for now. I tried a G B D G B D tuning lately and it felt comfortable.
enough thread hijacking ...

[nosuch]

Originally Posted by cletus

And I know I'll get flamed for this --- Tone is not in the fingers --- technique is in the fingers. Don't believe me--- put your fingers in your ears and see how they sound!!! Rant over.

cletus

You seem to be pragmatic about hardware with a nice "getting the job done" philosophy I share.
IMHO the tone starts in the head of the player. Good players know how to get their idea of a sound out. But first of all, you have to have an idea. I agree that the fingers do the craft, technique Appropriate gear is needed for that, but it is not as determinig for the sound as a lot of us think. You may have heard famous players with a strong signature tone playing different equipment and still sound like themselves. I strongly believe that is due to the strong vision of music in their head.
Mortals like us may not have such a convincing and original idea so we tend to try to "sound like" by using the same gear as our heroes.
Nothing wrong to that.

let me tell you one more thing: I have a friend, a local hero blues guitar player who I play with often on sessions. he uses whatever is there and always sounds good (to me). he sometimes doesn't even bother to bring his guitar (he's got many you would be lusting for like late 50s les pauls), so he uses whatever he can borrow, sometimes even cheap chines things, digital roland amps, whatever is there. he always sounds like himself, with some variations sure, but ... very much like himself. He used my guitar when he sat in with my band last weekend and it just sounded wonderful. He also has a natural presence that seem to comfort the musicians he plays with so even mediocre players sound better when the play with him. Sometimes these complain he would be too determinating, personally I feel it is always a strong learnig experience.
BUT:
The very same guy always complains about the quality of amps and guitars, fender amps are scratchy, my tele felt slick, my amp is sh*t, etc.

He might hear something I do not ...

[RomanS]

Yeah, I've got a Duesenberg Multibender unit (with 3 levers) on one of my homemade lap steels, too (the Duesenberg Pomona lap steel that comes stock with the Multibender is a bit too pricey for me...) - still working on getting used to the E6 tuning (B, C#->D, E, G#->A, B->C#, E), as I've been playing 8-string C6 (ACEGACEG) for the last couple of years...

[11 Gauge]

Originally Posted by nosuch

All that said I am getting more and more to the opinion that hardware is indeed overated.

But such a statement will always require subjective reference. Otherwise, we're left pi__ing in the wind, so to speak, or possibly presuming rhetoric in the case of the OP's question, which it doesn't appear (at least overtly) is the case.

I still fail to see the need to categorize any piece of guitar gear as superfluous, or possibly nothing more than augmentation. Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't. Maybe blue is the best color. Maybe green is. They are both true and false at the same time.

The name of the thread is "Why so many pedals?" and not "Why not use less pedals?" Since thus is the case, maybe a new thread might serve for a sharper focus for the advantages of a minimal rig, an embracement of the luddite's doctrine, or something along those lines. Otherwise we're just throwing around subjective statements that don't really answer the original query.

[nosuch]

well to give some reference or rateher an example try to play some licks by john scofield on a clean sounding amp with a tele or strat. If you do it will still sound more scofield than fender, although he uses a semi acoustic with buckers and a lot of pedals. on the other hand a lot of guitar students tried to emulate his sound by using the same gear in the 90s - you could meet these clones on aevery other jam. until they play the same licks (at that point it get's ridiculous) they could never make me feel that some of sco's vibe was there, while playing his music did, regardless of the gear used.
same gear + different music = no sco,
same gear + same music = some ridiculous sco clone,
differnet gear + sco's music = presence of sco's moj.
man it's hard to explain what I mean, I am not a native english speaker!
Forgive me.

I am not anti pedal or something, my statement goes more in the direction of: It doesn't matter that much as it is talked about. The notes you choose and when an how you play them have much more impact.
Then on the other hand it's much easier to talk about gear than it is to discuss music.

I think the original poster was wondering why today we use that much pedals and why we discuss them ad nauseum. and that question was asked in a forum called "the stomp box".
Please forgive my ambiguity.

