my guitar gear
My first guitar and amp were a Squier Stratocaster and a Fender Frontman 15R. I was fifteen years old and believed everything the owner of the local music shop told my parents about how to spend the money I earned working for a month in a factory. Quite unbelievably, I used that 'set-up' with my first band, which played lousy covers (think Zombie and RHCP) and even lousier originals (just don't think). I still have this vivid image of me during rehearsals, playing that red Stratocaster on that tiny solid state practice amp, using a great looking fluorescent green jack cable. Actually, our first drummer went on to study music and now has his own trio and our first guitarist now makes experimental soundscapes.
As it turned out, the Frontman was a little too light to be heard over a singer, a guitar player with a loud amp, a bass player and a drummer - especially when all that was amplified through a PA. So two years later, after another month of hard work, I went to another store, told them about my problems and was persuaded to buy a €1100 Marshall AVT150 Advanced Valvestate - all shiny right out of the box, four channels, sixteen built-in digital effects and one tiny lamp in the pre-amp. I was ready to rock & roll.
One day, my uncle, who sold jukeboxes at the time, gave me a guitar for free - he had found it at someone's place and they had asked him if he could do anything with it since it was just gathering dust. After some online research I encountered Wim Markenhof, who told me it was a Dutch guitar, an Egmond Thunder III, which in my totally objective opinion looks a lot like a Fender Jaguar. It has however such a thick neck and high action - and the local shop didn't want to touch it because it would cost too much to get it back in a decent shape - that I tuned it to open G and learned myself to play Led Zeppelin's Travelling Riverside Blues and In My Time Of Dying. By the way, this picture is so old I couldn't believe I still had it.
Then the band split, regrouped, split again, changed some personnel, recorded some tracks, got one gig, split again and regrouped with a change of personnel - and that's when I was told to p*ss off. Which was a pity, since we recorded some songs which sound good to me even today. That one gig we played was in a local club, where we first played an acoustic set (some folk, blues and pop) and then an electric one (with bits of blues, postrock and a cover of Wooden Ships thrown in). For this band, I played the mandolin (a Richwood RMD 20 EVS - when I asked the shop owner if I could take lessons anywhere, he told me there was this mandolin band who played classical pieces in the next town), banjo (five string open tuning, that is - I only found out James Taylor used Neil Young's six string banjo on Old Man afterwards) and acoustic (an Ibanez AW 40 E CENT electro-acoustic folk western guitar, or what do you call an acoustic with a pickup these days?) and electric guitar (Egmond Thunder, Squier Strat and a lousy 'Gibson' Les Paul copy which was impossible to intonate correctly and thus sold pretty quickly - see picture below).
I then resumed college and quickly started to think I actually was a singer/songwriter. I even played before an audience once, during an open mic at concert hall Het Depot in Leuven. Incidentally, this was the same evening Sanne Putseys first performed in public. Singer/songwriter Milow, who co-organised these open mics, immediately took her on tour and that's when Selah Sue started getting famous. Looking back, Belgium should thank Milow he didn't mistakenly pick me (I'm very proud I found a reason Belgium should thank Milow).
Luckily I eventually realised I am better at playing rhythm guitar in a band than playing acoustic guitar by myself. So I rehearsed with one band, started working, played with another band and in general fiddled about a bit. At this point in time I was using an old Marshall Valvestate 8080 combo, which doesn't sound half as bad as most reviewers would like you to believe, and a wine red Aria PE Elite, which I still use today. I also got another amp, though it was a bit smaller than the Marshall - in fact, a Danelectro Honeytone might even fit in your pockets if they are big enough. There are entire pages on the internet devoted to repairing and modding this cute looking little monster, which I use often when testing new pedals.
