My First Pedalboard!

Gear
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After years of not really caring about pedals and effects that much, I caught the bug! I’ve been having a lot of fun learning about effects, trying out new gear, and making new sounds. Here’s my first pedalboard ever, which just went on its first tour:

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Here’s the signal path from bass to amp:
Bass (Peavey Cirrus 4)
Line 6 Relay G30 Wireless (not pictured, need to re-adhere to the bottom of the board)
Keeley Bassist Compressor
Source Audio EQ
Boss OC-2
EHX Nano POG
Chase Bliss Audio Brothers
EQD Bit Commander
MXR Envelope Filter
TC Electronic Corona Mini Chorus
TC Flashback 2 Delay
TC Hall of Fame 2 Reverb
TC Ditto Looper
TC Polytune 3
Amp (TC RH450 head + RS210 cab)

The pedalboard I’m using is made by Temple Audio, and I’m loving it. Instead of velcro, you lock pedals onto the board via adhesive plates with thumbscrews. I’m really liking the system, and it’s super lightweight.

I’m loving the CIOKS power supplies so far too, everything sounds super clean.

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Also the super compact cables I’m using are made by EBS and they are killer. For my needs, anyway. I don’t think I would have been able to fit this much stuff on the board without such small cables. I’ve heard they have higher impedance than some other options (like Lava cables), but for my active instrument it doesn’t seem to matter.

The coolest part is the LED strips I have running on the bottom of the board, I’ll have to grab a photo at a gig when I’ve got everything lit up - it’s purdy.

Let me know if you guys are curious to hear more, I’m not a pedal expert but I can share my experience so far with any of this gear. It’s fun!

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Mind. Blown. That’s more buttons and knobs than an airplane has! :crazy_face:

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That’s unbelievable! I wish that I had some idea on how it worked!

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Haha yeah, I’m still figuring it out myself. Used it outdoors for the first time today and it was really hard to see all the LEDs! Had to guess which pedals were on/off by ear a few times. :stuck_out_tongue:

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You’re going to need another foot for all those pedals!

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Haha, feels like it sometimes. The funniest thing is when my big ol’ feet kick an extra pedal I didn’t mean to kick (like I’ve been turning on the Ditto Looper by accident when I use the Hall of Fame 2 reverb. :laughing: )

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Do’h! I’ve been know to unplug my board in the middle of the song. Not completely but just enough that the bass cuts out. Then the search begins to what went wrong, was it the bass? the amp? the pedal board?

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Haha, looks like we’ve got a few pedals in common! I like the MXR octave too, it’s got some nice sounds. Oh and are those EBS cables between pedals?

Have you considering running a right angle jack into that Basstortion instead? Might be less easy to step on?

EDIT: I use almost the same settings on the Envelope Filter. :raised_hands:

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Since I don’t have a lot of experience with pedals, I am not sure why I would need any. That’s just my ignorance. I mean I know there are different sounds, but to me the bass always sounds like the bass in music. Maybe it’s a particular genre?? Can you point me to a particular song that requires it to sound decent or different?

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You probably don’t need any… just like I didn’t need all those Legos growing up. :stuck_out_tongue:

A lot of music doesn’t require bass effects. Frankly I’ve gone almost my entire career to date without using any. For me it’s a recent exploration that I’ve started based just on my own curiosity, and I’m finding places to work them in on stage.

But if you want to get certain special sounds, you need the certain special toys that make them. Like…

You can hear some envelope filter on Bootsy’s bass here:

Or some distortion on Krist Novoselic’s bass here:

So many other examples… it just depends on what you want. But probably at least 90% of bass playing history doesn’t involve effects.

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Good call with the right angle jack. I’ll give it a try. Yes, they are EBS cables, I like them because of the low profile and helps in fitting all the pedals on the pedaltrain Nano. Any thoughts on pedal order? It seems like if I read five articles I get five different answers.

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Yeah it’s hard to beat that low profile! I don’t think I would have been able to put my board together that tight without them.

Well, putting your octave after the distortion is a little questionable if you want good tracking, because you’re giving the octave a more “confusing” input. Of course that only matters if you run them at the same time, and if you want the cleanest possible octave tracking.

So if you wanted to clean that up you could just scoot the Octave deluxe to the beginning, and then go distortion → envelope → compressor → tuner.

But it’s all about what you want, to paraphrase Juan Alderete, there’s no right or wrong pedal order, you just get different results.

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My first pedal is the Deluxe Bass Big Muff for distortion. I got it for playing with the metal backing tracks (i.e. AC DC, Metallica, Nightwish).

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Nice! That looks cool, haven’t tried it. Lot of fun controls to play with.

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How do you like it?? My first pedal - and still my favorite pedals to use - was/are distortion. Hope it is delightfully fuzzy and rocking.

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I can’t disagree, even though I have a different order. Wah - Compressor/Overdrive/Distortion - Chorus/Flange - Octaver- Delay-Reverb. And I also am experimenting with a B9 by EH which sounds wicked being punched by an overdrive. My point? I don’t use any in the band but a octave down and a slight chorus maybe two minutes in a 90 minute set! Pure Kid syndrome when I plug into my FX!

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Wow, how does the octaver respond to having chorus/flange in front of it? Doesn’t that make the tracking go crazy? Or do you not run them simultaneously?

Haha, I feel the same way with my current board sometimes, so much gear for so few actual opportunities to do anything other than “play bass.” :stuck_out_tongue:

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Yes yes yes.
It’s just so nice to get to press buttons!!

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I have done the crazy thing simply for that, crazy tracking where the down octave suddenly becomes - other… Could be an octave up or anything between 1 down and 1 up. I (seriously for not much more than a second) tend not to do this when it matters. I have found that with depth on full I can shift the pitch by using the rate control but this is random although also the most fun especially with some dirt in front and delay in the rear… Although as you noted the actual opportunities to use this stuff equals out to maybe 5% of the whole gig time and then it’s usually only a mild mix compared to the dry bass signal, maybe 25% wet? It’s all fun till the screaming starts.

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Haha cool, that sounds fun. Nothing like freaking out an analog octaver for some interesting noises :slight_smile:

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