[RomanS]

Originally Posted by nosuch

I am not anti pedal or something, my statement goes more in the direction of: It doesn't matter that much as it is talked about. The notes you choose and when an how you play them have much more impact.

I have to partly disagree here - this may be true for some genres like blues or jazz, but for others it is not - there's a slew of musical genres that are more "sound"-oriented (just think of the whole "shoegazer"-scene, or of bands like Sonic Youth, the Spacemen 3, etc., that are much more about "texture" rather than about "songs"), and for those the actual sound (which depends a lot on effects) is more important than the song or the notes that are played.

Or to bring another, more conventional example: I can play eg. Folsom Prison Blues, exactly the same way, using the same notes - but depending on whether I use a clean sound & slapback echo, or with no echo but a bit of dirty, or with lots of distortion - and it is going to sound like rockabilly, like blues, or like hard-rock, respectively - and ONLY the sound will make the difference, not the actual notes used!

BTW, I personally love a lot of my all-time favorite guitarists mainly for the sounds they are making/using, NOT for the notes they are playing (think of someone like Neil Young - his magic is 99% sound, and only 1% playing; or JC Wilsey, another favorite of mine - his licks for those great Chris Isaak albums are all about great clean sounds; and I could mention a lot more examples here...)

[nosuch]

So I have to quote myself:

Originally Posted by nosuch

Back to the OP's question: I think it is a question of style and context. As the edge has been mentioned, he could not have developed his style without all the pedals he utilized, U2 would not be U2 without that.

I agree, my friend. And sound is not less important in blues than in other styles, it's just a different sound that for most people does not need that much pedals.

let me try to express my statement that way: when you are playing "Folsom Prison" without slap delay it is still the song and if you play fine will be appreciated by the listener. if you want to sound as close as possible to Luther Perkin's contribution, you get it closer with the delay?
Right?

As an analogy we can look at artists, some use whatever colour they can get, sculpture and use digital medias, some decide just to draw with a pencil.
Ain't nothing wrong with either. You just have to be fond of your medium of expression.

[RomanS]

Originally Posted by nosuch

let me try to express my statement that way: when you are playing "Folsom Prison" without slap delay it is still the song and if you play fine will be appreciated by the listener. if you want to sound as close as possible to Luther Perkin's contribution, you get it closer with the delay?
Right?

Let me answer that from the perspective of the listener, not the player: If someone played Folsom Prison Blues to me, and he plays it 100% perfectly - but he uses, say, a fizzy overdrive sound - no, I will NOT appreciate it, and I'd much rather listen to someone who plays it maybe not so perfect (and makes a couple of mistakes), but uses a great tone (with slapback).

See, people like music for different reasons - some appreciate great playing (in the technical sense), some like good lyrics, others like witty references to other songs, others like great rhythm grooves, and, yes, others like certain sounds. I guess all of us will appreciate all of these aspects, but each of us will have their personal preference of what is most important to them, and where they place the emphasis.

...and for me it is sound and tone first and foremost!
If I hear a great guitar tone of the kind I like (usually warm clean, with lots of reverb or delay), I will listen to the music, no matter whether the player is perfect or not, and no matter whether that song is in a genre I like, or not; and I refuse to listen to any player (as good as he may be) that uses guitar tones I don't like (like high-gain distortion), even if he plays in one of my favorite genres.
I'd rather listen to a so-so player play corny Schlager songs with a great clean tone rather than to Joe Satriani playing my favorite country or rockabilly song with high-gain distortion - and that's also why for my own playing effects (and the search for the exactly right ones to achieve precisely the tone I'm looking for) are one of the most important aspects...

It's all a matter of taste & preferences!

[Bensen]

Pedals make me happy. I caught myself this week just holding my proco rat 2 in my hands and smile. I'm that simple.
That said, I sometimes limit myself to just guitar - amp to get the most out of my fingers, and that is fun too.

[Tonemonkey]

Originally Posted by Bensen

Pedals make me happy. I caught myself this week just holding my proco rat 2 in my hands and smile. I'm that simple.

