Pedals and the TFB Jams

darthed1981

Hi All,

I've been thinking of putting together a little mini pedal board for the TFB jams.  Nothing fancy, probably some mini-pedals stuck to a plank of wood, but enough to give a few options.  I've got a little fuzz, compressor and flanger (the latter might not make it as fun as it is) and would need a drive (TS mini) and a tuner, maybe a delay to finish it off?

I was quite impressed by @Modellista s teeny portable board at the last Hudds.

It also occurred given that I've gotten by so far with very little FX, maybe a simple OD and boost like Thorpy's new "The Dane" Pete Honore sig pedal might do the job.  I'm fully aware though I could do a whole board for less than the cost of one of those.

What are everyone else's thoughts? 

munckee

Last time I played clean straight into the amp. This time I am going to take a tubescreamer type thing as it was too clean. I can’t picture needing anything else. 

darthed1981

munckee said:

Last time I played clean straight into the amp. This time I am going to take a tubescreamer type thing as it was too clean. I can’t picture needing anything else. 

I had a similar kinda thought, I've got a Behringer TS copy that could just go in for some extra drive, but also might need a boost for solos (though I did OK with the volume control last time).

meltedbuzzbox

I wouldn't buy stuff for an one off jam. 

munckee

darthed1981 said:

munckee said:

Last time I played clean straight into the amp. This time I am going to take a tubescreamer type thing as it was too clean. I can’t picture needing anything else. 

I had a similar kinda thought, I've got a Behringer TS copy that could just go in for some extra drive, but also might need a boost for solos (though I did OK with the volume control last time).

If you are playing rhythm and lead on the same song I could see maybe you want extra, I was mainly thinking just to keep faffing around down to a minimum  

darthed1981

munckee said:

darthed1981 said:

munckee said:

Last time I played clean straight into the amp. This time I am going to take a tubescreamer type thing as it was too clean. I can’t picture needing anything else. 

I had a similar kinda thought, I've got a Behringer TS copy that could just go in for some extra drive, but also might need a boost for solos (though I did OK with the volume control last time).

If you are playing rhythm and lead on the same song I could see maybe you want extra, I was mainly thinking just to keep faffing around down to a minimum  

Which is important, quite right, or @ttony will beat me up in the corner   That's why I thought a dual OD/Boost pedal might be a good solution, use the drive for, well, drive, and hit the boost for lead.

@meltedbuzzbox also quite right, wouldn't recommend that to anyone, I'm also trying to use the jams to find "my" sound.

djspecialist

If I was going to one of the jams I'd probably bring my regular band board.  Ten pedals would definitely be overkill for that kind of session - but you don't have to use them all, and being already wired up it's plug and play.

meltedbuzzbox

darthed1981 said:

munckee said:

darthed1981 said:

munckee said:

Last time I played clean straight into the amp. This time I am going to take a tubescreamer type thing as it was too clean. I can’t picture needing anything else. 

I had a similar kinda thought, I've got a Behringer TS copy that could just go in for some extra drive, but also might need a boost for solos (though I did OK with the volume control last time).

If you are playing rhythm and lead on the same song I could see maybe you want extra, I was mainly thinking just to keep faffing around down to a minimum  

Which is important, quite right, or @ttony will beat me up in the corner   That's why I thought a dual OD/Boost pedal might be a good solution, use the drive for, well, drive, and hit the boost for lead.

@meltedbuzzbox also quite right, wouldn't recommend that to anyone, I'm also trying to use the jams to find "my" sound.

As a musician I would argue that you would use a sound that compliments the song rather than imposing your sound upon it. 

Playing style nearly always makes it's mark more prominently than a set sound. 

Ymmv and all that

TTony

darthed1981 said:

I'm also trying to use the jams to find "my" sound.

Can you actually achieve that?

The jams are about plugging in and playing  - the focus is on the song and the joint effort to play it.

Surely, to be able to find "your" sound, you'd need to be playing, tweaking some settings, playing some more, tweaking some more, playing some more, ad infinitum.

Now, you can do all of that in one of the separate rooms, no problem at all.

But then you bring your pedal board into the main playing room and the acoustics are different.  The amp that you plug into is probably different.    Even if you could bring the amp too (and we're not changing backlines!), the sound that you've just crafted in the separate room now has to interact with all the other instruments/amps in the room. 

