Tag Archives: Guitar Effects

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.

Back on the Board: Micro POG

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My new board is still not complete and I’m waiting on a few things before I can assemble it, so in the meantime, I thought I’d start explaining why I have certain pedals on my board and why I’ve switched out others. Sometimes I have really good reasons sometimes I don’t, but I wanted to pass on what I have learned and how I feel personally about some pedals. With that said, this is my personal opinion and you may find something to be completely different. Try it for yourself.

First new pedal on the new board…the EH Micro POG. I had this pedal back when it was still cool to play the big box POGs. I got rid of it once I got a POG2, favoring the presets and cool swell tones I was getting with the POG2. A few weeks passed and I realized I really didn’t get the octave sound I once had in the Micro POG, so I started thinking about running a Micro and a 2 (crazy…I know). It didn’t really make sense to have both, so I went back and forth on what to do. Ultimately, I thought my swells and ambient stuff would be fine without the POG2 and it sounds different now, but the octave stuff helps a lot more in ways too.

Maybe someday later down the road, I’ll go back for the 2 (and I still wish I could run both, just for that sweet swell sound the 2 brings). Until then, I’ll gladly hang onto my Micro POG.

Overdrive: Amps, Pedals and Everything in Between

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There’s been one thing that I’ve noticed about tone over the years. You can play without any delay or reverb pedals. You can play without compression. But you cannot play without good overdrive. I’m sure each of us can think back to our first days, months and years of playing guitar and remember the awful tone. A lot of that came from not knowing enough: What should it sound like? How should it be EQ’ed? Is that too much drive? Too little?

I started as an acoustic player and didn’t have to worry about overdrive. When I switched over to electric, I borrowed a friend’s stuff for the first 6 months or so until graduation when I could afford to buy my own stuff. I had his American Fat Strat, a small Orange solid state amp, a Line 6 DM4 (that’s the distortion modeler that you rarely see used) and a DL4 (that was the only thing that was mine…same one I have now still). The Orange could get decent tone for a small solid state amp (of course, I’m saying that not knowing if what I thought was “tone” was really tone). I used that DM4 and had no idea what I was doing. I remember sitting down and trying to figure out what were 4 good sounds I could program in. I found a few but who knows if they sounded good.

Since then, I’ve only progressed in finding a good drive sound. I’ll share what I’ve learned and how to get a good drive sound.

  1. Your amp – Good tone starts first in your amp. A crappy guitar can sound pretty good through a great amp (why do you think Keith Urban still sounded so ridiculous on that song he gave away that cheap guitar on?). Tube amps are where it’s at. They allow for clear, transparent overdrive. Quite honestly, all drive pedals attempt to make overdrive sound the way that it sounds coming from an amp that’s pushed. Different people approach amps differently. Some run their amps super clean, some a little dirt and some a lot. I like to clean mine so that I can get a great clean sound out, and a driven sound when I dig into the strings. If the amp has a master volume, I try to run it pretty loud and just adjust the gain to my taste. A lot of times, you can’t turn it up really loud though (especially in the type of settings a lot of us play in) and that’s where it’s important to have a good drive pedal. If the amp is run TOO low though it starts to sound really saturated, and ultimately sounds thinner (I’ll come back to this in #3). Regardless of how you run your amp, it’s the start of your good drive tone.
  2. The pedal(s) – I’ve learned that good drive isn’t always up to your amp, guitar playing and how you set up the pedal. Sometimes it’s not up to you at all. Sometimes the pedal isn’t a good pedal and therefore causes the drive to sound not as appealing. It’s hard for me to take a Boss Double Death Metal Zone and get a good sound out of it (I think I made that pedal up, but if I didn’t, I have no idea how it really sounds so I don’t mean to offend you!). I’ve never really been through a lot of overdrives, but have played with some and know what sounds good. The great thing about drive pedals is that you can get good ones for cheap, and also spend a lot on them and both sound good. Ultimately all pedals try to sound like a driven amp or like the classic Tube Screamer. Although there are other good pedals, here’s a few that I like a lot and sound great: Boss Blues Driver, Voodoo Lab Sparkle Drive, Fulltone Fulldrive 2, Xotic RC Booster (heard good things about the AC Booster too, but never tried it), Divided by 13 Joyride and, my personal favorite, Paul Cochrane Timmy.
  3. Settings – Having the right pedals and a good amp sound is a big part, but not all of it. You have to dial in good settings on the amp and pedals. I’ve already talked some about the amp drive settings and now I’m going to talk about EQ tone for amps and pedals. There’s not a certain right way to EQ your guitar tone, but it’s important for it to be balanced…not too bright or too dark. The same is true for your pedals. If you dial in more high’s, your guitar will cut through the mix more, which is nice when you’re using a pedal just for leads. But other than that, a balanced sound is pretty good. I’ll typically dial in just a bit more high’s so that it cuts, but without losing the presence from the bass.

