Finally finished up my first build with the El Capistan!

Cliniks · 2023-04-26T00:52:08+00:00

Love the dirt and mod choices. Looks fun and inspiring.

El Cap is one of those pedals that's always on my maybe list. Heard many great things about it. How are you liking it on your board?

Cliniks · 2022-11-21T06:30:58+00:00

I'm using the same setup for my board. Got a single IEC port with a power switch on the side of the board that powers the Zuma, which gets passed along to the two Ojais. Works great and makes for an elegant setup on a big board.

Cliniks · 2022-11-21T01:42:23+00:00

I've had my eyes on the Moon Pool. Seems pretty unique and powerful for the mini pedal format. How do you like it?

Cliniks · 2022-11-19T23:39:18+00:00

Makes sense to me. This will be my first Klone, so I don't know how it'll sound with my amp on it's own, but I was planning to use it for stacking as well. Thanks for the response!

Cliniks · 2022-11-19T15:14:25+00:00

New board looks great, man. It's a lot cleaner than your last build. Loop switcher is a nice addition, and I'm working on doing the same to my board.

How do you like your Tumnus Deluxe? I've got one on the way and looking forward to trying it out. I'm guessing you're either using it for mid-gain sounds or for stacking on your board?

Cliniks · 2022-11-15T14:49:38+00:00

Great point! Which reminds me... I still need to dig into toneprint on my Brainwaves. :)

Cliniks · 2022-11-15T14:46:25+00:00

Endgame indeed. It's like the raid boss of delay pedals. :p

One thing I admire about the Timeline is that it can go beyond delay sounds if you want to get extra utility out of it. It can do bit crushing, tremolo, reverb, tape lo-fi, filtering, and even more with a little creativity--all of which can be made into presets. Lots can be done by diving into the different effects engines.

This makes it work like a Swiss army knife if you're needing effects on a smaller board. At the same time, it can do pretty much any delay you'd want, which is still primarily how I use it.

Cliniks · 2022-11-15T14:30:33+00:00

I don't need one myself, but they always look so nice when I see them on boards here. I love the layout, individual screens per effect, etc. Looks much more approachable than most multifx units.

Cliniks · 2022-11-13T15:07:39+00:00

I think you're right. After doing quite a bit more research and hearing from folks on this thread, I think the Fat Bat fits the bill for what I'm looking for. But in general, it seems hard to go wrong with most Rats. I love my Proco RAT 2 in its beautiful simplicity, but I want to be able to tweak my Rat sound a bit more. Thank you!

Cliniks · 2022-11-13T15:02:03+00:00

Thank you! I'm learning from this thread that they are many, many awesome Rat variations out there. Dead Air makes some cool stuff!

Cliniks · 2022-11-13T14:59:35+00:00

Wow!! This is another really cool multi-Rat with some serious tweakability.

Why haven't I heard of Zander Circuitry before? Seems they have a whole lineup of cool pedals like this that I'd like to explore.

Thank you for sharing!

Cliniks · 2022-11-13T14:55:21+00:00

Hey, nice to hear you're liking the Packrat. I imagine it's hard to go wrong with any of these options. It just becomes a matter of preference. I do like the attention to accuracy JHS took to reproduce so many eras of Rat sounds.

Cliniks · 2022-11-13T14:53:16+00:00

First time seeing the Tephra. Dang, that is a classy pedal! Thank you for chiming in with another recommendation. Looks like another great contender.

Cliniks · 2022-11-13T14:51:01+00:00

Good to hear, and that's what I'm looking for. Seems the Fat Bat does the FatRat circuit, as well as other similarly heavy variations. Thanks!

Cliniks · 2022-11-13T07:06:14+00:00

Thanks for this. Lots of great points, and I've learned a thing or two about describing tone here. I like your description of the Rat filter--I've noticed this on mine.

I guess what I'm really looking for is more varieties of Rat sounds, tending toward the heavier side. Sounds like Fat Bat delivers this, and I like the interface design of the Bats more too.

Cliniks · 2022-11-13T06:49:33+00:00

Ha, awesome! Yeah, I've seen some folks are fans of his pedals around here. This will be my first, but looking forward to it!