Oh, and then the sound engineer completely changes your sound anyway when they're mixing all the tracks together when they mould the different frequencies so that they fit together, add/subtract a few dbs  to/from this or that track (or even at different parts of a track), hit the compression button, etc, etc.


And what the mic hears is different to what you ears hear anyways ...


That's one of the reasons why I sceptical about people worrying about bringing their own pedal boards with their carefully defined settings.  OK, so for some effects, it's necessary, I accept that.

But for things like varying boost/gain on your part of a song, isn't that what the p'up selector and vol/tone controls for?  Plus the way that you play the different parts - tone is in the fingers!


For full disclosure, I'll also admit that I'm not a massive user of pedals.  All of the 4/5 that I've got spend most of their lives in their boxes.

Discuss ...

darthed1981

TTony said:

Discuss ...

Yes indeed, I'd like to hear others input.

I probably don't mean find "my" sound at the jams, but also bear in mind that with me, as an individual, "my sound" will not be a subtle, Gilmouresque tone with lots of FX.

My sound is probably going to be something more vulgar and extreme.

Basically, a bit like what I got in the room from the Marshalls and 4x12s at Woking, but with something by my feet that goes from "more subtle" to "not at all subtle" for solos...

Snags

I think at the jams the only point of pedals is either for a specific song e.g. tremolo on Boulevard, or if you're doing rhythm with lead bits on less busy songs, when a boost and delay could be handy.

You won't get a 'regular' sound because you're walking in to someone else's amp with someone else's settings, and no time to piss about.

The only time I really felt the lack was on ITGWO where I hadn't been planning on doing a solo, so could have done with drive+delay to cover some of the ropey bits.

I have put together a mini board to.cover that eventuality in future, bit I'm also using it elsewhere when a Novo 32 takes up too much space. So it's not just for the jam.

I've opted for cheap/secondhand kit. Tuner, compressor I already had and won't use much, mini-Tube Screamer, cheapo overdrive (so can use OD for crunch and TS to boost), mini-delay, mini-reverb. Frankly the TS and the delay would really be enough, but I got carried away

Alnico

My GT100 plus a katana is dead quick to set up and everything is pre programmed. 
I can get pretty close to the sound I need for a song even if I want to use a few different effects in one patch and it's one easy box to navigate without taking up too much space. 

LuttiS

I've got a mini board that i generally use, bought it to the last jam, and didn't use it. @TTony was right about it being more of a plug and play type scenario. Most useful bit of thing i had was a clip on tuner. 

But.

On a couple of the songs i did it would have come in very useful to have it there. The main reason i didn't use it was the faff of plugging it in etc, so i'm looking at getting a rechargeable psu (wanted one for a while, this is a great excuse) and potentially a wireless system for guitar to cut down cable pluggings and what not. I'm all about simplicity me

Alnico

 @TTony makes some good points as do a few others.

It's a step too far to ban pedals altogether and I'm not sure I agree with "Tone is in the fingers" however too much faffing around at a Jam causes other problems for everyone.

There's a balance to find here and that's part of a skill set that makes a good jam session player. There's a thousand jam sessions / open mic nights that have some amazing players attend who aren't so amazing at playing in that environment. It's not a gig and no matter how good you are on the strings, you're not there to be a star. The way to be a "Star" is to go with the flow and impress people with how well you fit into that environment and *still* sound good. That's a real skill and not as easy as it sounds.

It's about the ensemble.

Not every song can be achieved by plugging straight into the amp but it *is* a jam and most of the time, we're only trying to approximate a sound so if the board in question is a simple mini board or a multi-fx that's properly set up and ready to go, there's little problem with that providing the person who owns it knows how to set it up quickly and without fuss.

At any regular pub jam, you'd get away with something simple and quick but you'd get a ton of hassle and possibly told to "Get lost" if you cause the general populous on the stage too much hassle or keep the audience waiting too long. It's about consideration for everyone at these events and when we're talking about backline it's very much a case of using what's there. No one will mind 1 or 2 minutes to plug something in and to be fair, most people spend longer than that waffling or incessantly noodling between songs which are WAY more time consuming and counterproductive.

