Never mind headroom, talk about
overhead cost. One lives in hope.
Reverbs and
Processors:
Penthouse
Placement
Picking up where we left off in the
previous section, I will detail a practice I
have discussed before: penthouse
placement. Basically, if I am using an
effects loop-equipped amp, of which I
particularly like the drive sound, I will run
a rack unit or one or two post-preamp
pedals sitting atop the amp. This frees up
pedalboard space, minimizes cable mess
and stops me from tap dancing when I am
trying to play and sing. One of my
favorite current rigs is a tuner, boost, fuzz
and analog delay on the board out front
and an Eventide H9 connected with short
cables in the loop sitting right next to my
amp head. The H9 is almost always on
and preprogrammed to the set with
custom ‘verbs, delays, trems and ADT
28
TONE TALK //
effects. It processes the board on the
floor beautifully. It also acts as a bailout in
case my board loses power or a cable
breaks mid-set. I can get by with the core
effect on the H9 for each song and it
even has a tuner. If I am feeling like a
minimalist, I will actually Velcro my
Strymon El Capistan or Keeley 30ms ADT
to the top of my head, patch them into
the effects loop and act like they are setit-and-forget-it built in amp effects. They
both love effects loops and have delay,
random pitch modulation and reverb on
offer—my staple effects diet. If postpreamp effects are coming from a rack—
such as my trusty old analog-sounding
Alesis Midiverb II—it has to sit up top
anyway. Reverbs are fine for this, because
they are typically static throughout a
track and most units have a switchable
bypass option. However, for the fearless
sonic adventurer, go ahead and run those
verbs into the front end of a distorted
amp. It might just blow your mind, just
ask Kevin Shields.
Effects Routing 101: Pre and Post Processing