Don't you just feel like packing it all in after the 100th gear related disappointment?

Strangefan

You're all mad just get a multi fx,  

professorben

Strangefan said:

You're all mad just get a multi fx,  

This, to an extent, I do feel we are victims of our own cork sniffery, when I started playing (early 90's) I only had the choice of a few hundred different overdrives and modulation pedals......

I run a MultiFx for Delays,Verbs and modulation, with a valve preamp for my clean and dirty tones, I might stuff a pedal or two in the front of it if I feel like it occasionally, I've never had a better tone than now, but every piece of gear I've had in 25 years of playing has been a learning curve, either positive or negative, I've always sounded like me, but with each improvement in gear I sound more like me. 

frictionfraction

UnclePsychosis said:

My opinion (and it wont be popular) is that most guitarists have way too much gear, or at least try and use too much gear a at once. 

I see bands and for the absolute vast majority of the time the the tones they have are basically 

1. Clean/crunch
2. More
3. Lots
4. Delay 
5. Phasey wobbly goodness 

That's it. Then you look at their pedalboards and realise they've got about 25 pedals to deal with. That lot could be done with two gain pedals, one or two delays, one or two modulation pedals. 

Obviously there are guys who actually use loads of effects and need all the pedals, fair enough. But loads of guys seem to be carting around ludicrously convoluted boards when they don't need to. 

By all means buy, own, and use lots of different pedals - but I bet the majority of us don't need to have them all on the board at once. 

Agreed ,  took me years to realise this (bit thick - I know). Now use amp and pedal board with tuner,  crunch, more crunch, boost and delay.  
Also my Live set up is totally different to recording, playing at home, etc set ups.  It's a mid focussed, cut through simple set up. 

Strangefan

Same here @professorben I started on the mid 90s on a encore strat kustom sound tranny and a rocktek overdrive, which did me till I bought a Dean lol,  now after many many guitars but  only a handfull of fx (mainly multis) and amps I can honesyly  say I sound  great and live sound exactly how I should,  only using  a jap jackson handful of pedals and a hh performer, I put this down to concentrating on technique feel and making my gear work for me,  im in no way saying tone chasing isn't fun, I'm just saying tone is not bought.  

http://i.imgur.com/q9dXoBi.jpg

Gassage

UnclePsychosis said:

My opinion (and it wont be popular) is that most guitarists have way too much gear, or at least try and use too much gear a at once. 

I see bands and for the absolute vast majority of the time the the tones they have are basically 

1. Clean/crunch
2. More
3. Lots
4. Delay 
5. Phasey wobbly goodness 

That's it. Then you look at their pedalboards and realise they've got about 25 pedals to deal with. That lot could be done with two gain pedals, one or two delays, one or two modulation pedals. 

Obviously there are guys who actually use loads of effects and need all the pedals, fair enough. But loads of guys seem to be carting around ludicrously convoluted boards when they don't need to. 

By all means buy, own, and use lots of different pedals - but I bet the majority of us don't need to have them all on the board at once. 

I can do all of that with one dirt pedal.

(and my rack...)

Sassafras

@Strangefan what's that pedalboard you're using? Looks interesting.

Strangefan

Sassafras said:

@Strangefan what's that pedalboard you're using? Looks interesting.



It's a replica of the hover board from back to the Future two lol

Bridgehouse

Strangefan said:

Sassafras said:

@Strangefan what's that pedalboard you're using? Looks interesting.



It's a replica of the hover board from back to the Future two lol

Want.

Strangefan

http://i.imgur.com/ftuCA8g.jpg

lukedlb

Nine months later and much has been jettisoned including the G2. 4 sounds required. I even discovered that reverb is NOT an always on pedal; messed big time with fuzz and drive. Gone were the Kingsley and effectrode of this world and replaced by a cali76 and a boost. 
The last piece of the puzzle is finding a qmx4 or similar to divide those 4 sounds and reduce tone loss. 
Anyone else feel better now?
and those bad pickups turned out incredible; the heights just needed adjusting. 

Jonathanthomas83

Simpler the better is usually the key, glad you got there in the end. 

I know its a different kettle of fish, but the Axe FX made me realise that the hunt for the perfect tone I was after wasn’t as difficult as I was trying to make it. Turns out most amps (models in my case) would get me there and minimal pedals too.