Behind the scenes we're working on a more focused project, geared much more towards getting the *right* sounds and spending lots of time perfecting things with a view to only playing and recording a small number of songs in the day, possibly only one or two songs. So far this project looks promising so if people want to go that route and try something more in-depth, bear with us while we get this together.

That will be the time for massive boards, lots of experimenting with sounds and the in-depth approach to what you play and sound like with multiple takes, multi-track performance, etc.

The point I'll back up wholeheartedly is...

TTony said:

... the focus is on the song and the joint effort to play it.

That in itself is difficult enough to achieve without worrying about tweaking effects or which of your 17 different drive pedals to use.

peteri

TTony said:

darthed1981 said:

I'm also trying to use the jams to find "my" sound.

Can you actually achieve that?

The jams are about plugging in and playing  - the focus is on the song and the joint effort to play it.

Surely, to be able to find "your" sound, you'd need to be playing, tweaking some settings, playing some more, tweaking some more, playing some more, ad infinitum.

Now, you can do all of that in one of the separate rooms, no problem at all.

But then you bring your pedal board into the main playing room and the acoustics are different.  The amp that you plug into is probably different.    Even if you could bring the amp too (and we're not changing backlines!), the sound that you've just crafted in the separate room now has to interact with all the other instruments/amps in the room. 

Oh, and then the sound engineer completely changes your sound anyway when they're mixing all the tracks together when they mould the different frequencies so that they fit together, add/subtract a few dbs  to/from this or that track (or even at different parts of a track), hit the compression button, etc, etc.


And what the mic hears is different to what you ears hear anyways ...


That's one of the reasons why I sceptical about people worrying about bringing their own pedal boards with their carefully defined settings.  OK, so for some effects, it's necessary, I accept that.

But for things like varying boost/gain on your part of a song, isn't that what the p'up selector and vol/tone controls for?  Plus the way that you play the different parts - tone is in the fingers!


For full disclosure, I'll also admit that I'm not a massive user of pedals.  All of the 4/5 that I've got spend most of their lives in their boxes.

Discuss ...

This is something I wouldn't agree with.

I agree we don't want people messing about a lot, but part of the jam is to enjoy the performance and the experience. At the Water Rats jam I did a song with someone who was encouraged to use the p'up selector and volume control and it didn't work (it wasn't his fault), the reasons you cite above come into play.

You're taking someone in a stressful/new situation, getting them to plug into an amp they don't know at all, and in 10/30 seconds set the amp up for their part and guitar, and in such a way that they can get a clean, crunch and lead sound? That's not going to happen - so what will happen is either the gain or volume will be wrong at some part of the song, and that can easily spoil the song not only for the player but also for the whole band.

Additionally, a boost pedal isn't always about making things louder - one of the reason a TS works so well is the mid-hump, so kick it in for a solo, you drive the amp harder and also boost the mids, which makes it stand out more and also changes the harmonics etc - yes if you set the amp for that sound to start with and turn the guitar down you can get close - but only if you know the amp.

I'm all Fractal now, but I used to hire rehearsal rooms quite a bit - so I could turn it up a bit - and the most reliable setup I had was a clean amp, basically all controls on noon - and then everything from a pedal board, the amp just makes things louder and the pedals are things I'm familiar with work for me, and if the amp is clean - I honestly never had to fiddle, it's only when you introduce amp drive things get harder.

One of my great joys in preparing for the Water Rats was working out the sounds, I played a variety of songs and certainly for two of them I could have gone straight into amp, but for two I absolutely couldn't have done.

If I was doing a small pedalboard, I'd have a mini wah, tuner, TS Mini, MXR Phase 95, Angry Charlie, Carbon Copy/Ibanez Mini Delay (or clones of the above) and I reckon you could set up in well under a minute and have everything you'd ever need - consistently and predictably.

Alnico

peteri said:

TTony said:

darthed1981 said:

I'm also trying to use the jams to find "my" sound.

Can you actually achieve that?

The jams are about plugging in and playing  - the focus is on the song and the joint effort to play it.

Surely, to be able to find "your" sound, you'd need to be playing, tweaking some settings, playing some more, tweaking some more, playing some more, ad infinitum.

Now, you can do all of that in one of the separate rooms, no problem at all.

