Played today with no pedals

I did a gig recently, and went "commando" - armed only with a tele and pathfinder 15R - it is good to do this once in a while - it gets you out of your element and you are forced to think a bit differently. good stuff. Volume, reverb and vibrato.... just like back in the day...

good for you though. What is there to not like?

 

That's crazy talk!

 

Haha +1

 

Well...is commando really reverb and trem?

 

I go back and forth. Love the straight tone but I will really miss the left side of my FD-2 and I do like my echo, tremolo, and Tuner pedal. I have a bunch of other pedals but they are mostly window dressing.

 

If your amp has it, why not use it? The older "modern" tube amps incorporated those effects, so why not? Seems OK to me....

BUT - does that mean my uber-over-accessorized SS amp with a Kajillion tweakable on board effects and floorboard is going commando?

The jury do be out on 'dat, yo......

Here come the judge.....

 

I like pedals, but I do get a better clean sound from plugging straight into the amp. It depends on the band and the gig, I suppose.

 

Insane!

 

I feel pretty much the same way. Being the singer in the band sometimes makes it hard for me to do my effects tapdance in the middle of a song- sometimes I just enjoy the no-hassle simplicity of playing straight into the amp. But on the other hand the pedals add a lot to the band's sound, even if using them comes at the price of losing total focus on singing/playing.

 

I love plugging straight into my tweeds, but when I'm playing a show, I always use my tuner and volume pedal. I could get by without the volume pedal, but it does help me out quite a bit. When I used a DRRI, I would have never thought about gigging without reverb, trem, and a drive pedal. I feel like playing without pedals makes me a better player because I have to utilize pick attack techniques and guitar knobs. Love it!

 

Agreed, but I've never liked stepping on pedals during my vocals. I do, however, roll the guitar knobs during vocals. I think it's much easier and less distracting.