Sure you were'nt just hold in it in one hand?

[Ignatius]

It's very simply a matter of finding and using the tools you want to use to get your tone for a given situation.

I think it's pretty narrow minded for anyone to imply that an individual should do otherwise.

[nosuch]

Originally Posted by RomanS

It's all a matter of taste & preferences!

OK, I understand and agree. Although i would not go as far as to listen to fuzzy schlager if I can avoid that. I think sound belongs to music would not seperate that so much.
Round and clean seems to be my ideal of a sound, too, with some hair thrown in from time to time.
Still I think that a good player can make gear sound the way he wants it, if it has a minimum quality. So I would not equal sound = gear, but I'm sure you wouldn't either.

Thinking about the OP's question again, maybe it is just that it is in our nature to collect things, kind of a genetic determination of the human animal.
and with both the information and the products itself being much easier available than ever before (thanks to the internet, which also allows me to discuss nerdy questions and procrastinate my task for today - do my taxes! Autsch!) it is just natural that pedal-boards are more crowded than ever before.
???

[Waynel]

Originally Posted by SirJackdeFuzz

I like the all of the RHCP albums untill, and up to "One Hot Minute".

But i still think he sounds generic and almost boring to my ears.
There is nothing about his tone that makes me sit up and pay attention as soon as i hear him play.
I know that is just my oppinion, but i really think his tone is very bland.

Thanks for saying what I was trying to. I see the same thing. A guy can really rip it, but do the effects detract from the skill. And you have to remember that non-guitarists (without articulating it) recognized and liked certain guitarists for both their technique and "original" tone.Think of the difference between Carlos Santana and Billy Gibbons. You can hear the first five notes of their solos and identify them, even if you don't play an instrument. Forgive this "old fart" story but I remember something Mike Bloomfield once said of Jimi Hendrix (yes, he used a couple of effects onstage) "I walked into Jimi's hotel room and he's sitting on the bed playing his Strat through a tiny Fender amp and he pulled up the most incredible tone I've ever heard."

That said...if you love the pedals use them. If playing guitar ain't fun, there's no reason to do it.

[Chito]

For me, I use pedals when I play in the rock cover band but doesn't use anything on my other band where I play an archtop. The guitar sound has evolved over the years, it's not just an overdriven/distorted sound and a clean sound which was more like what it was in the 70's except for maybe the wah and some boost pedals. In the 80's, a lot of the modulation pedals like chorus, flanger, phaser, delay came out which in turn produced a different guitar sound, and so on and so forth. These sounds cannot be reproduced by just the amp alone. Thus the pedals. Just that some music requires pedals while others don't, e.g. blues or jazz.

[Tonemaster]

Originally Posted by 11 Gauge

I can't seem to locate it on my '71 Vibrolux Reverb...or my '79 Deluxe Reverb, for that matter. I guess I'm just not avant garde - what to do?

Plus not everyone wants that buzzy preamp distortion. Yuck!

T.

[Waynel]

Originally Posted by cletus

Waynel-- you said no judgment on your side so I apologize if I came across as an ass. If you are getting back in the saddle after 25 yrs are your intentions to play the same music you played back then? If so then the couple of pedals you mentioned will surely do a great job. They probably even have better models of the same pedals ie: true bypass,better components,hardware. The distortion side of a 20 watt Marshall or Fender is pretty sweet when you can get the tubes cooking up to the sagging point. One of the best sounds I ever heard OD wise was from an old 18 watt Vox. But with todays technology in PA equip we no longer have the luxury of cranking amps into their sweet spot but rather have to maintain a more manageable stage volume. So now my amps of choice have to start with a crystal clear clean channel and then I add my dirt and lead boost using pedals. The other pedals are essential in covering certain songs in our set. I simply can't do Waylon without a phaser. I can't do rockabilly without some dirt and a delay or country without a compressor and some chorus on the slow songs. You don't have to have these pedals but it sounds a hell of a lot more realistic to the original when you do. I don't buy/own reasonably priced guitars or solid state amps. I wait and buy the best I can afford so I'm not gonna put crappy pedals in my rig either. So yes my board does cost as much as a '52 RI tele--- but if I sound like hell at least I know it ain't the gear. Congratulations on getting back into it after all these years and Good Luck to ya!!!

