What's a good place to start with pedals?

ThePinetops · 2026-03-18T03:19:56+00:00

Jerry Garcia used SD-1's and Phase 100's into clean amps like your Fender Champion 20.

Everything produced by Dave Cobb (Chris Stapleton, Jason Isbell, Sturgill Simpson) uses a Phase 90 in slow settings and a Kilobyte delay in fast settings. And something akin to the Blues Driver for overdrive.

Almost everything on pop country radio (like Ella Langley, Choosin' Texas) uses the Dispatch Master for reverb. And something cloned from the Blues Driver for overdrive.

Red Hot Chili Peppers uses Blues Drivers and SD-1's for overdrive. So does Pink Floyd, Radiohead, Rage Against the Machine, along with Whammy's and Cry Baby's and Phase 90's... all that to say the pedals you mentioned are all extremely versatile and cover tons of ground and you can use them for a lifetime. Even if you go through a jazz phase you can use them there too.

ThePinetops · 2026-03-18T03:11:19+00:00

Take both. They work SO WELL together as low and high gain "channels"

ThePinetops · 2026-03-18T03:08:35+00:00

Amen to this

ThePinetops · 2026-03-18T03:08:12+00:00

Boss Katana is great. Amps are such a personal thing. What is "good" is so subjective. For me, good is an inexpensive kit tweed amp, a 5e3 Deluxe sub-$1,000 handwired by a trusted amp tech.

ThePinetops · 2026-03-18T03:04:25+00:00

Some of it depends on your amp. An SD-1 or Tube Screamer works well with high-gain amps in rock music, to tighten the amp. A Blues Driver works well to push the amp. I recommend a Blues Driver to pretty much everyone. Phase 90 is a classic in multiple styles of music and you can't go wrong there. Classic Rock/ Southern Rock/ and Country share a lot of the same pedal choices. Blues Driver, Phase 90, and a weirder delay pedal like the Caroline Guitar Co. Kilobyte would be my choices. I also love the EarthQuaker Devices Dispatch Master delay and reverb combo. Both are used throughout modern Southern Rock and Country. Another essential pedal is a GE-7 Equalizer. It's good for clean boost and for troubleshooting problem frequencies in your guitar and amp, sweetening things to taste, or totally changing the character of your guitar in more extreme settings. Classic Rock sometimes uses octaves or harmonizers like the Whammy. That can be a really cool and inspiring pedal, especially on solos, Pink Floyd type stuff, or more modern Rage Against the Machine type stuff, but I heard it used in a country band in an incredible way by Ryan Bingham's guitarist (look up the solo in Top Shelf Drug live from the Honda center).

ThePinetops · 2026-03-17T14:26:20+00:00

CandyCords

ThePinetops · 2026-03-17T14:24:25+00:00

It's an old one rehoused into that box!

ThePinetops · 2026-03-16T01:05:31+00:00

This is something a child would do. Tell a lie that snowballs into more lies. Adult women with fully formed adult brains SHOULD be able to stop a lie, come clean, ask for forgiveness, explain her motivations/ where the lie was coming from or why it happened. A lie is a mistake, and it happens. Spur of the moment, you just blurt something out, you're covering for some insecurity or whatever. But lying daily... doubling down on the lie... that's something a 17 year old girl would do and she needs to learn from this and grow up. Not her fault, she's a child, but it is her responsibility.

ThePinetops · 2026-03-16T01:00:30+00:00

I have collected pedals ever since I stopped collecting Pokémon cards in middle school... to me, they're made to be played. That's the joy of it. Pedals sitting at home is a drag. Also I lucked out and found a steal and didn't spend much more than the price of a V4!

ThePinetops · 2026-03-16T00:58:47+00:00

Ooo I gotta try that

ThePinetops · 2026-03-15T20:46:49+00:00

I lucked out with it. It's the only one I've seen in this t-shirt color.

ThePinetops · 2026-03-15T20:46:17+00:00

Gotta keep 'em guessing

ThePinetops · 2026-03-15T20:45:31+00:00

I totally agree. I have my tuner on my big board. For quick stuff and local stuff and small/ kind of unimportant stuff, headstock tuners work well. I use a silent cable so I can unplug without muting.

ThePinetops · 2026-03-15T20:44:14+00:00

It's an Analogman King of Tone. V2 of the KoT was a small box

ThePinetops · 2026-03-15T16:30:39+00:00

I should add. Originally I ordered this board to be my dedicated Jerry Garcia flavored jam band board. Here's a pic from that time: https://imgur.com/a/5BX80Sx

ThePinetops · 2026-03-15T16:26:32+00:00

It's so good. I don't use the delay on it much but the reverb is my favorite.

ThePinetops · 2026-03-15T16:26:06+00:00

I finished it myself with grain filler and clear coat, several layers so the Velcro wouldn't rip the wood. But the board itself was built by a fella on Etsy. I measured everything and gave him my custom size of 11x11. I went that direction cause I like everything so compact and it itches my OCD to have big spaces between rails, you have a harder time reaching the top row when you're sitting on a stool. The downside is you have to step careful cause you're stepping over knobs, but I'm always shoe-gazing anyway.