Somewhere around this time, the company I was working for at the moment held a garage sale, selling all the instruments they didn't want to rent out anymore. Other than the great but expensive stuff (a Fender Bassman 100 guitar amp with fitting 215 cabinet, a Trace Elliott 4x10 bass combo, a green Yamaha Vinnie Colaiuta signature drum kit), there was a rusted Pearl drumkit. I haggled the boss down, took some hardware and cymbals with me and started polishing. I now have this nice looking black Pearl World Series drumkit (22" bass drum, 12" and 13" rack tom, 16" floor tom, 14" Sonor chrome snare drum) set up at my girlfriend's nephew's place. A couple years later I bought a red flightcase for my Blues Junior from the same company.
I got interested in pedals when I was struck by Sjoerd Bruil's great imitation of George Harrison's lead sounds, which he used to play the entire White Album with tribute band The Crab Four. Other than a small Peavey Classic amp and a Fender Stratocaster and Gibson Les Paul (if I remember correctly), he used some nice looking pedals which I googled the moment I got home from the gig. And that's when I lost it.
Of course, I already owned a couple of pedals - a Korg DT-10 digital tuner which Santa Claus had brought me, a Boss OS-2 Overdrive / Distortion and an old Spheres stereo volume pedal which I had gotten for free and a Jim Dunlop GCB-95 Cry Baby, since every cool guitarist seemed to have one. But except for the tuner, I never used them a lot, as I had the great DFX from the AVT150. I even owned a digital multi-FX at one point, a Korg AX10G which I managed to sell to a novice eventually. I never really used it though - hope that saves me from the tonal inferno...
When I finally sold the Marshall AVT150 (for a mere €250...) and bought a 1974 silverface Fender Super Reverb 4x10, I got me a second hand Electro Harmonix Nano Switchblade, to be able to switch between the non-vibrato- and the vibrato-channel - for one reason or another, this seemed really cool to me. Then when I was listening to Eric Clapton's great tone on the Beano album, a Marshall BB-2 Bluesbreaker II popped up on the local ads - and I had to get it. Obviously, both pedals have left the building since.
So there I was, with one cool amplifier, one nice guitar, one tuner, one volume pedal, one wah pedal and two overdrives. That's when I realised that if I wanted to get some nice sounds going, I'd better started researching this stuff, so at least I knew how everything worked and which one's were quality or garbage. I got hold of Analog Man's Guide To Vintage Effects and started reading up on web articles and forums. Later my uncle gave me Dave Marsh's Practical Handbook, which became my Bible for a short while.
Meanwhile I had found a rock cover band to play with and when I mentioned my growing interest in guitar effects to the keyboard player, he sold me his dad's old pedals. These included a non-working Boss CE-3 Chorus, which I fixed and used for a while before trading it (I really couldn't stand the LED being hidden behind the middle knob), an Ibanez TS-10 Tube Screamer Classic, which I sold because I couldn't stand the jacks on the top (sorry Danelectro!), a big box Electro Harmonix Deluxe Octave Multiplexer, which should be fixed, a big box 'blue' Electro Harmonix Deluxe Memory Man, which could do with some fixing as well, and a CBS/Arbiter Fuzz King, which reportedly was designed by Gary Hurst, as were the legendary Sola Sound Tonebenders.
Then I had the opportunity to fly to the States and there I happened to drive by a Guitar Center - which had a used reissue Ibanez TS9 Tubescreamer on sale for fifty dollars and a new MXR Phase 90 for seventy five. On the last day I visited a pawn shop and got hold of a beat up but working Vox V847 wah pedal ("You Jimi Hendrix eh?" the salesman smartly remarked while I was testing it).
Back home I continued shopping for stuff I liked and could afford - which usually was a tough combination. That is probably why I had my share of Behringers (UT100 Ultra Tremolo and SM200 Slow Motion) and Danelectro Cool Cat (Tremolo, 18V Chorus, Transparent Overdrive and Fuzz) - although I do like the Dano stuff. I mostly got my pedals from a second hand website except when I was looking for something new (read: expensive) and had saved enough, which is when I would visit a nearby shop. I started collecting a few delays (Electro Harmonix Memory Boy, Ibanez EM5 Echomachine and Boss DD-7 Digital Delay) and got some great pedals: a new MI Audio Crunch Box (Marshall in a box), an old Elka Fuzz Wah (copy of the Vox/Jen Double Sound which, when I bought it, had a Boss poweradapter soldered on to it), a new Electro Faustus Photo Theremin (online via Crush The Button), a new Voodoo Lab Micro Vibe (the same day I got a Voodoo Lab Pedal Power 2+ and a Fender Blues Junior III)...