cletus

Thanks. I'm the last person to judge anyone. I'm just tryin to catch up just like using PC's at work. Yeah it's good to be gigging again and most of it is Classic rock, you know the songs everyone dancing hollers out. I do some new stuff and will need a phaser and digital delay but that's about it. I must admit I'm excited about getting some digital echo. I go so far back we used to use a reel-to-reel tape recorder to loop the guitar signal to get a slapback. They didn't make anything to do that back then...so by no means am I anti-tech. Anyone remember the Leslie we used? God help us what were we thinking to lug that around?

[krauser2]

show me how to get great tube overdriven (power section) sound without killing the front row

that 20 watt marshall is expensive. Run it clean, slam it with a decent pedal....

my question is this:

WHY SO MANY GUITARS. I'd rather have 2 guitars and 20 pedals as oppose to the other way around. You can only play one guitar at a time...I can play 20 pedals at once if I wanted.

[Tonemonkey]

Originally Posted by krauser2

show me how to get great tube overdriven (power section) sound without killing the front row

As if it hasn't been said enough:

Sell your 100W monster, buy a decent 15/20W amp, crank it, don't point it at the front row. Small club, point it at the back wall or ceiling, Mic it through your PA if you have one. Big club same.

I sold my 100w marshall and 100W Twin when I spent most of my days building blast shield for the audience. Even a BJr can drive sweetly so its not expensive. I run a Traynor 20W ($220) and a Lightning 15W (bit more!!)

Its not rocket surgery.

[octatonic]

Simple really.
I use a bunch of pedals to change the basic tone of the amp.
If you buy the right products and configure the rig properly there is no real change to the tone.

I run three basic rigs, one for small shows, one for large shows and a studio rig.

The basic design is the same for each, the only difference is the number of items and the portability of the rigs.
Even the small rig has wah, compressor, octaver, two overdrives, modulation and twin delays.

The bigger rigs have a lot of options- 3-4 overdrives/octavers, rack gear doing multiple fx, slow gear, guitar synths- the sort of things I don't need for country/roots music, but for the more progressive styles it really helps.
It is a tonal palette.

I don't understand why people have a problem with other people using effects- they are just tools, a way of painting with sound.
It is similar to knowing (and being able to apply) a lot of different chords.
Sure, G,D,C and will allow you to play a lot of songs, but sometimes you want to hear G13 sharp 11.

[krauser2]

Originally Posted by Tonemonkey

As if it hasn't been said enough:

Sell your 100W monster, buy a decent 15/20W amp, crank it, don't point it at the front row. Small club, point it at the back wall or ceiling, Mic it through your PA if you have one. Big club same.

I sold my 100w marshall and 100W Twin when I spent most of my days building blast shield for the audience. Even a BJr can drive sweetly so its not expensive. I run a Traynor 20W ($220) and a Lightning 15W (bit more!!)

Its not rocket surgery.

that was my point......all these great fender and marshall amps cost some dough. Pedals make it more affordable to get a plethora of sounds without having to spend alot of money.

In my opinion if you spend 500 dollars on anything thats a nice chunk of change not everyone can swing it. A cheap amp and some pedals are some peoples only options

...and thats why you see so many pedals, a thrifty shopper can get all the sounds he or she wants for the fraction of the price of an amp that only produces one (albiet a very pleasurable sound)

[cletus]

I own several amps big and small so here's my take on the small amp. The bars we gig are pretty good size. Keep in mind we are not a blues band but we cover everything including a few blues tunes. With a small, low watt amp, volume is directly proportionate to gain so I can only get so much clean volume before I am overdriving the amp and now I'm stuck with whatever amount that happens to be. Once you reach a certain point on a small amp there is no such thing as a clean boost. Even ones with a master volume have only so much clean headroom. In a strictly blues band this is ideal. In a cover band ---not so much. So I use at least a 40 watt tube amp with a lot of clean headroom and control the amount of dirt with pedals. Way easier to control overall volume too. Not knocking anyone's way of doing things, it's just that the small amp approach doesn't work for everyone and every situation. As always ymmv,iirc,imho,r2d2 and 10-4.

cletus

[Tonemonkey]

K2

I don't deny it mate. My palette is those two amps A/B'd - Wah, BD2, TS9, Zendrive.

