Reverb's here to stay - The Chain Gang #11

A very nice effect on this particular pedal - I have to post it before I forget.

Tweaked like this the "Snake Bite" gives me reverb that never goes away - similar to a delay with high feedback / repeat settings.

The notes you play keep on sounding and you can play over them but unlike said delays or loopers, with the reverb pedal you get a more eerie, ambient sound.
It's less controllable but at the same time less predictable.

A warped wall of sound through reverb - full of lovely sonic surprises.

Organ Experiments - The Chain Gang #10

Well, there's the "Tube Rotosphere" out there and it is no longer in production.
Reading about it led me to a funny experiement:

Let's take a tube overdrive (Hughes & Kettner "Tube Factor") and two chorus pedals and try to set up a Leslie emulation.

So, from left to right:

• Volume pedal to conrtol the attack of my guitar, the amount of drive from the Tube Factor and to do some volume swells.
• Tube Factor with channel 2 engaged for a bit of overdrive.
• The EHX stereo pulsar to split the signal and to give some tremolo effect.
• The "Super Chorus" with an EQ pedal for the low frequencies.
• The "Ultra Chorus" and a EQ pedal for the high frequencies.
• The "Time Core" stereo delay for a bit of room adding to the parallel chorus effects.

From there you could go to a stereo preamp or a two channel recording interface or even two separate amps. Even one guitar amp and one bass amp would be worth a try, I think.

For me it was an idea to try out, let me know about your results, if you ever tried something similar.

There's also a more practical application for the two chorus pedals I came across during this experiment:

The overdrive pedal, combined with the chorus pedals, this time in series.

Switching on the "Ultra Chorus" adds a sweet harmonic overtone to my guitar signal.

Adding the "Super Chorus" creates some additional space and ambient room for single notes.

Just keep the depth knob dialed down almost all the way to "mask" the chorus worble.

Le Faux Leslie - The Chain Gang #9

No Hammond or Leslie within my reach so a makeshift will have to do.

Of course it's not the real thing but it's good enough to inspire my playing.

The "Highway Man" is ment to simulate the tube drive of the Leslie cabinet, it also allows me to cut highs and boost the bass to my liking.

The "Super Chorus" gives various warbles and worbles.

The "Pulsar" tremolo simulates the volume changes of the rotating speakers inside the Leslie cabinet.

Everything is set to pretty fast, there is no way to simulate the slow setting on the Leslie with this set up.

I use my B.C. Rich Mockingbird on the bridge pickup.

With the volume almost all the way back clean chords sound quite nice to my ear.

I turn up the volume or switch to the middle position when I want more drive out of the Highwayman.

Delayed Delay Delayed - The Chain Gang #8

Stacking delays has gotten fashionable, this is just my idea of a starting point.
Thes two delays go from 25ms - 600 ms, which is quite enough for the application I use here.

The "Time Space" is set between 450 and 550 ms, a delay time that works as a basic setting for most common song tempos or for trying out ideas with a bit of nice ambience added to the guitar sound.
I like the feedback so that two repeats are clearly heard befor the effect dies off.
This pedal on its own works behind the sound so to speak, giving your chords more volume and fills the space between single notes.

The "Blue Ocean" is set to a matching sub division of the longer delay with fewer repeats.
When both delays are engaged, the delay is kind of multiplied - like switching from quarter note  to 16th note repeats.

Depending on the correlation of the delay intervals there are some nice rhythmic variations to have.

Two Overdrives for Clean Tone - The Chain Gang #7

The clean tone of the Crate Palomino can be a bit bass heavy and the highs of the cheap tube amp are piercing my eras in certain situations.
The amp's EQ can only do so much, but with this two overdrive pedals in front, I am able to enhance the clean sound and tailor it to my liking.

The guitar's volume is dialed back a bit which filters out some of the highs already.
I use the neck pickup for single notes and the middle position for strumming chords.

The signal then goes into the "Orange Burst", a medium overdrive / booster.
The volume of the pedal is almost all the way up, gain is turned down completely.

The "Pure Sky" is a low gain overdrive which is set up with the gain all the way down and the volume is set to unity level when both pedals are on, compared to the pure signal of amp and guitar.

Both pedals provide a treble and bass knob to reign in the harsh highs and booming lows.
So two overdrives provide quite an effective way to eq the guitar signal before it meets my amp.

There are a multiple of ways to achieve the same goal, you could of course use a dedicated EQ pedal, some sort of booster or filter and every combination will yield different tonal results.
This variant worked for me, so I post it before it vanishes into the obscurity of my fleeting mind.