What's Your Essential Pedals?

[Neptical]

As I run a few different amps ex: Marshall heads with cabs, Fender combos and Boogies with cabs, I keep my essential pedals (mostly OD/Dist) all on the same board. It's easier than running a few different boards - plus after lots of experimenting, these pedals run FANTASTIC with each other.

1.) Boss SD-1
2.) Wampler Tumnus
3.) RAT II
4.) TC Spark Mini
5.) ISP Decimator
6.) MXR 10 Band EQ (fx loop pending amp)

Of course I have my tuner (obv) and my modulation above on my second tier. But the OD/Dist listed above is what gets me all the fantastic tones on any of my amps, so they're my essentials. The Boss SD-1 is the always on secret sauce.

What's YOUR essential pedals?

 

[BFcaster]

Really the only essential pedal I have is my NUX Atlantic reverb- delay in one pedal. Overdrives are to taste for me, but usually my BD-2 gets stomped upon regularly. I find my Nocturne Jr Barnyard preamp adds nice seasoning (for old-school amp Gretsch/PAF Gibson sounds) but isn't necessarily essential. Still trying to find out if my first tubescreamer (clone) is even a keeper or not!

 

[northernguitar]

Nice gear. I run two amps; a VOX Night Train 15h G2 and an Orange Rocker 15 Terror. I also run an enormoboard, don’t care what’s fashionable. If I had to narrow it down to bare bones, I’d want the following:

-Digitech Bad Monkey Overdrive
-Dallas Rangemaster treble booster clone
-BYOC ‘Leeds’ Superfuzz clone
-BYOC EA Tremolo clone
-MXR M300 Reverb
-Ibanez GE10 EQ Pedal

But f-it. Life is too short, gimme my board!

 

[Neptical]

@northernguitar Beautiful board! Lots of great pedals there - I could definitely work with that. For what kind of styles do you play?

 

[Chiogtr4x]

Boring, yet perfect Boss ( all 20+ years old) for me:

Tuner> Blues Driver> Chorus Ensemble ( fake Leslie setting) or Tremolo (just one on board)> DD-3 Delay

- I will stack a Biyang Rat clone with ( always ON Blues Driver) when I want harder distortion ( for '70's hard rock we.may do occasionally) than what I get with BD-2 ( at 1/3- 1/2 Gain ) alone...

 

[MilwMark]

Boring, yet perfect Boss ( all 20+ years old) for me:

Tuner> Blues Driver> Chorus Ensemble ( fake Leslie setting) or Tremolo (just one on board)> DD-3 Delay

- I will stack a Biyang Rat clone with ( always ON Blues Driver) when I want harder distortion ( for '70's hard rock we.may do occasionally) that what I get with BD-2 ( at 1/3- 1/2 Gain ) alone...

Almost the same here.

Tuner -> CE-2 (fake Leslie setting) -> SD1 -> DD3

 

[Telecaster88]

I play clean, so my essentials are Dyna Comp Deluxe, MXR Chorus, Carbon Copy Deluxe. If you twisted my arm I would be forced to add a Boss TR-2 and Topanga.

 

[northernguitar]

@northernguitar Beautiful board! Lots of great pedals there - I could definitely work with that. For what kind of styles do you play?

Thanks, I feel pretty good about it all. I’m in a trio and we play a mix of Garage Rock, Pop-Punk, Alternative, New Wave, Classic Rock. Everything done gritty.

 

[kuch]

Still experimenting but here's what I have now:
Catalinbreak Topanga burnside Reverb
Boss BD-2
Keeley 30ms
Keeley Compressor plus

The only pedal I had for years was the BD-2. I usually play clean but I've been trying new things.

 

[johnnylaw]

Polytune Mini for gigs.
Dirt, delay, and verb frequently come along for paid gigs, but they’re not essential.
I play straight into an amp frequently so that I stay keen on lean and mean.

 

[dlew919]

The essentials...

Tuner - wah - Boss BD-2 - TC Dimension Chorus - Boss DD-7 delay.

There are others I like, but that's the minimum requirement...