    Some drive pedals have a volume and drive/gain knob. It’s important that you don’t set that volume too low or it’ll sound saturated. I used to set my volume based on where I could turn it off and on without being able to tell a big difference in volume between the pedal bypassed and on. I now try to set it around 1 o’clock to stay away from the saturated sound. I hear anywhere between 1-3 o’clock keeps that saturated sound away. Then you use the gain knob to dial in the drive to your taste (depending on how driven the amp is run). The more you turn the gain knob you’ll hear the difference between clean and the pedal sound. Find a balance and tasteful drive (depending on what you need). Some pedals sound great for heavier stuff and some sound better lighter drive. Don’t make the mistake of turning down your amp, only to turn up the gain on your drive pedal to compensate. That’s bad news! Put the volume up to around 1-3 o’clock on the pedal and use the gain/drive as almost like a volume knob to finding the good drive sound.

    It’s good to run a drive pedal with not a huge difference between the bypassed and on volume (especially for the sound guy), but it’s important that it doesn’t start to sound saturated. When dialing in the sounds on the pedals, keep that in mind. I like my drive to make it a little louder, but not so much louder that I can’t hear well once it’s turned off.

I hope this helps some. Drive is big part of tone. If you have any questions, comment away.

Line 6 DL4 Vs. Boss DD-20

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It seems that there is a constant debate over different delay pedals. Although there are a billion delay pedals out there, I wanted to zero down on two popular ones: the Line 6 DL4 and the Boss DD-20 Giga Delay. These are two very different delay pedals, and although I won’t go through all the modes, I’ll be sure to hit on the big differences.

The DL4, or “the fabled green box,” has many different modes: Tube echo, Tape echo, Multi-Head, Sweep echo, Analog echo, Analog with Modulation, Lo Res (low resolution) delay, Digital delay, Digital with Modulation, Rhythmic delays, Stereo delays, Ping Pong, Reverse, Dynamic delay, Auto-Volume echo, and a cool Loop sampler. From this list you can tell that there are some cool noises and delays you can get from the pedal. With three presets and a tap tempo onboard, this is a great pedal for saving settings, or doing something different on the fly. There are 6 knobs including the effect mode selector: delay time (in addition to the tap), repeats, tweak, tweez,  and mix (wet/dry effect). The tweak and tweez knobs do different things for each of different effect modes (you can use the stickers that come with or the manual as a reference for what each does in the different modes) and there is also an expression pedal available for extra control and more features.

