I’ve been on the road almost every weekend for the past couple of months with Chris Orr and have started doing a few new things when I’m playing live and wanted to share (I feel like it’s “Show and Tell Day” at school).

This is my pedalboard live setup with Orr these days. It’s the same pedalboard listed in the Gear section of nathanwright.org, with the exception of the pedals off the board to the right. Because Chris Orr Band is playing without a keyboardist I’ve started using the Boss RC-20XL to loop some pads and other patches. I’ll make a pad in Reason and record it into the Loop Station and use the volume pedal to control the volume and fade it in and out and then send it to a direct box to the house. I have pads saved in almost every key we play in, as well as some organ type sounds and other looped synth patches. This really fills out the sound and makes transitions smoother. I’ll even play some clean delayed partial chords on top of it or make more pad sounds from my guitar and play some different notes on top to give it some more variation. For information on this, check out this post.

I’ve also started running stereo amps live to fill out the sound a lot more. I’ll use my Dr. Z Maz 18 Jr. and my Vox AC15TB (British made). I re-routed my pedalboard making the DD-20 and everything behind it capable for stereo effects (even though I only use a few at this point). I’m not a professional at running stereo amps and I’m still learning a lot, but I set mine up so that both amps can give me a similiar sound, but the Z has more mid/low end naturally, so I take advantage of that, as well as the nice chimey highs that come from the Vox. Other than that, they’re ran about the same, but I’ll also typically use a Sennheiser 609 on the Z to pull that low/mid out a little more and a Shure SM57 to pull in the highs a little better on the Vox. It’s given me a really fuller sound and allowed me to make some really cool sounds when using the stereo effects and the amps are panned in the house.

Just wanted to share a few things I’m learning and some things I’m doing differently…please feel free to share any experiences you’ve had with either one of these things, as well as anything else you may be learning or working on and generate some discussion.