There are other options out there and I
have a few others that I will expound upon later, but I want to stick to my
current rig and its attributes, good or bad, for use in worship. This time around, I’ll go through about the
first half of the pedal board and discuss the second half or so next time.
The first thing my signal sees is the
Barber Electronics Tone Press. Someone
once told me, the best way to use compression is to use as little as
possible. It can be like a strong spice
at times and overtake the natural sound of the rest of your rig. I have the Tone Press set to boost the signal
strength from my single coil guitars just enough that I don’t need to change
amp settings drastically when switching between humbucker and single coil
guitars. I took the setting that they
listed in their manual called “Magic Dust for Single Coils” and modified just
slightly for my needs. The volume knob
is set at about 1:00 on the dial, Blend is set for about 11:00 and the Sustain
control is set close 12:00 (all settings reference a relationship to a clock). The Tone Press is a very smooth sounding
compressor that does not seem to muddy up the sound of a guitar like many
compressors that I have tried.
From the Tone Press, I have been using
three different pedals to provide different level of overdrive and / or
distortion.
The first pedal in line is the Rockett
Designs Blue Note OD. This pedal has a
very smooth tone in my opinion. The
sound is very transparent in that it does not drastically change the natural
sound of your guitar and amp. It really
just smooth gain and volume boost as you dial it in from the controls. They do include a FAT control which does
filter in some low mids to add a little girth to your overall tone. The HOT switch boosts the gain, volume and
adds a touch to the low mids as well. I
love this pedal with most of my guitars, but it especially goes well with
Strats, Teles and lower output, less aggressive humbuckers. It even does well with my high output
DiMarzio equipped guitars, but it does require a little adjustment to the tone
and FAT knobs in my opinion between the two.
The second pedal in my overdrive section
is a Wampler Dual Fusion. The Dual
Fusion is actually set up as two pedals in one housing. Based on two of their existing pedals the
Euphoria Overdrive and the Paisley Drive, it is designed to be used with either
channel singly or with both channels cascaded together. There are several options available to set up
how the pedal runs in stacked or cascaded modes. I am using it in conjunction with a bypass
loop switch that I describe later and this allows me to choose each channel
independently and with both loops engaged, it runs channel one into channel
two. Channel one is labeled Vintage. This is probably my favorite of the two
channels. I use it set with the Smooth /
Fat switch in the Smooth position and it produces a nice crunch tone for rhythm
playing that is not grainy sounding and tends to clean up a little with a
lighter touch. Channel two is labeled
Modern. This channel is very smooth
almost like the Blue Note overdrive listed above. I use it with the Throaty / Natural switch in
the Natural position and it has a nice boosted lead tone that actually takes a
healthy dose of the gain knob to get it to break up much. This pedal has been great with my humbucker
equipped guitars, especially. It takes
to single coils very well, also.
The third and last pedal in this section
is the Wampler SLOstortion. This one is
just plain fun. If you like your high
gain with a little ’80’s flavor, this is the pedal. It was designed to be very much like the
Soldano SLO-100 in sound, but keep it more manageable in both price and
volume. Being a huge Soldano fan, I
really like this pedal. It gives me a
nice high gain amp sound through any of my amps and it’s different from the
typical Mesa Boogie Triple Rec sound that everyone seems to have these days. To me it’s more organic, while still being
preamp drive distortion the Soldano sound to me tends to bridge the gap between
the crunchy, singing vintage Marshall and the all out Triple Rec rage. I don’t tend to use this one much in worship
services as I think it can be somewhat over the top, but it is great for hard
rock and metal covers or just about anything where you would want that massive
high gain overdrive.
All of these pedals are mounted a
Pedaltrain pedal board frame with a hardshell case. As alluded to above, all of these pedals are
routed into a One Control Iguana Tail loop switcher. This allows me to keep the switches along the
front of my pedal board where it is easier to make changes without accidentally
bumping a knob reaching over a pedal to engage a pedal. It also has 9 volt outputs to supply power to
all of the pedals (no fussing with batteries) which can be powered by a Visual
Sound One Spot as well as a dedicated output to run the guitar signal to a
tuner. The other loops are muted when
the tuner switch is engaged. The main
output of this goes to the front of my amplifier through a Dunlop Volume X
pedal that I will cover in a later post.
Remember, our responsibility as electric
guitarists is to serve the song and create a setting that helps our congregations
become engaged with the word of God as it is being presented in the songs. While it is fun to grab the volume and gain
knobs and crank them up (and it is FUN!), it is not always appropriate. Worship is more about our lifestyle, than it
is about the music. God is glorified
more when we are serving and loving others than when we cater to ourselves.
God Bless,
D.K. Sears
Guitarist / Technical Advisor – Landmark Baptist Worship (www.lbcohio.com)
Founder / Lead Designer / Tone Consultant – Crucible Guitar Works
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