But then you bring your pedal board into the main playing room and the acoustics are different.  The amp that you plug into is probably different.    Even if you could bring the amp too (and we're not changing backlines!), the sound that you've just crafted in the separate room now has to interact with all the other instruments/amps in the room. 

Oh, and then the sound engineer completely changes your sound anyway when they're mixing all the tracks together when they mould the different frequencies so that they fit together, add/subtract a few dbs  to/from this or that track (or even at different parts of a track), hit the compression button, etc, etc.


And what the mic hears is different to what you ears hear anyways ...


That's one of the reasons why I sceptical about people worrying about bringing their own pedal boards with their carefully defined settings.  OK, so for some effects, it's necessary, I accept that.

But for things like varying boost/gain on your part of a song, isn't that what the p'up selector and vol/tone controls for?  Plus the way that you play the different parts - tone is in the fingers!


For full disclosure, I'll also admit that I'm not a massive user of pedals.  All of the 4/5 that I've got spend most of their lives in their boxes.

Discuss ...

This is something I wouldn't agree with.

I agree we don't want people messing about a lot, but part of the jam is to enjoy the performance and the experience. At the Water Rats jam I did a song with someone who was encouraged to use the p'up selector and volume control and it didn't work (it wasn't his fault), the reasons you cite above come into play.

You're taking someone in a stressful/new situation, getting them to plug into an amp they don't know at all, and in 10/30 seconds set the amp up for their part and guitar, and in such a way that they can get a clean, crunch and lead sound? That's not going to happen - so what will happen is either the gain or volume will be wrong at some part of the song, and that can easily spoil the song not only for the player but also for the whole band.

Additionally, a boost pedal isn't always about making things louder - one of the reason a TS works so well is the mid-hump, so kick it in for a solo, you drive the amp harder and also boost the mids, which makes it stand out more and also changes the harmonics etc - yes if you set the amp for that sound to start with and turn the guitar down you can get close - but only if you know the amp.

I'm all Fractal now, but I used to hire rehearsal rooms quite a bit - so I could turn it up a bit - and the most reliable setup I had was a clean amp, basically all controls on noon - and then everything from a pedal board, the amp just makes things louder and the pedals are things I'm familiar with work for me, and if the amp is clean - I honestly never had to fiddle, it's only when you introduce amp drive things get harder.

One of my great joys in preparing for the Water Rats was working out the sounds, I played a variety of songs and certainly for two of them I could have gone straight into amp, but for two I absolutely couldn't have done.

If I was doing a small pedalboard, I'd have a mini wah, tuner, TS Mini, MXR Phase 95, Angry Charlie, Carbon Copy/Ibanez Mini Delay (or clones of the above) and I reckon you could set up in well under a minute and have everything you'd ever need - consistently and predictably.

One of the main points of the jams is to show people what real jam sessions are like. In those situations, you would totally get away with either a fractal (Or other multi-fx) that's all set up and ready to go. That's exactly how I do it with a GT100 and a small-ish board that's also ready to fly won't cause a problem either.

Don't misread this, no one is saying pedals aren't allowed at all.

What's being said here is that too much focus on that detracts from the point of the jam.

I also don't fully agree with relying totally on pickup switch and volume control. Like you, I depend solely on my GT to give me the sounds I need and I spend hours creating patches for it.

As long as the effects you want to use are quick, easy to set up and don't take up half the studio, no one is going to mind.

To address the point you make about being set up in 30 seconds, no one expects that either however if you go to a pub jam session and try taking more than 2 minutes setting up, you won't be popular no matter how good a player you are or how good your effects sound.

A major part of these jams is to bring some real-world feel to what we do and although it's not all about that, the main focus of these jams has always been to show people who've never done this before or who have limited experience, what the real world jam sessions in pubs are like.

Please don't forget that when we started all this last year, the very first suggestion (from me) was to take ALL of this to a real Jam session in pubs and throw everyone in at the deep end. It was from that discussion that we realised that was too brutal for a lot of people and we couldn't focus the whole event around *just* those with enough experience to do that.

These jams *try* to cater for all involved and in that, we need to consider everyone - you and I included with our multi-effects. I'll reiterate that point, I approach this the same way you do and like you, I only need 2 minutes to set up my effects.

What we're trying to avoid is too much time being taken up by tweaking in the room, on the day and detracting from the ethos of the jam whilst also trying to maintain a real-world feel.

