GUITAR
HOW COMPLICATED SHOULD A PEDALBOARD BE ? | Chris Rocha
Throughout the years of touring , I ’ ve seen all kinds of pedalboards . The mini-compact version and the mega-spaceship version that attracts everyone ’ s attention . I once saw a pedalboard setup that was so insane and impressive , I was sure I was gonna hear the best tone of my life , but it wasn ’ t that at all . It was a very small sound that came out of the board cause the signal had to travel through so many pedals that by the time it hit the amp it was so degraded . My current pedal board is pretty compact ; I ’ ve done a big-board but it wore me out with all the traveling so downsizing was a must for me . In this article Jonathan Diaz and I go into detail on how we recommend you build your pedalboard .
In the age of an abundance of guitar pedals , we can get carried away with how big or small a pedalboard should be , what pedals we should have , what ’ s necessary and what isn ’ t and what brands we should have . Over the last few years I have made many pedalboard builds , both small and large and everything in between . I have had up to 22 pedals on my largest build , and 2 pedals on my smallest , and along the process I ’ ve learned many lessons about what is and isn ’ t necessary for any context . And now I have set up a few questions and parameters that help me make the right choices for the perfect build .
HOW MANY GAIN STAGES DO I NEED ? When I made my first pedalboard build , I had two distortion pedals . The Fulltone OCD , and the Wampler Sovereign . And they are amazing pedals and did the job well , but I didn ’ t know how to set them up , I would dime the gain knob and wonder why everything sounded so loud and fuzzy when I would stack them . After some time , I added a Klon style pedal and dialed back the gain and it helped a lot but I still didn ’ t have the sound that was in my head . Eventually with my biggest pedal board build I had up to 6 different gain pedals and would only really use two or three at a time . On my current build I have three , and only still use two sometimes . The answer to the question is … know your setlist . In most modern church setlists the overdrive doesn ’ t get too crazy , I usually like to have two overdrives . One low transparent drive , and one medium gain distortion , then if a solo is needed I would just stack them together for a solo sound . Some guitarists ( including me ) like to have a third , heavy drive option to have a slightly different color and texture and have more stacking options , but it ’ s not entirely necessary . There are also some friends of mine that will just buy one heavy overdrive pedal and use their volume knob to achieve all three sounds .
DELAY AND REVERB Delay and reverb in our modern church context seems to be more and more necessary to our church tones . Many people tend to take care of both of these by obtaining pedals that have many different delay or reverb options . When I built my first board , I started with a TC Electronics Arena which I believe might have just been a re-case of their Hall of Fame . And I would combine it with the amps reverb to get different textures . And from the very beginning I knew I needed different delays , so I used a Line 6 DL4 to have different presets . And over the years I have kept the same or a similar mentality . I have kept using a multi effects delay , and 2 reverbs . But it is not really necessary . Over the last few years , I also made a small pedal board , that eventually went on to become my main pedal board . On this board I used one reverb and one delay , and quickly realized that even though it didn ’ t seem like I had as many options , I really had the same amount . I didn ’ t have to work as hard to think of what effects to turn off or on , I was free to play more and think creatively .
For example , the delay that I first used on the