Category Archives: Guitar Gear

Powering Your Pedals

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I remember when I got my first pedal. It was the same Boss TU-2 tuner that I have today. I really only played acoustic guitar then (see this post for more about that). I used a battery for it. Then I got a Line 6 DL4 (again…the same one I have today) and needed to power it so I got the power supply. When I finally started playing electric, I bought a Fulldrive 2 off eBay to go with my tuner and DL4. I suddenly needed a little more to power my pedals and wasn’t really sure what to do.

Powering your pedals is a big deal. The way you power them can determine how you sound and your tone…and if your pedals will fry or not.  You spend money on your pedals to sound good, but if you’re not powering them right, you run the risk of them not sounding good. I’m by no means a pro when it comes to electricity or powering pedals, but I’ll share what I’ve learned.

First of all, there are a few things that matter a lot when powering pedals. First of all, is AC or DC power. Most pedals will use DC, but some require an AC adaptor (Whammy and the M9 are the only ones I’ve had to use this on I believe).

The next big thing is voltage. Different pedals require different voltages to power the pedal. The most common you’ll see is 9V or 12V, but you’ll occasionally run into some other stuff. If you don’t give a pedal the right amount of voltage or too much, it will either not turn on or fry the pedal. Check the box/manual/sticker on the pedal or online to make sure you’re giving it the right voltage.

The second big thing is milliamps. Some pedals require more milliamps than others and if you don’t fulfill this it can really bite you. For example, when I first got a Micro POG pedal, I supplied it with 9V but only at 100mA when it requires 200mA. It worked fine almost always, but occasionally something to pop and it would start squealing through my amp uncontrollably (of course, right in the middle of an intense, worshipful moment too)! When I realized what the problem was, I was able to fix it but it was a big deal.

Another thing is the tip connector for the pedal. I believe most pedals require a standard polarity tip negative/barrel positive jacks, but some require a tip positive/barrel negative jack on the pedal.

Honestly, if you use the power supply that comes with each pedal, these aren’t issues you need to think about. But if you the power supply that comes with each pedal, then you’ll have a huge power strip on your board taking up a ton of space!

There are a few options for powering pedals. Here they are:

  • Standard Power Supply – You can use each pedal’s own power supply it comes with and plug them all into a power strip. This will work and sound alright, but it’s not really neat and will be hard to travel with.
  • Daisy Chain – When I first made my board, I used a daisy chain. You power your tuner or another pedal that has an input power jack and an output jack. You can plug in a daisy chain cable in the output to power other pedals off the power your first pedal is getting. This is a cheap and easy option, but can create a lot of noise in your chain and you can also run into problems powering pedals with different power requirements.
  • Multiple Pedal Power Supply – With one of these, you send power to the base unit and use multiple outputs to send to the pedals using connector power cables. This has kind of become the standard of good tone. There are multiple kinds of units you can use for this. I use Voodoo Labs power supplies, but I’ve used a PedalGear.net Juicebox. There are plenty of other kinds that are great. The tricky thing with these is making sure that you’re getting AC or DC power, the right voltage and the right milliamps.

My advice is to get one of these multiple pedal power supplies, but take certain measures to make sure you’re giving the right voltage and milliamps for each pedal. With some of these newer pedals like the Eventide and Strymon stuff, powering them is more difficult, but most power supplies are coming out with stuff that can handle these. I know this is the more expensive option for powering pedals, but it’s worth spending the money to make sure your pedals sound right.

Swells and Ambient Noises

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I love making ambient noises and swells in a worship set where it’s needed. Where it’s needed is probably the key phrase in that last sentence. I think it’s important to know when to stop playing. Dynamics are big and you don’t always have to play! Sometimes it should just be acoustic or keys. Or acoustic and keys. Or just drums. Or drums and bass and so on. However, sometimes it adds a little something to play some ambient stuff. Or maybe you don’t have a keys player and need to pad a little.

I made this video a few years ago about a neat and easy way for a guitar player to run some good sounding pads while playing, but I’m going to talk about swells and ambient stuff on the guitar more now. You could go buy all the same gear I have or run the pedals the same way, but that’s not being true to yourself and it’s not the only way (and definitely not the best way) to do it. So this post is not going to be about settings and certain pedals, but how to get swells and ambient stuff in general.

When doing swells, the biggest parts are being able to swell the volume smoothly and having the note or notes carry over while you swell in the next note. Volume pedals are obviously the easiest way to swell, but you can definitely use a volume knob with a lot of practice. Be sensitive to the volume so that you don’t overpower who is speaking or praying over it. I typically turn off drives, but will sometimes have a little boost on if needed.

From an effects standpoint, it’s important that you get a long tail on that note or notes that you play. Most of the time, you may want a few delays on for this. I find that an analog delay with a long repeat and some modulation gets a great swell sound. I use my Memory Man for this, but I really like the Echo Park sounds as well. I also have a great analog setting on the DD-20 that has a long repeat I’ll use with the Memory Man. If you put the feedback or repeat up right before it gets crazy and doesn’t stop repeating, that typically sounds pretty good. There’s also this cool reverse setting on the DD-5 you can use where you put the effect in just a little, repeats pretty long and the time can fluctuate.

