If you come into my studio for private lessons, you will notice I have a pedal board that I use during class. I started with a small custom pedal-board that I built from Birch plywood. I had an rc-3 Loop Pedal, and a tube screamer style Overdrive. This allowed me to record a loop, and then play over the loop. In popular music, the guitar tone used for solos is often distorted. I couldn’t use the distortion on my amp because it would make the loop that plays the rhythm part distorted too. This was great to start, but pretty soon I had people who wanted to play a wider variety of styles. Classic Rock, Metal, Blues, Death Metal, Thrash, Country, Jam Band, and Jazz Fusion. It seems people want help learning a wide variety of styles, and if I could mimic the tone it really helps them to see that we are playing the song properly. I remember when I first started teaching, I was the classical guitar teacher at a music school on the east side. I had a student ask me about a Metallica song, and I started playing it on my classical guitar. He was a new player, and wasn’t able to recognize that I was playing the song note-for-note because the tone of the instrument was very different than what he was used to. The percussive attack, and decay would also be dramatically different. The next week i brought in my electric guitar, and practice amp to demonstrate the song for him. His eyes lit up. He seemed amazed that I could play Classical Guitar & Metallica. It really demonstrated the impotence of being able to simulate the tone of the guitar for new players. Experience players recognize the notes regardless of the tone, but its really important for beginners.
I gradually added a couple more pedals to allow for some variety in my distorted tones. I added a MT 2 style pedal to get aggressive death metal & Heavy Metal tones. This Cheap MT2 clone is an amazing value: https://amzn.to/2Oyoa4O
Then I upgraded my overdrive to OCD pedal. https://amzn.to/31BHqDJ This has really great Tube Screamer style tones that mimic the Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughn, David Gilmour Type Sounds.
I had a Soul Food Pedal which is a Very Clean Boost type Pedal, but it adds some color to the sound in a good way. This is still the first pedal I recommend for new players that don’t want to spend a lot of money on pedals. https://amzn.to/36ZQG5K
I loved the Soul Food, but I played through a J Rockett Archer, and even though it is three times the price of Soulfood, it was the sound that I was chasing. If you have Deep Pockets buy the Archer : https://amzn.to/388qNCi
I have The Tumnus https://amzn.to/39pMwpB on my Gig Pedal Board, and they sound extremely close in sound. I think I might like the Archer a little more. The Tumnus is a little smaller, and my gig pedalboard is packed. So, I’m sticking with the Tumnus.
I liked the Archer a lot!!! I checked out some other J Rockett Designs, and found The Dude was perfect for gain staging pedals. The Dude is designed to mimic the Dumble Overdrive Special that was made popular by Stevie Ray Vaughn, John Mayer, Henery Kaiser, Robben Ford, etc… The Dude https://amzn.to/31Dpmcr
I like to create ambient loops to force people to improvise is unexpected ways. The Line 6 DL4 is my secret weapon. https://amzn.to/31vrWRC
I mounted all these pedals on the Pedaltrain Classic. Spend a little extra and get the road-case. You will thank me later. The case makes it easy to store, and protects your expensive pedals. https://amzn.to/2S2TL0K
I power all the pedals with MXR Brick https://amzn.to/31vAKXM
I’m not a huge fan of teh MXR Brick. If it fails. I will replace it with Tretone 1 spot pro https://amzn.to/2Oykb8o
The One Spot Pro doesn’t seem to include cables to power the pedals. So you will need these https://amzn.to/2OzUUup
I use these really amazing EBS low profile cables to connect the pedals.
You will need a few of these.
7″ for two pedals next to one another https://amzn.to/2vXDGkj
if you have larger cables EBS 12″ Cable https://amzn.to/2Us6USF
to connect pedals from top level of pedal-board to lower level EBS 22″ Cable https://amzn.to/385bOZR
One final note. If you are planning to only buy a few pedals. I would recommend The smaller pedal-board. This Smaller Version https://amzn.to/3bhTGh4
I would buy a power supply with daisy chain https://amzn.to/3bhrFq6
I put all these things into a list to make it easy to put together your pedal board. Make sure to order multiple patch cables if you have multiple pedals. You will need one short cable for every pedal, and two long cables to plug your guitar into the pedals, and pedals into amp. This link should have all the items in one convenient place. Don’t forget to change quantity of EBS cables to match your pedals. Choose one power supply, and delete the unwanted one. https://amzn.to/2v9TqAo
If you only want a loop pedal and power supply look at this list. https://amzn.to/3bhtXFI
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