What pedal(s) do you own that has inspired the most musical creativity ideas?

Couldn't agree more. It's the pedal that has saved me $100's over the years on delays/reverbs. Every time I think about buying a reverb or delay pedal, I'm reminded that the Zoom can do anything that pedal can do and then some. Dotted 8th note an any delay? Yep. Simultaneously tap tempo for 3-4 delay pedals? Yep. Analog, digital, reverse, lofi, tape, slapback, multihead? Yep.

 

I'm a man of simple needs.

 

Wampler Terraform. I have no idea why more people don’t own this modulation machine.

 

VFE Klein Bottle...any 3 ingredients or more, mix to your desired satisfaction, adjust to taste and voilà ... stew, witch's brew, ambient pancakes, frosting with sprinkles and etc.

 

Looper. The ability to lay down a riff and jam over it is a lot of fun. This is after years of using no pedals at all. I usually plug right in for the natural tube od and add a bit of reverb and that's it.

 

A good delay pedal will open up many interesting and, creative sounds.

 

Strymon Flint. The ambient reverb creates a wash of sound to solo over. Previously I used a TC Electronics T2, which is more flexible but overall not as good at doing what I want

 

Looper all the way

 

Sometimes late at night I sit in a dimly lit room and get really, really creative. The Earthquaker Afterneath and/or Danelectro Back Talk are perfect for this.

 

EHX Superego Plus

 

I dont own them anymore but a line 6 dl4 and digitech whammy pedal seemed to put me out there in the creative ether.

 

Tremolo for me. I've had an EHX Wiggler for years, and it has some cool features other than tremolo, but has gotten so noisy, I have been reluctant to use it, and I have a couple songs that it's a major component of. I've been lusting for a Strymon Flint, and the noisy Wiggler drove me to it. It arrived very quickly after ordering, and I've had one chance to mess with it and it happened to be in full band setting (socially distanced, natch) and it was amazing and silent with regard to noise. I'll probably play it for a few weeks and do a review if anybody is interested.

 

Neo MiniVent. No knobs to mess with, and I love the Leslie-like sound.

 

It feels like cheating, but Zoom G1FOUR multi-effects. Drum patterns, synced looper, headphones, I'll see you in 45 minutes of E Mixolydian.

 

I like to think about the music of places



so, definitely this

 

AdrenaLinn 2. Absolutely everything sounds musical through it, but nothing like any other pedal. The built in drum box is incredibly useful too. I first heard about these in an interview with Steve Rothery from Marillion and knew I had to have one.

 

None of my gear has really inspired much in the way of creativity, because the creative parts tend to happen in the absence of most of them.

They are just tools to realize something, at least for me.

Possibly the singular exception was using a scratchbuilt Jordan Bosstone-like fuzz that I had modified, because it got faux horn sounds. Because of that, there was a brief period when I was trying to come up with horn-like riffs. Ultimately, it was short-lived, because I ended up trying to ape horn or horn-ish riffs from existing songs, like Ring of Fire or Low Rider. So no creativity required, and I (literally) had my hands full simply trying to alter my technique as needed (very soft pick attack, very specific vibrato, only single notes)...

...I played trumpet briefly as a kid, so you'd think that might have helped. Since the mechanical means to produce similar sounds was different, it didn't help at all.

One thing I can say - I'd used a Roland guitar synth in a music store once, and did spend some time twiddling around with horn patches. I didn't care for that at all (I might as well have been playing a Roland keyboard, IMO). OTOH, there was 'something simply musical' with the faux horn sounds from the modified fuzz. It's this sort of vocal quality, and the right harmonics and frequencies being reproduced, or at least IMO it is in terms of what a lot of guitarists would probably find to be appealing.

Edited to add - I've been listening to a lot of Miles Davis lately. I should try to follow along with my faux horn fuzz. Maybe I'll be inspired to do my own Miles'ish tangent, with it ultimately not sounding much like anything Miles actually did. I could actually imagine a much more accomplished musician building their own signature sound and compositions in a method like this. Allan Holdsworth and Oz Noy come to mind.

 

My most recent trip was on a Roger Mayer Voodoo-Vibe.

 

Earthquaker Afterneath for me. I am looking for a simple Auto Swell to go with it, like a less expensive Slow Gear, but now I am using the volume knob to make swells with this pedal on and I never tried things like that before this pedal.

 

Looper.