 

[RetroTeleRod]

These…
Blues Driver for boost
Rat for overdrive
Little Big Muff for fuzz
Boss Phase Shifter
MXR Carbon Copy
Boss RV-3 Reverb/Delay
Pulsar Tremolo
Boss RV-6 Reverb

 

[KC]

Essential? I can get by with a Tchula and a reverb, if the amp doesn't have reverb. Clip-on tuner. Volume knob.

Real board is tuner -> Cali76 -> Timmy -> Flint -> Hermida echo. Small but mighty. I can get a sound out of almost any amp with this rig.

OR: El Pescadoro (dirt and verb in one box). Great sounding box.

 

[4pickupguy]

We are doing a few prog tunes and lately reverb, delay and my Fuzz Face are doing the heavy lifting. The rotary (leslie) sound is getting more use of late as well. Basically I use everything on my board with the exception of Blue Note, I could lose that one and be fine.

 

[wrathfuldeity]

Despite a bunch of other pedals on the board, the minimal pedals are:
JDM Vindicator...od/dist/fuzz>
Seymour Duncan PU Booster powered with a Dead Bat >
EHX LPB-2ube first tube to frame/tube buffer the rest of the board>
VFE Klein Bottle parallel mixer for each channel for VFE Old School trem, Tech 21 RVB verb, VFE Blueprint delay>
EHX LPB-2ube second tube to end the frame/tube buffer>
Tube amp

 

[Killing Floor]

They’re all essential. But I have a few favorites I use on a small board including a Durham Sex Drive, a Browne Protein, a Demedash T120 delay, a W&C Caprid custom, and a Red Panda Context. If I need more compression the Sex Drive gets substituted with an Origin Stacked Cali76. I have a skajillion other pedals and a secondary board with a lot of cool midi stuff but normally wouldn’t gig with that. If I need to play low volume as in a small space I’ll put a Sushi Box tube preamp in front of the board.

 

[Tele-friend]

My essentials would be this 5 pedals

Booster/overdrives:
Boss BD-2
Boss SD-1
TC Spark

Delay:
TC Flashback II

Wah:
Dunlop Crybaby

But I also use these...

Fuzz:
MXR 108
Analogman BC183

Distortion:
Boss DS-2

 

[tomasz]

Just those really:
- Tech21 Oxford
- T-Rex Alberta
- any warm sounding delay

 

[Maguchi]

As I run a few different amps ex: Marshall heads with cabs, Fender combos and Boogies with cabs, I keep my essential pedals (mostly OD/Dist) all on the same board. It's easier than running a few different boards - plus after lots of experimenting, these pedals run FANTASTIC with each other.

1.) Boss SD-1
2.) Wampler Tumnus
3.) RAT II
4.) TC Spark Mini
5.) ISP Decimator
6.) MXR 10 Band EQ (fx loop pending amp)

Of course I have my tuner (obv) and my modulation above on my second tier. But the OD/Dist listed above is what gets me all the fantastic tones on any of my amps, so they're my essentials. The Boss SD-1 is the always on secret sauce.

What's YOUR essential pedals?

Ibañez AD-9 Analog Delay
EHX Small Stone Phase Shifter
Boss AW-3 Dynamic Wah
Boss CE-2 Chorus (original MiJ non WAZA)
Boss GE-7 Equalizer
Vox 847 Wah

I use the amp for dirt, drive and crunch, don't got no pedals for that.

 

[Weazel]

Boss FV-50 VP - with a Hardwire HT6 poly tuner from the always on output
Behringer CS400 (Boss CS3-clone)
Blackstar LT Boost
Behringer TO800 (TS-clone)
Behringer UC200 (Boss CH 1/CH 2-clone
NUX Roctary (Rotary/octave)
TC electronic Choka tremolo
TC electronic The Prophet digital delay

(and an optional EHX Switchblade+ for those occasional two amp setups)

All currently mounted to a Palmer 60 board with a Joyo PS

All of this is totally affordable stuff which does what it is supposed to do, and then some.

I have had way more expencive stuff over the years, but then one day, I woke up and realized:
I do not care about hype, myths and the odour of corks anymore.

I care about what I want to hear, not what I want to see.