At home I almost never use any pedals, but plug straight into the amp or play acoustically instead. However, in a live situation it's always nice to have something at hand to colour your tone with. Not that I necessarily had to use a lot of fx pedals during a normal gig, it's still nice to know that I can if I feel like it. And you just never know when you really need to get that wah wah + phaser + vibe + tremolo + delay sound for the next chorus... let the tap dance begin!
My current gigging pedalboard (Pedaltrain Pro HC) consists of the following pedals: RMC Picture Wah - Retro-Sonic Compressor - Legendary Tones Time Machine Boost - Fulltone OCD - Ibanez OD-850 - MI Audio Neo Fuzz - Sweet Sound Mojo Vibe - Retro-Sonic Phaser - Cusack Tap-a-Whirl Tremolo - Ernie Ball Volume Pedal Jr. - TC Electronic ND-1 Nova Delay - Xotic Effects RC Booster. The signal flows through the pedals in the beforementioned order: last four pedals (tremolo, volume, delay and RC Booster) are placed in the effects loop of my Bogner Duende amplifier. There's an A/B switcher between the volume pedal and the tuner: this way I can also tune my acoustic guitar with the same tuner. The tuner (Peterson Strobo Stomp 2) also features a DI box, which is a very nice feature: this way I won't have to bring a separate DI box for the acoustic.
All cables in the signal path are George L's (.155 guitar cable and right angle solderless connectors) except for the effects loop cables, which are Cordial Road Line high end instrument cables with golden connectors. The cable from guitars to the pedalboard as well as the cable between the pedalboard and the amp's front end are thicker .255 George L's. The XLR cable coming from the Tuner/DI box is a Neutrik+Cordial. The signal cables, XLR cable and Bogner Duende's footswitch cable are neatly fitted inside a cable shrink wrap tube which makes them comfortable to transport and connect/disconnect while gigging.
All my pedals are powered with a T.Rex Fuel Tank power supply, which is mounted underneath the pedalboard with cable ties, thus not wasting precious space. Currently all my pedals run on 9V DC voltage except for the TC Electronic Nova Delay, which needs 12V DC. The Neo Fuzz actually gets its juice from the Fuel Tank's 12V AC output - the AC is converted to 9V DC with a wonderful little handmade rectifying-filtering-regulating gadget (thanks Zeeboo!). Why all this hassle? Because fuzz pedals with germanium transistors internally use negative voltage and thus cannot share their ground connection with other pedals. All the 9V outputs in the Fuel Tank share the same ground so I had to come up with a way to isolate the Neo Fuzz from all the other 9V pedals connected to the Fuel Tank. Of course I could've used batteries (and I actually did for some time), but I'm not that good at remembering to disconnect the cable from the pedal's input every time I stop playing... luckily now I won't have to!
The tuner is a Peterson VS-S2 Strobo Stomp 2. It also serves as a DI box for my acoustic guitar. The three-button footswitch controls my current main gigging amp's (Bogner Duende) channels and tremolo.
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