I had decided by now that I wanted a small pedalboard to take with me to rehearsals and gigs and a big pedalboard to give my cherished vintage beauties a safe haven. For the big board I used a keyboard flight case which was old but still in great shape (thanks, Ives) and I covered the inside of the loose lid with a layer of foam, so I could put the pedals there and be able to switch them on and off. I then glued lines of velcro (the rough part) to this foam, with a fixed distance between each two lines. Then I put the soft part on the bottom of my pedals and Pedal Power (so if I use them without the board, it doesn't damage the floor - and also because I didn't have as much soft parts as rough ends) and on a few pieces of foam, on which I put rough ends again on the other side, so I could use them as moveable second floors.
Now that I had the complete structure of everything, I just needed to puzzle out my signal chain. Eventually, I decided on guitar and theremin into Switchblade -> Korg tuner -> Vox V847 wah -> CBS/Arbiter Fuzz King -> Voodoo Lab Micro Vibe -> Carl Martin Hot Drive 'N Boost -> MI Audio Crunch Box -> Danelectro Cool Cat Chorus -> Spheres volume pedal -> one output into the Blues Junior, the other into the Electro Harmonix Deluxe Memory Man -> Boss DD-7 with tap tempo -> Fender Super Reverb. I got the Carl Martin when I traded the Boss CE-3 and the Marshall Bluesbreaker for it.
I then got all the other necessary items (patch cables, power cables, power strip, small velcro to keep cables together, small power cable extensions) and puzzled everything inside. Here is what the case looked like when you opened it.
That black box in the bottom right corner is a Marshall footswitch, which I had modded for use as a footswitch for my Super Reverb, so I could switch tremolo and reverb if I wanted. Because the case was so big I had space left for a storing compartment on the left. It contained some extra patch cables, every jack-jack cable needed for my set up (each of these is rolled up with a piece of velcro so when setting up, I could make sort of a cablesnake on the spot if I wanted to keep my power cord, my two signal jacks and my footswitch jack together) and pedals that were not in chain but also not up for sale (at the moment this picture was taken, it were the TS10, the Memory Boy and the Dano Tremolo). I also used it to put picks, my slide, extra strings... The 'separating wall' next to the volume pedal also had velcro on the bottom so it could move around as well. I use the Pedal Power to feed the 9V pedals - the Carl Martin and the Memory Man both have their own power cable. These three power cables went to one power strip, so I could easily plug all the power I needed.
As you'll see below, things have changed quite a bit since the above picture was taken. For some time I changed the Danelectro Chorus for an Electro Harmonix Small Clone, which I bought second hand online with another Cry Baby and a Build Your Own Clone Classic Phaser for the price of one new Small Clone. I liked the Dano Chorus better than the Small Clone though - it's big and needs 18V but it has stereo outputs and can also produce a nice vibrato with the 'chill' knob turned fully clockwise. So as we're speaking, the Small Clone has already gone again.
That BYOC Classic Phaser is actually the same as a script logo Phase 90 if you turn the depth knob completely clockwise. It makes a bad popping sound however when turned on and off - if it turns on at all - so for the moment, I'm not using it. I got a cheap DOD 270 A/B Box, since the Switchblade always leaked signal from the channel which was supposed to be switched off.
For the gigboard I just used a piece of wood, spray painted black and with two rubber feet to give it a small angle, which I then covered with strips of velcro - of course in the same way I put them on the big board so pedals can be changed back and forth. I made the piece of wood small enough to fit inside a small case which I had laying around, so transportation would be easy. I guess this is how most homemade pedalboards are built.
