Pedalboard

For the longest time I avoided pedals like the plague.  I fancied myself some sort of "purist" in that the only pedal I would use was a tuner.  Back in the eighties I used a Boss stereo chorus guitar pedal and an old Big Muff Pi perhaps entertaining delusions of grandeur ala Cliff Burton.  Then I went through a period of only playing through a head and a cabinet and no pedals up until about four years ago.

My best friend and I were in a band and he was (is) a total gear head.  Not to the extent that he was at the cutting edge of every new faze but he did keep up with the newest stuff.  When he moved from a Boss ME-80 to a Line 6 he graciously bestowed the ME-80 upon me to fiddle with.  For me, having limited experience with pedals, it was a steep learning curve and in retrospect it was a wasted gift. I ended up giving it back to him and reverted back to the "no pedals" policy.

A little over a year ago I got caught up in the pedal craze with the release of the Zoom B3n and found myself the owner of such a pedal.  This one was more intuitive for me and since it was specifically designed for bass it made sense to me.  I spent hours exploring the patches and amp models.  It opened the gates for creativity.  I loved it but live I just could not make it work.  It did not cut through the mix.  Disappointed I returned to the drawing board and to the straight head and cabinet setup.

I spent a lot of time considering what I wanted to accomplish from a live environment perspective.  I was familiar with the differences in the bedroom tone (and in my case the headphone tone as well) and what actually presented in the live mix.  What I was seeking to achieve was a livable balance between the bedroom tone and live tone.  What I achieved was better than I had hoped - in fact I believe I may have achieved the perfect tone in the process.

I will talk more about this in an upcoming post after I talk about personal technique and how I set up my bass but for now I will leave you with this gratuitous pedal shot.