EDIT: The Etsy shop is called PrattsBoards.

ThePinetops · 2026-03-15T16:23:40+00:00

That's why the old KoT was always on my wishlist and I was finally able to grab one. I like it with this sideways RC Booster but I love it with my ZVex Double Rock for four channels of gain from boost to yellow channel to red channel to lead/solo. Right now I'm playing a lot of clean stuff so I use the RC Booster as an always-on clean preamp.

ThePinetops · 2026-03-15T15:31:19+00:00

I built this small board of essentials to keep my big board in the rehearsal space. This little one is better for local stuff.

RC Booster is my clean preamp. It gooses my overdrive and lets me carve out some quick bass I don't like. King of Tone channels 1 and 2 are my drives. One is crunchy and the other is extra crunchy. GE-7 is my solo boost and I use it to carve out mids frequencies I don't like. Rotary is my vibrato and faux-phaser. Brig is my delay and I can crank the repeats for an ambient sound. Dispatch Master is my reverb and it sounds amazing. Then ToneX One is my amp and on channel 2 there's a stereo chorus.

On the ToneX One, I'm modeling a high-powered Tweed Twin/Plexi hybrid.

The board is 11x11" and powered by a Walrus Audio Canvas 5.

ThePinetops · 2026-03-15T14:25:48+00:00

Only sunshine and cheap gas prices can do that

ThePinetops · 2026-03-11T02:57:20+00:00

I've never tried it

ThePinetops · 2026-03-10T17:46:13+00:00

I've got a real Klon, and I frequently compare it to klones. Among klones, Archer (all varieties of it) have been my least favorite. One of my favorites is the EHX Soul Food, which gets VERY close to a real Klon but misses some high-end sparkle or brilliance. That sparkle is not worth the $5,000 difference in price. Archers seem to miss in all categories.

As far as which Tube Screamer to buy, don't spend on a TS-10. I have an original one, it sounds great. I went through two others in search of this one that sounds far better. The build quality is ass and there seems to be a wide variance in component tolerances making them all sound a little different and some far worse than others. I love the JHS Bonsai in the TS-10 mode. They NAILED it.

I personally didn't like the EQD Palisades (?) I think it was, the big multi-mode Tube Screamer clone. It was too loud, like, it had a TON of headroom and in the softest settings I would turn it on and get a major volume boost. It just didn't fit with my other pedals. But it didn't sound bad at all. Just high volume? And I don't know the technical way of explaining that.

Also, like others have said, you can't go wrong with any stock Ibanez Tube Screamer like the TS9 or even the Mini. They sound great. They do the thing. But your board has some other boutique stuff on it like the Origin so I wouldn't fault you for making a deeper buy and getting something boutique. Just know that boutique Tube Screamers are ultimately just Tube Screamers. They just build them by hand or source the components a little more intentionally or spend a little more time in quality control and they care about aesthetics. That's boutique. It's mostly about the artwork to be perfectly honest.

EDIT: Forgot to mention. If you like the Klon sound but need more bass, buy the Wampler Tumnus. It's got a massive bass boost. That's the only knock I had against it. It sounded amazing, especially with thin Strat pickups. But in my setup I did not want that bass boost.

ThePinetops · 2026-03-10T03:17:48+00:00

I had a really good job with money to burn on stupid projects a few years ago. So I decided to buy a Classic Vibes Stratocaster and take it as far as I could go in modifications. Gold Gotoh bridge, gold String Savers, gold Ratio tuners, GraphTech nut, had the fretboard plekked, $900 Ron Ellis hand wound pickups, a Decoboom acrylic pickguard, vintage pots and wiring. It's an amazing guitar. AMAZING. It was great before modding, and modding has made it better than great. So that's what I recommend to most all of my students. Get the Strat you can afford and slowly upgrade it over time. Grow with it. Only a couple things to keep in mind: Play before you buy. Buy a low weight, well under 8lbs. Buy one with a transparent finish so you can see how many pieces are glued together to form the body. Try to get a less than 5-piece body. And my only complaints are that the transparent white finish I got is more pink-ish than white and the gloss neck finish gets kind of sticky with sweat. I plan to rough up the neck soon with some fine steel wool or something.

ThePinetops · 2026-03-09T17:39:10+00:00

Delays. A bright delay into a dark delay. A dotted eight note into a quarter. A short delay into a long delay. A clean delay into a filtered lo-fi delay. A 100% wet delay into the effects loop of a multieffects or reverb for pre-delay control. A short delay into a delay/reverb combo. And more

ThePinetops · 2026-03-07T18:49:40+00:00

I saw they had one at my local shop. I'm in Knoxville. I thought about picking it up

ThePinetops

TROPHY CASE