I typically will also have some reverb on there. I stick to the modulation setting on the RV-5. You don’t want it repeating forever so that all your notes get muddy, but you want it to transition smoothly between the notes, without any dead space. I also occasionally like to add some octaves (not too crazy but helps with a fuller and sometimes organ sound), or a slow tremolo with not too much depth. If you use a wah pedal, you can also sweep the frequency and it sounds pretty cool, but that’s obviously very hard to do while use the volume pedal too. Which brings me to my next point…

I really hope someday, some company makes a swell pedal. All it needs to do is swell…and be small…and cheap. The Line 6 DL4 has an awesome auto-volume delay patch that makes an amazing pad sound when you dial it in right and combine it with some other effects. What this does is eliminate the need for swelling the volume pedal or knob and it swells automatically. The thing you have to watch out for with this is how it can be sort of choppy and the transitions between chords and notes aren’t smooth. When I had my POG2, I had a preset that did a swell setting really well too, but it didn’t have any tail at all. I honestly liked the POG2 more for ambient stuff and swells than for octaves. There was another setting on that pedal that would keep my dry signal coming through but add a shimmery octave and verbed out sound behind it. All this to say, if you have something swelling for you, it makes it easier to use the wah pedal like I mentioned earlier…and it’s not as much for you to have to do. I’m sure there are lots of great patches in many other units as well. Feel free to share those in a comment on this post.

But you don’t have to have these pedals to play ambient stuff. One trick for doing some ambient stuff is to turn on a few delays and/or a reverb and turn the tone knob back all the way until it’s really dark sounding. You can pick through some partial chords and let the feedback carry it to make some ambient stuff. The DD-5 reverse setting does well with this for me. Try switching the pickups some too…that always seems to give a different, but nice sound.

I’m not pro at this and my ways and tips aren’t the best or the only way to do it, but I hope this helps spring you to discover some new things and share them back here.

Pedalboard Update: Fall 2011

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I’ve been thinking about changing a few things around on my board for the past few months. I was going to just swap out a pedal or two, but things were too tight to swap, so I had to wait to do a makeover. In the next few days, I’ll be posting about how I plan out a pedalboard, but in the meantime, I wanted to post the board and what I’m doing with what.

Here’s the chain:

  • [JHS Little Black Buffer - this will be first in the chain, but I ran out of power cables to power it, so I'm going to wait to put it on there until I get another cable]
  • EB Jr. Volume – still put pre-drive to control gain…I’m using this a lot more now. It’s nice to be able to pull back gain so easily
  • Budda Wah
  • This1sMyne True Bypass Looper – everything in the rest of the chain goes through this and has stereo outputs at the end
  • Diamond Compressor
  • Micro POG
  • RC Booster – currently using this for EQ and anything else needed…it pretty much always stays on, but will probably change once the Little Black Buffer gets put in the chain
  • Timmy – main drive for everything
  • Joyride – used for kicking everything up a bit and also used as a light drive
  • DD-5 – my favorite digital delay pedal
  • DD-20 – decided to use this over the DL-4 as it’s a little more versatile and you can dial in the BPM
  • DD-5 – kept another one of these on the board to use for different settings
  • Echo Park
  • RV-5
  • Empress Tremolo – I swapped this out for my Tap-A-Whirl…I love the sound and the gain knob on it that allows it to be heard better than the TAW.
I’m still using the Juicebox and Pedal Power 2+ to power it and Lava Cables. I’ve also got one FS-5U and a mini tap (that I got with some pedal I bought in the past, though I’m not sure who made it…maybe Dan at This1sMyne…?) for the Boss delays.

I’ve also updated My Gear Page to show these new updates.

The Strymon Timeline

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As you know from this post, my gear really hasn’t changed much since last fall. The most change I think I’ve seen has come from little things, like choosing to play my Tele for the whole set at a church yesterday.

However, I’ve been “surfing the web” some lately (how was that ever a cool phrase?!) and have come across some pretty cool stuff. I’m going to try to post some of the products I’ve found that seem like they’re pretty cool and see if anyone of you guys have had any experience with them.

The first up is this new pedal from Strymon called the Timeline. Anyone using it? I’ve heard it’s kind of like the Damage Control Timeline, but I’ve got to be honest…I know what the DC Timeline looks like, but couldn’t tell you why it’s so appealing or what all it could do. So comparing them to each other, doesn’t really do me a lot of good. I’ve watched some videos online and it looks pretty awesome to me. Like a Timefactor + a DL-4 or something. The thing that always got me with the Timefactor was that it had too many options for me. It became too hard to dial in a basic dotted eighth delay while a DD-5 or DD-20 was so easy and sounded better to me. And the Timefactor was harder to get a weirder sounding delay out of it (like an analog, tube echo or swell delay like I use my DL-4 for).

So with all that being said, this Timeline looks like it’s the real deal. What do y’all think? Have y’all had any experience with it yet?

[PS...this video is kind of a little weird, but it shows you what it can do all around. Check out some other videos on YouTube to see more from the Timeline]