The DD-20, or Giga Delay, has many different modes as well: Reverse, Modulate, Smooth, Pan, Dual, Standard (Digital), Analog, Tape, Warp, Twist, and an SOS setting (like the Loop Sampler on the DL4). Comparing this list with the DL4′s list of modes, you can tell that this pedal is more of your standard delay sounds, rather than strange delays that can make some weird noises. But don’t judge this pedal and think it can’t do as much. Along with the effect mode knob, there is an effect level (wet/dry effect), feedback (repeats), and tone knobs. The Giga Delay also has knob that adjusts the delay time, complete with a screen that digitally shows number of BPM’s or msec’s (you can switch between which is shown). With the twin pedals and an additional footswitch you can purchase, you can choose and switch around which one turns the effect on and off, one switches between the presets, and one can be used as a tap tempo between the three. There are 4 presets and a manual setting that is set to whatever it currently dialed in on the knobs. You can choose between whole, half, quarter, eighth, dotted half, dotted quarter, dotted eighth, triplet half, triplet quarter, and triplet eighth note delays. This delay pedal is great for your standard delay sounds, with a few extras.

So these two pedals are very different. While the both can produce some similar sounds, they produce very different delays as well. While you can get standard delay sounds from the DL4 and strange unique delay sounds from the DD-20, the DL4 has more features that aren’t your standard digital delay sounds and the DD-20 has more of your straight up delays.

For me, it’s important to have both. The cool thing about both delays is that you can have both. You can have a preset or two of standard delays and another preset or two of strange delay sounds. The DD-20 has four presets (technically five with the manual setting) versus the three on the DL4. Both have a tap tempo, but the DD-20 also has the BPM setting where you can program in the tempo that you’re running with the click. However, the DL4 has more modes and lots of flexibility with the different delays.

I can’t tell you which one to get because both of their sounds have become almost essential to my playing and tone. If you don’t want all the extra features of either of these pedals, check out their little brothers, the Line 6 Echo Park or the Boss DD-7. The big difference between these and their big brothers is the ability to store presets. With the DL4 at about $250 new and the Giga Delay at about $220, either is a good pick and worth having.

Pedalboard Update

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My pedalboard has changed a significant amount in the past month and will continue to over the coming months I suppose. I wanted to give an update for anyone who cares…I just love talking gear.

I upgraded my Boss DD-5 to a Boss DD-20 Giga Delay. I love this pedal because I can now enter an exact tempo from how many beats per minute the drummer is running with click. I can also now save 4 presets for delays, as opposed to the one preset I had with the DD-5.

I also got a Line 6 MM4 Modulation Modeler stompbox (the big blue one). It has some cool tremolos, phasers, uni-vibes and other modulation effects with 4 preset spots. I’m still working on what sounds I like, but I’ve gotten some cool stuff out of it so far.

Since I got both of these pedals that require a little more juice, my BBE Supa Charger was not going to be able to power all I needed it to at safe voltages. I emailed my friend, Taylor Johnson (guitar player for Shane & Shane, Robbie Seay Band, David Crowder Band, etc…), to see how he powered this combination of pedals, plus more. He told me about the JuiceBox, made by Pedalgear.net. I had heard about them before as Alex and Daniel Carson use them, but I knew these were a little pricey for me. Taylor told me he’d sell me his for a good price, so I bought it. After getting it, the fuse was blown (but RadioShack told me it was fine), so I got to pay a visit to Tony, the owner of the company. He was so helpful and such a nice and great guy. Not only has the JuiceBox worked amazingly well for me with 5 isolated outputs (with 11 jacks), but Tony and the guys at Pedalgear.net were amazing and so helpful in working with me.

Because the JuiceBox could not be mounted under my board like the Supa Charger, I had to remove my volume pedal to make room for the JuiceBox on my board (Chris Coleman was so proud that I took my volume pedal away). I have been really uncomfortable without my volume pedal and haven’t been able to use any of my volume swell tricks as well with the knob on my guitar, so I am sure that I will have to get it back soon. However, I have no more room on my board, and I plan on getting some more pedals too. I love the size of my Pedaltrain 2 Pedalboard, but I simply can’t fit all that I want to on it. So I ordered a Pedaltrain Pro board the other day and plan on trying to fill it up within the coming months.

So here is how my Pedaltrain 2 board will look for the last time before I upgrade to the Pro (the DD-5 is on the board, but not connected or being use):