EFFECTS

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Pedalboard

Some people have said, “Wow, that’s a lot of effects for a jazz guitarist!” There was a time I used rack gear. Oh the 80s! Then I did an about face and didn’t use anything except a guitar, a cable, and an amp. And that’s it! Not even any reverb. Then in 2008 I started slowly getting into pedals. Of course I don’t have a single pedal from the first 5 years of building up an array of pedals. Here’s my current set up:

Pedals Listed From Left to Right (not in order of how they’re connected)

Top Row:
1 – Lehle Parallel L (creates a parallel effects loop) Right now, the only thing that is being mixed through it is signal from the compressor.
2 – Strymon OB.1 optical compressor. OB1. Get it? As in Obi-Wan Kenobi. It uses lazers.
3 – Strymon LEX (for that Leslie rotating speaker sound)
4 – JHS Little Black Buffer
5 – Toshihiko Tanabe Dumkudo Overdrive (for that Dumble type sound) 

Bottom Row:
6 – Strymon BlueSky Reverb (beautiful lush reverb sounds)
7 – Strymon El Capistan Delay (beautiful old analog tape delay sounds. Think Echo-Plex)
8 – Electro-Harmonix POG2 (for that Hammond B3 Organism sound, and other synth sounds) The newest edition.
9 – BOSS FV-30L low impedance volume pedal (you need low-Z if you run your volume pedal through your amp’s effects loop, or you run a buffer before the volume pedal. Hi-Z if you don’t use a buffer, or before your buffer in the chain)
10 – T.C. Electronic Polytune Mini
11 – All mounted on a Pedaltrain 2 Pedalboard (aluminum and lightweight)

Not Seen:
Everything is powered by the VooDoo Lab 4×4 (underneath the pedalboard)

Routing
The first thing the guitar signal hits is the overdrive (1) [By the way, his is the pedal that gets that great great overdrive sound on the song, Night Drive, on the Out of the Blue CD]. Next onto the tuner (2), then on to the the JHS buffer (3). It then goes to the the Lehle (4) that creates the parallel loop which the compressor (5) is the only pedal that is routed through it. The Lehle is great because you can blend the unaffected signal with whatever effect(s) you put through it. 

Usually reverbs and delays are run parallel. But I like having the extra control instead of having the signal 100% compressed. I also find that compressors do weird things to reverb that I don’t like. This solves that. 

Next, on to the POG (6), then to the Lex (7), then the delay (8), onto the reverb (9), and lastly the volume pedal (10).

Summary:
Guitar → Overdrive → Tuner → Buffer → Parallel Mixer (send) ↑ Compressor ↓ Parallel Mixer (return) → Organ/Synth Box (POG) → Leslie Simulator → Delay → Reverb → Volume Pedal → Amp

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