But the amp matters: Pedals aren't your tone; they just flavour it.

[krauser2]

oh yeah, the amp matters, I definitely agree.

but you don't just eat one flavor of ice cream right?

thats the answer to the first posters question..why so many pedals?

because people want different sounds, not have 5 different amps for each one, or expensive rack units.

[Tonemonkey]

Originally Posted by krauser2

oh yeah, the amp matters, I definitely agree.

but you don't just eat one flavor of ice cream right?

thats the answer to the first posters question..why so many pedals?

because people want different sounds, not have 5 different amps for each one, or expensive rack units.

K2

For the last time...........hold on a minute.....we agree?

I do run two very different amps though......

PS, I like tutti frutti - one Ice Cream, many different flavours.......like the pedalboard of Ice Creams.

[bradpdx]

Pedals are a big part of the sound I have evolved, even though most people would immediately identify my sound as "classic twangy Fender".

I don't want to peg my BFDR to get overdrive. That's too loud and limits me to one volume/one sound too quickly if I crank it past 6 or 7. Pedals are better, I just want the amp to give me a touch of grit so I have room to work.

It has EVERYTHING to do with fitting the music the way you do when producing a recording. If I just played "Southern Rock" as an example then perhaps I could get by with just an overdrive. But I don't. Depending upon the gig and the artists I work with, I might hear places in songs where an echo should happen, or perhaps a low-volume overdriven rhythm part followed by a clean, compressed Knopfler-esqe solo, etc. I need immediate ways of getting different sounds at different volume levels in the mix.

A good pedalboard lets you follow what your ear tells you. And critically, a volume pedal (NOT the guitar volume control) allows you to place any sound in the proper dynamic context.

My rig: CS-3 Compressor -> CE-2 Chorus -> OD-2 Overdrive -> ProCo RAT -> Ernie Ball Volume -> DD-3 (slapback) -> DD-3 (long delay) -> '65 Deluxe Reverb

In this rig, the guitar volume control is only used to affect the signal level driving the compression/distortion, and so is more of a tonal control. The Ernie Ball is my "mix control".

That's why so many pedals.

[Donnie55]

Pedals come ans pedals go. Use them when you need to , Leave them at home if ya dont

[hedegaardo1]

Originally Posted by SirJackdeFuzz

I like the all of the RHCP albums untill, and up to "One Hot Minute".

But i still think he sounds generic and almost boring to my ears.
There is nothing about his tone that makes me sit up and pay attention as soon as i hear him play.
I know that is just my oppinion, but i really think his tone is very bland.

This begins to be a bit off topic.. sorry about that :P ... But One Hot Minut was released when Frusciante wasn't in the band.. It's dave Navarro, who's playing the guitar on that album :)

[Donnie55]

After giving it some more thought. Heres how the pedal thing seems for me. I have a Crate VC 30 watt class A. Its been modded pretty hard, all the stuff has been replaced with hi quality parts,, caps , resistors ect. Put JJ`S in the power section and Tung Sol in the preamp. Put an Eminence Tonespotter in it. Its two channles w/verb. When Im using this amp ,I have no need for pedals.For other gigs ( smaller venues ) I have a 1970 Princeton AA964 model same as the Blackface, non reverb model. When I use this amp I do employ a compressor for clean gain and it seems to make the amp a little more forgiving.I also use a Boss Blues driver modded by Keeley for some of my solos. So I guess my take on pedals........I must be gettin old I really had to think about that one,,,,,,,,,lol

[Larry F]

Originally Posted by schenkadere

I agree, it's nuts. Save your pennies and buy the best amp you can.