I bought a Boss TU-3 Chromatic Tuner, both as a tuner and to power chain the rest of the pedals, which at first were the Cry Baby, the TS9 Tubescreamer, the Phase 90, the Crunch Box, the Boss Chorus and the Memory Boy. The small board went through a lot of changes, at one time or another also including the Echomachine, the Micro Vibe, the Danelectro Cool Cat Fuzz and the Vox wah (since the Cry Baby had a bad hiss in treble position). I now use the DOD A/B selector to switch between the tuner and the rest of the signal chain, as to minimize the hiss. With no decent buffer in my chain this does mean I have to turn up the treble on my amp a bit.
I preferred the Fulltone over the Tubescreamer since I can get some very similar sounds out of both but the Fulldrive has the extra boost option. The phaser and chorus are there to color the basic sounds (clean with no pedals, dirty with the Fulldrive, filthy with the Moen, solo with the Fulldrive (boost) and the Moen). I used the wah for funky discosongs but found both the Crybaby and the Vox too shrill in treble position and too low in bass position.
I bought the Arion SCH-Z Stereo Chorus on eBay to replace the Echomachine - I didn't use delay that much so I'd rather have a Leslie simulator there instead. I tried hunting down the older SCH-1, but prices for these are just way out. Since all other options cost a fortune (DLS, Option 5), are way too big (Korg G4, Boss RT-20) or suffer from both complaints (H&K Rotosphere), I opted for the Arion Chorus version of which most people online say "you won't hear the difference between both versions with your other pedals on, in a band, in a live mix". And it really nails that Let It Loose sound...
The latest addition to the small board have been the Electro Harmonix Micro Q Tron, a very cool auto wah developed by Mutron engineer Mike Beigel, which has taken the place of the Micro Vibe, and an MXR Phase 100 which replaced his little brother. I once had the opportunity to check a vintage Phase 100 and fell in love with it's sound - it can do a nice univibe imitation as well. I'm guess I'm kinda set for a while now.
A summer gig on a French festival by Belgian band Triggerfinger (and specifically their lead singer and guitarist, the übercool Ruben Block) inspired me to get two things: more fuzz pedals and a hollowbody electric guitar. With the money I had earned over the summer, I got myself a second hand great looking transparent orange Ibanez Artcore AF75D. At Depot Open, Simple Minds and K's Choice guitar tech Hilko Nackaerts was kind enough to have a look at it. Apparently the wood did not dry long enough so the neck won't move, making it impossible to change the action. Still, I like it a lot.
After Christmas, New Year and my birthday I had some spare cash saved so why not go pedal hunting? I traded my Memory Boy, which I never used anyway since I don't use delay much and since I had the Ibanez Echomachine AND the blue Memory Man, for two fuzzes, a Guyatone TZ2 The Fuzz, which was inspired by the famous Univox Superfuzz and is great for laying down some stoner rock riffs, and the Moen MO-FM Fuzz Moo, which is a green Sovtek Big Muff Pi clone - which is probably why I like it a lot better than the two year old Electro Harmonix Big Muff Pi that I bought and quickly resold.
I liked the Memory Boy in the beginning but when I got the Echomachine, it started to sound a bit digital to me - which is funny, since the Boy is analog and the Ibanez is digital. Oh well, even the best ears in the business thought the Ibanez was analog when it first came out: "Last month we slobbered over the warm analog tones of the Ibanez Echomachine pedal... We're still slobbering but Ibanez has pointed out that the pedal is in fact digital." (Guitar Player magazine, August 1997)
As I already mentioned, I also bought a flightcase for my Blues Junior so for now I guess I have my small all around set-up pretty much worked out - all set to go on world tour, just need to find a couple of dates... My capo, slide and guitar strap go into the guitar case, spare strings, music sheets and cables into the pedalboard case. When playing live I can put the Blues Junior on top of the flight case so it's a little closer to my ears.
