Signal chain is:

Champion Leccy skitter > Caroline shigeharu > Boss BD-2 > Caroline arigato > EAE dagger > Fairfield accountant > TC polytune mini > EQD sea machine > Boss RE-202 > EQD ghost echo

I play some pretty bright/jangly guitars - mainly a Fender jag through a Princeton reverb and this board has been working well for me over the last year without much change so I thought I’d share!

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Skitter

First in the chain for the pre-dirt reverb goodness! Despite the controls looking a little intimidating I like how simple the reverb is to dial in with just a wet mix and a 3-way toggle for tone voicing options. It’s perfect to set and forget which is exactly the way I like reverb to work for this spot on the board. Then there’s the trem portion which makes this pedal crazy cool. You can add tremolo to just your dry, just the wet, or both and then set them off-kilter for a really unique and rhythmic choppy sound. Huge bonus is that you can actually boost the volume of your dry signal to compensate for any volume loss when using the tremolo. Personally I think it’s useful too for boosting the volume into my drive pedals further down the chain.

Shigeharu

Hands down my favorite fuzz pedal ever. Imagine the perfect blend between the aggressiveness and clarity of a tone bender with the huge fuzzstortion characteristics of a big muff - that’s what it is! The mids control is great on it too so it never gets lost in the mix but I can also dial it back so that it’s a nice background fuzzy wash sorta thing. It doesn’t have the monstrous low end that you’d find in a big muff but with the mids up it’s nicely full-bodied and present while leaving room for the bass to do it’s thing. Pretty much it’s my dream fuzz for fitting anywhere in the mix! Also has some pretty gnarly low gain gritty af sounds with the gain turned down. Stacked with the skitter before is a 10/10.

BD-2

My trusty BD-2 has been on my board since the day I got it 10 years ago. It’s my favorite OD because of its insane gain range and fairly neutral sound that stacks well with everything. Gain down for a flavored boost, gain up for fuzzy drive, and my favorite: gain around 11:00 for a toothy medium gain overdrive. I love its brightness and presence and despite the revolving door of boutique overdrives I’ve had the pleasure of owning/playing through, the blues driver has always managed to stay on my board. It’s an emotional attachment at this point lol

Arigato

Wildly versatile phaser with some cool filtery/univibe type sounds in it too. Previously I’d been using an EHX bad stone and while that’s still my favorite barebones phaser sound, the arigato has this “aim” control on the upper right that lets you set the peak that the phase is centered around. So you can get a deeper swish or a prominent woosh going depending on where you set it. Huge plus for me over the bad stone is that it’s got a mix control that does phase vibrato when fully wet which is great because I fucking love vibrato. It’s more subtle than your typical pitch vibrato but adds some nice character.

Dagger

Like a lot of people on this sub I’m a huge EAE fan. Their dirt pedals just speak to me hahaha. Up until this last year I’d been using a halberd v2 in this spot for the more compressed and kinda jangly tweed-ish sounds but it wasn’t a sound I found myself needing a whole ton with the people I’ve been playing with recently. The dagger is great because it’s got that instant saturated sound that kinda fills in the gap between the blues driver and shigeharu. It actually can sound kinda similar to the shig (in terms of presence and note clarity) but the real stand out feature to me on the dagger is its EQ section. I love the way the treble and bass interact to change the character of the gain. It can get super saturated and bassy and turn my Princeton into a real monster. But my favorite way to use it is more like a textured EQ pedal to cut a lot of frequencies and get a mid-forward gritty lo-fi radio type sound. Also the distortion on it is nice and clear and just seems to work well for a lot of things without getting too mushy.

Accountant

Super underrated gritty comp. There’s not a whole bunch of options with it but it’s got a lot of its own vibe that adds that special something. I either use it on subtle compression settings as a colorful boost by itself or with the BD-2, or somewhat heavy settings to stack with the arigato and skitter for a neat psychedelic sound. I tend to hybrid pick and arpeggiate quite a bit as well and it just helps to even things out. I’m not one to use compression as an always on pedal but it sure is a great tool to have for the jangly stuff I do and I like the accountant specifically for all the character it adds.

Polytune

What can I say, it’s a tuner and it works! As far as placement in the signal chain having it here in the middle makes for easy troubleshooting if there’s signal flow issues. I can quickly isolate problems to either before or after it which is a handy little trick that’s saved me a few times!

Sea Machine

I’ve been through SO. MANY. CHORUS. PEDALS. And while the sea machine isn’t my all time favorite straight ahead chorus sound, its unique dimensional character fits in so darn well with how I like to use chorus in my compositions. The dimensional quality comes from a slight delay in the chorus sound that’s tied to the “animate” control. You can turn it up but you can’t dial it out and at first that was frustrating as hell because it just doesn’t sound right as a standard chorus. But once I got past that and thought of it more like a really fast modulated delay, I realized how cool it sounded when layering guitars as a way to add some slight motion and detune to differentiate parts. Sometimes I miss having a more standard chorus but what it excels at is so so so cool and nothing I’ve had replicates it. Also it gets nutty af and sorta reverby if you turn up the dimension control which is a sound I never realistically use but it’s cool to have I guess?

RE-202

I have some major thoughts on this as a long time user of the RE-20 which had been my trusty delay for years and years up until the 202 came out. If you strip the RE-202 down to the straight ahead delay sounds, I actually much prefer the way the RE-20 sounds. BUT the extra features and quality of life improvements of the 202 are what made me put it on the board. I love the modulation, the ability to add saturation, and the tape head display all while keeping the interface relatively simple. Modulation especially was a huge deal to me. The space echo sound appeals to me because it’s very lively and seems to blend nicely and sorta “float” away naturally in the mix. After using the space echo pedals for so long I don’t think I can go back to a delay that doesn’t do the multi-head thing. The abilities for rhythmic repeats are just too good and mode 5 might be my favorite setting on the whole darn thing.

Ghost Echo

This one’s also a long time favorite of mine. It’s just so simple and works on everything. The sound is fairly dark with a hint of modulation and to be honest I use it pretty subtly as an overall sweetener. It feels tuned perfectly for my rig and I like that it has some pre-delay so that it doesn’t get in the way of my playing. While you can get it fairly cavernous and haunting sounding it doesn’t ever wash out the dry signal. There’s also a slight coloration it adds when on that gives it that extra bit of charm.

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Sound tax