If we structure the jams with too much focus on tweaking and allow the essence of the event to escape and then one of our Jammers goes out to a pub jam full of confidence, only to find himself cut to pieces by the band and the audience because he wants to set things up his way, we've done that guy (or girl) a disservice.

All along we've encouraged people to set up their own spin-off jams and in that way, you could theoretically spend all the time you like swapping amps and boards.

Does that help make it a bit more clear?

darthed1981

See this is all going the direction I sort of expected, and it isn't quite what I was getting at!

The answer to my original question I've gotten seems to be "sure bring a few pedals but don't screw around, or everyone will get all pissed off" which I wouldn't have done anyway so cool I guess... I haven't got a single cork sniffing bone in my body, which probably won't surprise anyone!

If anyone wants to chip in with which pedals, and what to look out for, I'd appreciate that as well

I think I want...

A tuner

Two OD/Boost type pedals, one of which would be a TS mini.

A delay or reverb, or a mini pedal that does a couple of these kind of things

My fuzz and compressor what I've got anyhow.

All on a little bit of ply covered in duck tape, with a daisy chain PSU.

Thoughts...?

I started this thread for others benefit as well, a lot of jam newbies will have pedals and boards and wonder what to bring.

Also you have all made me think of this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZoDUuAqV60

Alnico

In the course of the thread, other points have been raised and addressed.

I don't think anyone has ignored your question, Ed if anything I've tried to allay peoples worries about bringing effects.

If all you've got is "Stop screwing around" I think you've missed the points that were made.

I also don't think anyone thought you would "Screw around".

Your idea for a mini board sounds great and most of what I've replied with was to make sure that had some kind of voice (no pun intended).

Snags

@darthed1981 don't use a daisy chain PSU, you risk introducing noise if some of the pedals don't play well together, and then @Sasquatch_Bob (or whoever depending on the jam) will pop out and say "Er, there's noise there" and you'll have to rip your board up quickly and possibly lose the one effect you were hoping to use on that track because it's the offending unit.

Someone (ahem) at Hudd had this issue, because they lashed up a small board with what they had available. Rendered the whole exercise pointless

For what it's worth, the rig I've gone for is:

- Mooer mini-tuner:  so far seems fine, nice and clear display, appears accurate compared to my TU-2
- Ibanez TS-mini: lovely, simple, just works
- Mooer Blues Mood mini overdrive: it's "OK" and will do the job, but I'm not massively impressed. Could see me swapping it out for something a bit better in time as it very shows its price point. But ... when I used it for reals rather than in the house, it actually sounded pretty good. So, jury's out.
- Ibanez Analog mini-delay: for fiddling at home it seems a bit limited. In a real world situation, it turned out to be bang on. Have half an eye out for a TC electronric flashback mini as an alternative
- TC Electronic HOF mini: very nice, but you'll lose hours playing with the toneprint software trying to get just what you want!

All of that is on a Pedaltrain Nano+ powered by a Cioks DC5.  The latter rather changed the costings for the project (half the pedals were secondhand), but not getting a decent PSU just renders the whole exercise pointless, I decided.

Setup time is plugging in the mains and two jack leads.

If pushed I could ditch the HOF and the Blues Mood and roll with just the rest, frankly.

darthed1981

Alnico said:

In the course of the thread, other points have been raised and addressed.

I don't think anyone has ignored your question, Ed if anything I've tried to allay peoples worries about bringing effects.

If all you've got is "Stop screwing around" I think you've missed the points that were made.

I also don't think anyone thought you would "Screw around".

Your idea for a mini board sounds great and most of what I've replied with was to make sure that had some kind of voice (no pun intended).

Sorry, was all a bit more than it comes across on a re-read!

There are a lot of jams in the pipeline and if the "pedal philosophy" stuff is had out in here that's all to the good

Alnico

I personally think the Mini pedal format is great for this, especially as each pedal is slightly simplified over its larger relative.

Between Mooer and Ibanez there's a lot available and it's very simple in operation too.

I have seen some of the larger-footed players end up with problems switching in a hurry by placing them right next to each other. Mick from TPS highlighted that one for me when he tried it and he ended up using his foot sideways to get around it. I think he built a Moeer board using their own dedicated product and then found out about the space issue.

They all sound excellent from what I've heard.