Recently I joined a new band which is made up of the singer/songwriter who also plays banjo and bass drum, his girlfriend who adds percussion, a backing vocalist who also shakes and rattles with stuff, a really nice bass player and your's sincerely on electric guitar. For this project I borrowed the singer's Fender Telecaster in regular tuning and Squier Telecaster in open E tuning and added in my own Pitchblack, Danelectro Tremolo and Fender Blues Junior. We recently recorded a demo in a professional studio - which was fun since I could play on some great guitars through a handwired Vox AC15. The results are already online on MySpace.
After playing a gig with this simple set up, I realised what most guitarists with lots of effect pedals realize after a while: it's all in the fingers, really. So since then, I sold the Crunch Box, the Boss DD7, the Small Clone, the Big Muff and the Vox wah while the Carl Martin Hot Drive 'N Boost will be gone pretty soon as well. All they ever did was laying in a box at my home anyway...
After contemplating all the troubles with the pedals on the big board, I had a great idea: why not integrate the small board into the big one? The effect chain would then be Crybaby Wah -> Korg DT10 Digital Tuner -> small board starting from Voodoo Lab Micro Vibe -> Fulltone Fulldrive 2 -> Moen FM Fuzz Moo -> MXR M101 Phase 90 -> Arion SCH-Z Stereo Chorus with both outputs going to the Spheres Volume Pedal, of which one output went to the Blues Junior and the other through the Deluxe Memory Man and the Ibanez Echomachine to the Super Reverb. After some rebuilding, the result looked like this.
Like most guitarists, I quickly figured playing the bass isn't that difficult so with my first wah pedal, I also bought my first bass - both were sold second hand at the local shop. That first bass is a Squier P Bass, with only one of both knobs missing - hell, they are always fully open anyway, right? After searching for a cheap 1x15 combo amp for a while, I decided to up the budget and go for a head & cabinet combination, with the possibility of upgrading later. I bought a Hartke HA3500 amp plus matching 4x10 Transporter cabinet. This combination pushes 200W (or 350 if I could find a 4Ω cab) so playing with a drummer and guitarists will be no problem. I found a band to play with not long ago - you can listen to some recordings on Nelly Ann's vi.be page.
To take care of my new tuning troubles, I bought a second hand Korg Pitchblack online, which can also feed some other pedals. I wanted to buy a simple bass compressor and had my eyes on an EBS MultiComp and a BBE Opto Stomp for a while, but since they were not up for trade and budget is on an all time low, I'll have to wait for the compressor of my dreams for now. I tried to add a bit of dirt with the Big Muff Pi but this was no big success. I recently decided to put all the pedals I use for the bass and the singer-songwriter on one small pedalboard, which I spray painted chrome.
My uncle, who already gave me the Egmond Thunder guitar for free, then sold me a Faylon Studio 100, a Belgian built single fifteen inch combo amplifier, featuring two channels and six inputs: two for guitar, two for bass and two for keyboards. It could do with some maintenance though so the tech who fixed the Super took a look at it (apparently, the EL503 poweramp tubes it uses are quite hard to find). Although the sound ain't really great, it is a nice rehearsal and small gig alternative for the massive Hartke head plus 4x10 cabinet. So looks like I got myself that 1x15 bass combo after all...
After having it in my room for over a year while barely playing it, I sent the Super Reverb out for maintenance (and had the 'Marshall footswitch - loose stereo jack - transition from jack to RCA connectors' taken care of) and then put it up for sale online. Michaël Goffard, who plays guitar with Belgian band Malibu Stacy, eventually traded it for his Fender Pro Junior single ten inch valve combo, Malekko Spring Chicken reverb pedal and some cash - which I partly used the same day to buy a second hand Frantone Vibutron tremolo pedal. When I got home, I immediately put together the new singer/songwriter set up: Korg Pitchblack, Frantone Vibutron and Malekko Spring Chicken into Fender Pro Junior.
