Back in January I started talking to you about the wonders of guitar effects pedals, and how they can be used to enhance your sound. I also mentioned to you about a specific goal I had in mind for some pedalboard reorganisation. Well I tried it…. and it kinda failed, so I’m going to explain a bit about what happened, why it happened, and what I’m going to try next. Writing about this reminded me of one of the unerring truths about playing live that even the most experienced players sometimes forget, and I’m going to share that with you too.
Here's the problem...
Firstly I’d better briefly explain the problem. Alabama Stills, our band has been a four piece, drums, bass, lead guitar, and me, playing rhythm guitar and a spot of mandolin. There’s singing too, before you think we’re some kind of ‘Country Shadows’, but that’s not really important today.
The first problem I have with any pedalboard setup in either The Stills or indeed my other band is that it needs to accommodate an electric guitar, an acoustic guitar and the mandolin. On the face of it, each instrument might appear reasonably similar, but each requires different amplification and effects to reach their potential. The pedals I need to achieve those goals vary, and take up a bit of real estate on a pedal board before I even get to real ‘effects’ which colour my instrument tones. Most pedalboard setups are optimised for one specific type of instrument, let alone three, and the venues I play don’t necessarily have the room for me to cart in bucket loads of gear. I’m therefore usually on the lookout for elegant solutions that don’t take up too much space.
This has always been an issue though, and it’s not a new problem for me. The problem now is that our lead guitarist needs to take a break, and we don’t really want to replace him per se. He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother….. We have a brilliant dept. who helps us out when he can, but basically, we’re shrinking the band to a three piece. That means in order to try and maintain the level of, shall we say, ‘sonic interest’ the band is known for, both my pedals and I need to work harder to make more sound in the right places
I resolved to try and do this by basically splitting my guitar signal into two separate channels, each having a different set of effects in them, and panning those effects left and right. So I decided to run common effects to both sides up to a point, split the signal and push my guitar sounds to one side, and my organ and mellotron sounds to the other.
I’m not going to run you through exactly what each pedal does towards that ultimate goal, but suffice to say the mellotron and organ pedals generate ‘non-guitar’ sounds, the acoustic overdrive makes my acoustic guitar sound more like an electric, and pedals like the flashback delay make your sound bigger, by adding repeats, echoes and the like. Perhaps I’ll give you a better run down of some of the more interesting ones another time, or you can google them yourself.
This is where it starts to go wrong...
Anyway, this new pedalboard has had three outings in the last two weeks, and none of the times has it actually fully fulfilled the brief. The first time I’d say was purely a matter of personal opinion, I didn’t get the settings right, it was a bit of an experiment. Despite trying the configuration at a rehearsal, no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. And by ‘enemy’ I mean ‘audience’ (ha! only joking!!)
The second time, one of the leads running to the PA system failed, leaving me with a very dull sounding guitar tone and just the organ and mellotron options, and no sound at all out of one speaker. I remedied the lopsided nature of the sound by centralising the panning, but half the effects on the pedalboard were lost to me. I was mid-gig. I know it was a dodgy lead now, but the fault could have been any number of issues. Funnily enough though the fact that I had another lead already running to the PA already saved the gig from having to stop whilst I troubleshot. That’s a small tick for reliability I suppose.
The third time, at a club with a small, in house PA system, I only had one channel available to me to use on the house mixer, and hence half my effects were once again lost to me. At least this time they were the extra effects, not my core guitar tone, but still, the board did not fulfil its full potential.
So, what’s to be done?
I don’t think the basis of my plan is essentially wrong, but clearly, my signal chain, (that’s the order in which my guitar signal flows through the pedals to the PA system) needs work. It seems to be a little too susceptible to letting me down if conditions are ‘less than optimal’. Things are always going to break, and leads are going to fail, no matter how well you look after them, but you can make a certain degree of preparation for such failures. I think maybe the tightrope I set myself was perhaps a little thin for my size tens.
I’m therefore going to rewire my board with more of my core guitar functions running through both outputs, that way if one lead does fail mid gig, I’m still likely to be better off. It’s also time for some new leads. All my guitar leads are about the same age, if one’s given up the ghost, others may follow. Sometimes broken leads are repairable obviously, which is good, but also with gigging, reliability is king.
Advice for anyone...
You may think that, if you don’t use a pedalboard that none of what I’ve said holds any relevance to a non gigging guitarist. I’d argue you’re wrong. There’s a parallel lesson here for everyone who ventures out to play, even if it’s only to a guitar club or to jam with friends, and that lesson is ‘spares’. Take spare strings, leads, a whole instrument in some cases if you can, because sooner or later, something will break or fail at the least opportune moment to spoil your fun. Other useful spare include plectrums, 9v batteries for preamps, and a capo. Obviously if you need a screwdriver, allen key or pliers to replace strings or access battery compartments, you need those too.
There is an argument for simplicity in my case. Fewer cables, connections and bits of gear means less to go wrong, making problems easier to diagnose. I still have a dream though of simultaneously sounding like an orchestra, church organ and one and a half guitarists at the same time though. I once referred to pedals like a paint palette. My experimentation with colour isn’t over yet, but I do need to wash my brushes out before next time. I'll let you know how that goes in due course. Cheers
Record Time
As I've been generally talking about breaking things, this seems appropriate. It's also one of the tracks we jam at blues club.
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