Pedal Line Friday – 5/14 – Chris Mintie

Today’s pedal line is from Chris Mintie. If you have a pedal line (doesn’t have to be in a board) for your rig, please email me a photo, bio, description of pedals and routing to pedalline@nulleffectsbay.com. Every Friday I’ll showcase a pedal line submission. Make sure you include any links to your band or music page.

I have been playing guitar for the last 20+ years, and played in many different style of bands. anything from top 40 covers, classic rock covers,to original bands. I have bought, sold, and traded more gear,(especially pedals) over the years than I even care to think, when it comes to the amount of money I have spent. But in doing so I have gained what feel is a greater understanding of how pedals work together, (and how some don’t). And i’m sure if the internet and things like youtube, and sites like effectsbay were around back say 15 years ago I might have been able to have saved alot of money. So for this new generation and for future guitarist, they have the resources readily avialable to find out first if its what they are looking for before they make that purchase.

So with that being said, this is my pedalboard. its really like having 2 pedalboards working together. First my guitar is plugged to a roland GK-3 pickup which then carries the signal to my pedalboard.

1.) Roland GR-33 guitar synth. (with this synth working in conjunction with the gk-3 pickup,i can use the 3 way selector switch on the pickup to either bypass the synth signal and get just the dry guitar signal, divide the synth signal with the dry guitar signal, get direct synth signal with no dry guitar signal). Sending the signal using the synth bypass on the GK-3 it sends the direct guitar signal to the other pedals without the synth in the mix. This then sends the dry guitar signal to pedal #2.

2.) Skinkontrol Mintie Multi Fuzz pedal. This pedal was custom built for me by jason marshall and his Skinkontrol company. A great 3 way fuzz pedal that can use 1 or all 3 fuzz pedals in any order. It has a muff fuzz clone, a bazzfuss fuzz clone, and a fuzz pedal he devised and calls the Skinwave. This effect can get that 8bit original nintendo video game sound, or filter to a razor thin fuzz signal almost to the point of a crackle,or speaker blown sound.

3.) The classic Vox wah pedal. not much to say about this one. It speaks for itself. I use this if I want to get just a wah effect on the dry guitar signal and not on the synth signal, if I use the split signal on the GK-3.

4.) Skin-ei Fuzz pedal. Another Skinkontrol pedal. This was the very first one jason marshall made of this model. It is a clone based on the 60’s famous Shin-ei Fuzz pedal. A perfect match to the original. great 60’s tone. (check this out) circuitbentlasergun.com

5.) Ernie Ball volume pedal. Also not much to explain on this pedal. I use this volume to control only the dry guitar signal and guitar effects signal. The synth signal is not controlled with this.

6.) Line 6 DM4 distortion modeler. A great selection of classic distortion and fuzz pedals. I have 4 saved settings. 1.) big muff, 2.)clean boost,3.) metalzone, 4.) octivia fuzz.

7.) Skinkontrol Skin Flick(er) tremelo pedal. First one Jason Marshall made of this model. It’s basically 2 effects in one. A tremelo pedal as well as a clean boost. A great tremelo pedal with warm tones and very useable, with the bonus of adding clean boost.

8.) Digitech Whammy pedal. this is the pedal where I split the signal to stereo. I use this pedal mostly for the octave 1 up and 2 up. Sometimes the octave 1 down. These effects sound great alone or even better with delay.

9.) Line 6 Echo Park delay pedal. I use this for delay when I am using the Dl4 for looping purposes.

10.) Line 6 FM4 filter modeler. Alot of crazy effects in this pedal. Don’t use it much more than for crazy background noises.

11.) Line 6 MM4 modulation modeler. This pedal has again clones of some of the greatest chorus, flanger, phaser, tremelo, leslie effects that are available. I mostly use it for chorus, phaser, and leslie.

12.) Line 6 DL4 delay modeler. This pedal clones some of the greatest delay effects ever created. This pedal is quickly becoming a classic in itself. I use this not only for great delay, but I also use it for looping.

13.) Line 6 Verbzilla reverb pedal. A great reverb pedal with a great selection of reverbs. Anything from classic spring reverbs to sonic u2 ambient sounding octave reverb.

14.) Line 6 FBV floorboard. this unit is powered by my Line 6 Flextone 3 xl 2×12 stereo combo amp. I use this to add even more effects and amp selections stored on my amp. I can also use its volume pedal to control the overall volume of my whole signal. The same goes for its wah. It will add wah to not only the dry guitar signal and effects, but also the synth signal as well.

I use a lot of Line 6 products because I think they get great tone, and are reliable. I have been using there products now for over 10+ years and don’t plan on stop using them anytime soon. I will say, check out Skinkontrol pedals. They are great sounding, well built, and you know they are all built one at a time by Jason Marshall. They have that boutique feel. They’re not like the boss, or Digitech, and now ZVex pedals which are built on an assembly line. Check them out at circuitbentlasergun.com.

I am into alot of pink floyd, porcupine tree, radiohead sounds, and this setup lets me recreate the best of those things and more. and when you run that in stereo it makes it that much better. But if I want to recreate my other passion in music(GRUNGE) I can get nirvana, smashing pumpkins, soungarden, alice in chains, just as easy.