Unfortunately the Pro Jr. suffered from projunioritis: it hummed quite excessively, even with the guitar not plugged in. So I experimented with some different valves in the preamp and finally decided to leave a 12AX7 and 12AT7 inside. This small set up is really all I need for the singersongwriter band.
I'm very proud of the stuff you see on the below picture. I sent the Fuzz King, Fuzz Wah and Arion Bass Chorus to Dirk_Hendrik, who fixed and cleaned the Fuzz King and Fuzz Wah, cloned the Fuzz King and kept the Arion. The D_H Fuzz King replaced the Fuzz Moo on the gigboard for a while.
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When I had come to terms with the fact that I was gonna be seperated from my Fender Super Reverb, I realized it was quite stupid to keep a fully equipped huge pedalboard which was never used. So I sold the Korg DT10, the Dano Overdrive, a Boss stereo volume and expression pedal, the Electro Faustus theremin, the Elka Fuzz Wah and the Voodoo Lab Micro Vibe. Since I put most of my other pedals on a new pedalboard (see below), the flightcase was sold as well.
When I had come to terms with the fact that I was gonna be seperated from my Fender Super Reverb, I realized it was quite stupid to keep a fully equipped huge pedalboard which was never used. So I sold the Korg DT10, the Dano Overdrive, a Boss stereo volume and expression pedal, the Electro Faustus theremin, the Elka Fuzz Wah and the Voodoo Lab Micro Vibe. Since I put most of my other pedals on a new pedalboard (see below), the flightcase was sold as well.
My noname red 2x12 Celestion G12K85 loaded speaker cabinet complemented my coverbandrig really well. The picture on the right shows my stage set up. I put the 2x12 to the left of me (I'm usually stage left) and tilt it back a little so the guitar's sound goes straight into my ears and not into the audience. Now I just would like to find a nice head to replace the Blues Junior, since I only use it as an amplifier (while I do have to lug around the 12" speaker that's inside it as well) - either that or a nice 2x10/12 combo that's not too heavy.
When I got across an ad from some people who were looking for a guitar player to complement their Coldplay tribute band, I put together a new pedalboard. I found an old Warwick pedalboard online, stripped it and put in new velcro and some of the pedals I didn't use anymore to get that Jonny Buckland tone thing going. Since he uses a ProCo Rat for main distortion, I swapped the Moen Fuzz Moo for the Fuzz King again. Only thing missing was a tuner, so I bought an Artec Big Dots with the money I got for the Boss FV I sold. It's a really cool, flashy tuner.
We used to rehearse in the drummer's home studio, which meant playing with headphones on - the drums were the only instrument which didn't run through the mixing desk. That's why I played over the drummer's Line 6 Spider combo. I don't like it that much but it's better than lugging your own shit around, right? Felt real nice to play that Squier Strat again, too.
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While working at the Couleur Cafe festival last summer, I noticed that Stephen Bruner, Erykah Badu's bass player, had troubles with the bass amp the backline company I work for, provided him with. After some repatching of cables and checking his bass, I figured it was his Aguilar Filter Twin that was misbehaving - after which he told "Take it away man, I don't want to see that pedal ever again." Orders which I dutifully followed. At home with a battery though, this €250 double envelope filter works just fine with me - and can get me some crazy sounds when combined with a fuzz pedal.
In the last couple of months, I traded the Blues Junior for a Fender Hot Rod Deville 2x12 so I also sold the Red Cab with a nice profit. I also had my two Cry Baby wahs true bypassed (though without an LED) and the Original is up for sale. Unfortunately, I made up a new pedal wishlist, which includes a clean booster (MXR Micro Amp), an octaver of sorts (Digitech Whammy or Electro Harmonix POG) and a tap tempo delay (Boss DD-3 or DD-5 Digital Delay). I'm gonna send the Deluxe Octave Multiplexer (which doesn't do an octave up), the Carl Martin Hot Drive 'N Boost and the Fuzz King to Dirk_Hendrik to get them fixed.
