Drive Pedal Dilemmas

When I gave up using an amp to get my overdriven and distorted tones, and went with using pedals, it made sense. If I wanted a new drive tone, I could easily swap it out, for a pedal that gave me the sound I wanted. With the mini industry that effect pedals have become, the choices are pretty much endless.

For the longest time I used a Fulltone GT-500. I still think its a great blend of usable features; a fantastic distorted tone, with an super flexible EQ. Pair that with it's boost that has it's own EQ, and the choice of how to cascade one into another, it's pretty awesome. At times I used just the boost's drive cranked up as my main rhythm tone, and then just threw the distortion side in for a slight kick for solos and leads. It's not on my board at the moment, but I have no intent to part with it..

Then you get GAS. You get caught up in the frenzy of pedal junkie driven blogs (Guilty, right here!) gear forums, Facebook groups, never mind the onslaught of advertising done by the companies, and the "viral" youtube reviewers that somehow get the pedal early enough to do a video review, with great sound processing and production. Oh yeah and their home spun youtube channel releases their video nanoseconds after the pedal company posts the announcement. Gear junkie guitarists are like sharks, we sniff for blood in the water, then the frenzy ensues for the meat.

Last year I did a big pedal purge on reverb.com, I kept some select ones, but I still have WAY too many drive pedals. In the past, if I wasn't using a piece of gear for 6 months, it went up for sale. I mentioned parting ways previously with my Fender Prosonic and a Reverend guitar, and the remorse I felt, but I have no real trade-in or gear sale pedalwise that falls under the remorse category. I'm not a hoarder, I bet my wife might beg to differ though. At this point I'm a collector. Thankfully pedals are cheap, and in most cases smallish in size. The ability to change your tone with a small box is quite nice. But I've tried to keep my board to a minimum of 2 drive pedals.

1. A distortion pedal - Right now It's Vertex's Dynamic Distortion. It can go from cleanish boost, to TS drive, to Rat-tastic grind, and into sliky smooth fuzz. I like it somewhere between the Rat-ish and Fuzz areas. It totally killed my desire for a Rat Pedal.

2. A boost pedal - This kind of keeps floating around. I like my EHX Soul food, as it's got a nice color that interacts  well with pretty much every distortion pedal I have. There is some tweaking depending upon what pedal it's boosting though. Plus if I want, I can use that as an actual drive pedal. The second choice is the TC Electronic Spark drive. It's got a really flexible active EQ, so boosting and cutting lows and highs isn't a problem. There's a character switch that does a lot, I like it in the FAT mode. Plus like the EHX, it can be used as a primary drive. I like cranking the gain to Max, but the level control needs to be low or else it gets really loud and big, fast.

I actually won a pedal awhile back from Groff Amplification, their Imperial, which gets my vote for best marshall in a box sound. It can be used as a boost, as well, with lower gain settings and higher levels. But again, turning the gain back up, and the level down, it can do a really nice drive tone. Its one of those pedals that on it's own, with just me and my amp is good, but when I kick it in, with the band going, it really shines with it's own tonal space that compliments everything!

Pedals won are sweeter than pedals bought. I've pretty much entered in some kind of "win this" contest for musical gear since I started playing guitar, and never won anything, so I guess I was overdue. Happy to say it's a pedal I probably would have bought. Somehow they chose the name Imperial, and found out that some other company is using it, so they'll be re-naming it in the future.

But with just 2 dirty pedals on my board means a lot of my pedals are sitting out in the cold. Now at times I feel frisky and swap out the boost pedal, for another drive, or a fuzz. But the remainder of the time the pedals sit on a shelf. They're boxes of wires and junk. But I often see my Madprofessor Twimble pedal sitting there. I wonder if they come to life like the toys in toy story when I'm not around.