That's what happened with me. I built a Champ for fun, then tried to improve on it one pedal at a time. Then got a Victoria and put all the pedals away, except for reverb and ZenDrive2. Just got a Ceriatone Dumble clone and put the ZenDrive away.

[11 Gauge]

I still don't get the logic of retiring ALL pedals when the "right amp" is found.

If you want or need delay, compression, phaser, wah, chorus, fuzz, ring modulation, etc., how is a different amp going to provide all of those? What happens if that amp doesn't have trem or reverb? Just subscribe to the notion that, "the amp is so good that I don't even miss it," sort of mentality? For the average guitarist who needs options, that line is such a load of horse pucky that I'm tired of hearing it.

What happens if/when the right amp isn't right any more? Are you going to go on an Easter egg hunt until you find another one that does, or "limp along" with pedals in the interim?

A lot of these responses are still along the lines of subjective tastes, or that pedals aren't generally needed for certain types of music. Basically, they are, "few, if any pedals are needed," types of responses.

I see this as no different than if someone went into the recording studio and remarked on the vast number of mic pre's, compressors, rack units, software plug in's, number of channels, or any other sort of perception of excess options and gear for recording. It would be easy to have such a perception if you play stuff that doesn't require comprehensive production. But since the inverse is a predictable commonplace scenario, that would explain all of the gear. Pedals are really no different.

[Charles Obscure]

Originally Posted by hannigan

Pedals are fun!!!!
And I like fun.

I couldn't have said it better!
I built some BYOC pedals to replace a few I sold years ago. A phaser, tremolo, and a couple fuzzes (Fuzz Face and Tone Bender clones). Fun to build and fun to play with. In the spirit of fun, I asked a friend to paint them any way he wanted, and he covered them with a bunch of his cartoon characters!
FUN!

[krauser2]

Originally Posted by Tonemonkey

K2

For the last time...........hold on a minute.....we agree?

I do run two very different amps though......

PS, I like tutti frutti - one Ice Cream, many different flavours.......like the pedalboard of Ice Creams.

Im fond of vanilla, and moose tracks myself

but sometimes I'll sneak in some cookie dough if I'm feeln squirrely

I'm actually looking at getting a SDG amp or a fender DDRI for my base tone. Then pedals will do the rest as in drives and boosts.

[morroben]

Yeah...and why did Van Gogh use all those colors? A real artist would've just done them in black and white. He should have just saved his pennies and bought the best black paint and white canvas he could afford and been happy with it.

[Nub]

I think it's funny that you never see pedal guys starting threads raggin' on folks who don't use pedals...

[11 Gauge]

I think the whole "less gear = better/more authentic/etc. guitarist" trend is way past it's shelf life. It's time to move on IMO, but that would mean replacing this trend with another equally poor one (maybe even worse). And trends are just a pendulum swing, anyways. In the 80's, it was about maximum gear.

You'll always have luddites (especially if they're following the doctrine of a certain music genre almost chapter and verse), but it's tiresome to hear the same old banter from them.

I think that the pedal using crowd doesn't rag on non-users because it's a subjective thing. I certainly wouldn't go on a Mesa forum and tell them that Rectos are overrated, or bland, or whatever, and tell them that they should buy the best Marshall or Fender that they could.

Some folks just like to pee in this pool, from time to time, whether they are aware that they're even doing it, or not.

[fadingcaptain]

It is amazing what is available through the internet these days - all you have to do is go on Youtube and there's a lot to sort through. Given that, like any other thing you see people getting in to, it can get over the top in the quest for sounds and tones. Since the advent of the internet sale of pedals, no longer do I have to settle for BOSS or some other large name manufacturer.
But yeah, I keep it simple, and scratch my head at the larger pedal boards.
Me:
Vox Wah > MI Audio Blues Pro OD > MXR Carbon Copy Delay