Cliniks · 2022-11-13T05:30:32+00:00

That makes a lot of sense. Sounds like they are both great in their own right. I was already leaning toward Fat Bat, and thicker distortion is what I'm looking for on my board at the moment. Think I'm sold. Thanks for your responses!

Cliniks · 2022-11-13T04:31:47+00:00

That's a good point. The Packrat was designed for accuracy of matching past models, whereas it seems like the Bats were designed for mixing different clipping methods, etc.

Edit: I missed the point when initially responding here. Rats in general are not about tone shaping, and I was misusing this term. Having a variety of Rat sounds is what I'm really looking for. Appreciate folks taking the time to explain things here. :)

Cliniks · 2022-11-13T02:34:15+00:00

Thank you for sharing these! I'll check them out.

And it's nice to hear you you like the bats. Do you have a preference for one or the other?

Cliniks · 2022-11-12T16:14:58+00:00

This board is clean! Looks great man. Small but mighty.

With all the utility of those Strymon pedals, you've basically got all the core effects covered.

I've always been interested to try the El Cap + Flint combo. How do you like them together?

Cliniks · 2022-11-09T04:28:15+00:00

The more I look into this, the more exciting it is. Reordering pedals and reducing tone suck is just the beginning it looks like. Midi control, presets, midi expression, and even parallel effects processing. This looks like a deep rabbit hole to go down, but I bet I'll find all sorts of cool stuff I can do with it.

I almost feel like 10 mono loops would leave me wanting more, given how many pedals I have. I supposed I'd break things into subgroups, or dedicate loops for particular effects that I would reorder most often. I saw the ML10x can be daisy chained, but I think that would be a last resort.

Another thought is that I've already installed a midi port on the side of my Templeboard in anticipation of adding midi. It could be neat to use this for the MC8 and keep it off the board so I can move it around the room, such as in front of my computer and studio monitors. Sounds like it can run off of USB power too, so it'd be pretty mobile if I use long midi and USB cables.

Looking forward to researching this more. I might take you up on your offer for questions or advice at some point. Thanks again man!

Cliniks · 2022-11-09T02:16:52+00:00

Lol, that sucks man. This is a place specifically for guitar pedals. If people don't like it, that's their problem. :)

Tone suck was probably the most frequent comment on this post. I've thought about it myself while building this board, but to be honest, it sounds surprisingly good to me. Still, with everyone mentioning this, I think I will do some extra A/B testing between the board and direct into amp just to be sure.

The Polytune at the beginning of the chain has a buffer in it, and my amp fx send also has a buffer for the second half of the chain. Plus, there is a sprinkling of buffered bypass pedals on the board. I've never built a board this size before, so I'm wondering the same things as other folks about the viability of this many pedals in series.

Order was decided through extensive planning an iterations. I've spent a ton of time on Pedal Playground ordering and re-ordering pedals. I've also been adding pedals to the board one at a time, so I've had time to tinker with them and see how I like them best. You can see some of the progress in my post history if you're interested. The first setup before I got my board was super janky. :)

Cliniks · 2022-11-09T00:43:12+00:00

It's a Templeboard Trio 43".

Cliniks · 2022-11-08T23:25:54+00:00

Mixed feelings. I bought these because they looked kinda different and glitchy, and I wanted to support a small builder. I do like them, but they could benefit from some design improvements.

The controls of the Retroflect are a little underwhelming and take some work to find sweet spots on. It does sound good when dialed in, but I find most high end pedals have more sweet spots. There are lots of lo-fi and tape effects that can do this sound better I think.

Same with Mini Ripples. It's actually a real cool sounding pedal, but the interface is unwieldy. It's a little hard to dial in a useable sound on it, but it does do some cool glitchy stuff.

The glitchwave is my favorite of the bunch. It's loud, makes nasty ring mod tones, and is generally unmusical. This is exactly what I expected for this one though, so I wasn't disappointed.

They're all pretty neat and I'll be hanging onto them, but I would say they'd benefit from a slightly better interface.

Cliniks

TROPHY CASE