Wow, this had been a while... A couple of years even, I guess. Biggest changes since last time? I'm no longer playing in a band but instead am teaching the guitar. I also moved to my own house and that was a good incentive to rethink my amplifier choices. The Hartke head plus cabinet were sold to some guys who were gonna ship it to Africe to teach the children how to play rock music over there. I still own the Hot Rod Deville 2x12, Pro Junior 1x10, Maine 50C 1x8 and Faylon Studio 100 1x15, which are still way too many amps for someone who is not playing in a band - but hey, they don't eat sandwiches and who knows, maybe one day...
It's been years since I opened my pedal cases. Those pedalboards probably still look the same: Korg Pitchblack -> Frantone Vibutron -> Spring Chicken on the smallest one, Boss TU3 -> Micro Q-Tron -> TS9 -> Fuzz Moo -> Phase 90 -> Arion Chorus powered by the PP2+ on the regular one and the Warwick one has all the other pedals. If I counted correctly, I have bought some 50 pedals in total, off which I have sold 31. It's been fun, but perspectives and priorities change. As I said, who knows, maybe one day, the fever strikes again...
While working at the Couleur Cafe festival last summer, I noticed that Stephen Bruner, Erykah Badu's bass player, had troubles with the bass amp the backline company I work for, provided him with. After some repatching of cables and checking his bass, I figured it was his Aguilar Filter Twin that was misbehaving - after which he told "Take it away man, I don't want to see that pedal ever again." Orders which I dutifully followed. At home with a battery though, this €250 double envelope filter works just fine with me - and can get me some crazy sounds when combined with a fuzz pedal.
In the last couple of months, I traded the Blues Junior for a Fender Hot Rod Deville 2x12 so I also sold the Red Cab with a nice profit. I also had my two Cry Baby wahs true bypassed (though without an LED) and the Original is up for sale. Unfortunately, I made up a new pedal wishlist, which includes a clean booster (MXR Micro Amp), an octaver of sorts (Digitech Whammy or Electro Harmonix POG) and a tap tempo delay (Boss DD-3 or DD-5 Digital Delay). I'm gonna send the Deluxe Octave Multiplexer (which doesn't do an octave up), the Carl Martin Hot Drive 'N Boost and the Fuzz King to Dirk_Hendrik to get them fixed.
Wow, this had been a while... A couple of years even, I guess. Biggest changes since last time? I'm no longer playing in a band but instead am teaching the guitar. I also moved to my own house and that was a good incentive to rethink my amplifier choices. The Hartke head plus cabinet were sold to some guys who were gonna ship it to Africe to teach the children how to play rock music over there. I still own the Hot Rod Deville 2x12, Pro Junior 1x10, Maine 50C 1x8 and Faylon Studio 100 1x15, which are still way too many amps for someone who is not playing in a band - but hey, they don't eat sandwiches and who knows, maybe one day...
It's been years since I opened my pedal cases. Those pedalboards probably still look the same: Korg Pitchblack -> Frantone Vibutron -> Spring Chicken on the smallest one, Boss TU3 -> Micro Q-Tron -> TS9 -> Fuzz Moo -> Phase 90 -> Arion Chorus powered by the PP2+ on the regular one and the Warwick one has all the other pedals. If I counted correctly, I have bought some 50 pedals in total, off which I have sold 31. It's been fun, but perspectives and priorities change. As I said, who knows, maybe one day, the fever strikes again...
And it did! COVID-19 struck and I decided to toy around with my pedals again. Quite some changes since last time obviously. The phaser before the dirt makes it sound a lot bigger and I like to tweedle the knob with my foot while playing. Same goes for the Spring Chicken, which I took off the small board. That DH Fuzz King is a beast, I have to keep the volume down to 9 o'clock as to not have the neighbours banging on my walls. Echo Machine is set to slapback delay. Squier Strat into Fender Pro Junior and I'm good to go, noodling about for hours on end!