Got last pedal for the board before mid-summer weekend. Plan is to keep this setup for some time. There are few pedals which might change later but intention is to keep most of the current pedals on board. Order might chance but pedals should stay. Now is good time to tell what is there.
Board is Rockboard CIntiq 5.3. I chose Rockboard because they have place for patchbay at the back of the board. You can route cables through it. I use Rockboard Mod 2. It helps keep setup less messy when power and four cables go through patchbay. Power comes from Strymon Zuma and Ojai extension. Those power fourteen pedals. Surfybear needs own power supply. Zuma can’t give enough power to it. That is why there is fifteen pedals.
Signal chain starts from TC Electronic Polytune. You need tuner and I have had that for ages. Next is Boss NS-2. At one point I hoped I didn’t need noise gate but I needed it. Have had this pedal for ages. Not sure is this is best place to have this. Might change this after Lost Highway to suppress noise from Night Wire and Lost Highway. NS-2 also acts as buffer. I kind of want to replace these but don’t feel it is worth the money. At least at this point when I have spent so much on board and pedals lately. If I change these it is because I want to have buffer optional. NS-2 is always buffered. Better working gate would be nice. NS-2 works well but it could be little better.
Next two pedals are in less conventional place. First reverb and delay come at this point. I wrote about MXR Reverb in previous post. DoD Rubberneck is most suitable for this place of delays I have. These pedals are here because I had power and room for extra few pedals. Original plan was to have two reverbs and delays in more conventional place. Having delay and reverb before dirt pedals and modulation gives some extra options. Old times reverb and delay were before amp. Still need to learn how to get most out of these.
Night Wire and Lost Highway are next because they react to playing dynamics. Night Wire is harmonic tremolo which can also be phaser and envelope filter. Probably most versatile pedal on board. Lost Highway is phaser which reacts to your playing dynamics. I considered changing it but it can do what Night Wire or Polychrome can’t do.
Tone Corset is next. It is analog compressor. I have compressor before dirt pedals because I mainly use it for sustain. Having it after first reverb and delay give some options. This is probably first pedal to be replaced. I am not completely happy with it and it has buffered bypass. Some places say this has true bypass but they lie. It seems to be case with many EHX pedals. I trust EHX’s site more that web stores.
Dirt pedals come next. I have Revv’s G2 and G3. Both have three aggression modes which give different levels of distortion and some eq changes. These pedals give enough distortion. Manx Loaghtan is basically Big Muff with two-band cut/boost eq. Might still change this to Giygas if I managed to get rid of noise problem. It would be nice if Tone Corset’s buffered bypass is the reason. Giygas was noiseless in smaller setups and it is noiseless if I replace Tone Corset with it. True bypass seems to matter in this case. It is bit weird that only Giygas seem to have this problem though.
I think this is good place for cliffhanger. I go rest of pedals in next post.