What would you put on an "intro to FX pedals" board for your kid?

newi123

Most teenage boys are into Muffs of some sort I`ve heard........... 

pintspiller

Does his amp have two channels? Would lessen need for OD pedal.

Phaser or chorus?

PolarityMan

TimmyO said:

If he wanted it he could have the Helix - I don't use it 

I may not have been being entirely serious.....youd prob need a laptop to reroute the midi cc 

ICBM

meltedbuzzbox said:

A zoom 505 because I am mean

I keep meaning to get another of those. You can get good sounds out of them if you work at it - the key is to start from a completely clean sound and add only a little of anything - especially distortion, most of the best sounds are with the gain at 1 or 2... out of 30 .

Probably not that useful a learning exercise really though, it’s just so different from most modern multi-FX.

Strangefan

What a waste of money, leave the lad to see what he wants himself  you really don't know what he wants  , or just give him the helix you have "in the back of a cupboard" 

TimmyO

Strangefan said:

What a waste of money, leave the lad to see what he wants himself  you really don't know what he wants  , or just give him the helix you have "in the back of a cupboard" 

Jog on chuckles 

newi123

TBH the most important pedal for anyone learning is a tuner. Never play an out of tune guitar - it`ll help no end to develop his ear. 

After that OD / distortion and maybe delay. That`s all you need to cover a vast array of famous artist artist sounds from the last 40 years. Or at least get close enough to play along with.

BTW - as you know I`m still on a pedaltrain nano - sometime move upto a nano+, but I`m usually a little embarrassed to take such a large board to gigs. :-)

Strangefan

TimmyO said:

Strangefan said:

What a waste of money, leave the lad to see what he wants himself  you really don't know what he wants  , or just give him the helix you have "in the back of a cupboard" 

Jog on chuckles 

Naaa I'll stick around, I want to see how happy your lad is with effects bought for him by proxy, and that he hasn't had a say in.

prlgmnr

fuckin hell, you'd think he was being sent off to join the army against his will

no, wait....the navy

TimmyO

Quite! :-) 

This is a pretty chilled affair - it hasn't really occurred to him to dabble in effects - has been happy thus far flitting between the channels on the Katana - but I thought if I could stick a basic board in his room with say an overdrive, a more hard clipping distortion, and one or 2 fun things that it might be fun and interesting for him. 

If not, no harm and no foul, and I thought I'd see if there were any neat suggestions from the gang here that I wouldn't have thought of (which there are - I think a looper is a fab idea, among others) 

As for it being a "waste of money" - here's the thing - I love him and his brother more than I could ever hope to express - and now and then "wasting" some money on them in ways that I think will make them happy makes ME happy. Go figure.  And anyway very few among us NEED these things - money wasting is all relative at this point ;-) 

@Clecko I may take you up on that next time I see you - I don't own a chorus or a "distortion" (mostly polite blues pedals here ha)  - ta. 

TimmyO

newi123 said:

TBH the most important pedal for anyone learning is a tuner. Never play an out of tune guitar - it`ll help no end to develop his ear. 

After that OD / distortion and maybe delay. That`s all you need to cover a vast array of famous artist artist sounds from the last 40 years. Or at least get close enough to play along with.

BTW - as you know I`m still on a pedaltrain nano - sometime move upto a nano+, but I`m usually a little embarrassed to take such a large board to gigs. :-)

yeah I might have mentioned once before that seeing you gig locally with like 3 pedals brought me up short once a few years back - I was running a massive thing at the time and getting less out of it musically ha. 

ICBM

I really think that if you've got a Helix lying around you should just give him that. There's far more to try out on it than any number of pedals can possibly give him, and (although I've never tried one) I'd guess that a teenager will make short work of learning how to use it. If it really is a problem then something like the ME-50 has dozens of effects - 22 different types of distortion alone - and is no harder to use than a pedal. Why limit it to just a few basic sounds from physical pedals?

DrJazzTap

Wah wah pedal!! I still use the same Wah pedal my father bought for me 25 years ago, it's the one pedal I've never sold. And even though it's only a USA Vox I would be mortified if it got nicked.

57Deluxe

Tuner

mikeyrob73

Just built a fairly cheap board as a present for my lad 

see here 
https://imgur.com/gallery/WfkGMRH

Wah has been replaced but that’s pretty much it

octaver/ od/ American dream / chorus / phaser / delay / looper