Pedal Line Friday – 3/4 – Ben Winn

Today’s pedal line is from Ben Winn. 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.

Attached is a picture of my current pedal line: I like this because I can get about any sound I want and some I never would have thought of. My only disapointment is that I am out of room: I may upgrade to a bigger case but right now this one fits the footprint I am aloud to have in my music room: If you could e-mail my wife and tell her she doesn’t need a piano………

I generally run a modded fender strat or tele-and play through an Epi Valve Junior head and cab or a Peavey Bandit I built into a head (it’s my profile pic on twitter – hbombgraphics) or a first act V-stack 80 watt Combo: Don’t laugh, sadly underrated amp that they don’t make any more (I tried to get another one)

Pedals are listed in signal chain order not physical layout order, if I have a good reason why I will provide it. Basically I like the sound of Dirt running into phaser and octave effects for some things and the sound of dirt behind phaser and octave effects for other things.

Here is the rundown:

Electro Harmonics Russian Big Muff: Best Big muff I have ever played or owned: Just massive bass and very interesting clarity to it, almost sounds like some clean signal bleeds through.

Z-Vex Fuzz Factory: Just a beast of a fuzz pedal, sounds awesome but has to be before any buffered pedals to really sound great. I like to set it up pretty gated but then roll the gate back with my foot so it oscillates at pitch: Great fun for looping.

3 Leaf Audio Groove Regulator: This has officially replaced my wah- which was a staple on my boards for 14 years. tons of great sounds and easily tweakable. With Dirt it sounds

Keeley 4 Knob Compressor: Replaced my square button Ibanez from the late 70’s, great squish and sustain, leave it on alot for clean tones.

Fuzzhugger Arc Flash: I have it set to the lower gain mode as a nice Gritty OD, but it does the splattery fuzz thing just as well, my main Overdrive is a fuzz!!

Boss PH-3 Phaser: Very Versatile, mine has minimal volume drop if any: This is the second one I have owned, I set to 8 stage, but use the step function for space noises.

Boss OC-2 Octave: The lowest octave is glitchy and it doesn’t like chords at all: but it is perfect for riffing and adding some low dirt.

Z-Vex Mastotron:Gets run with the octave pedal alot, if I could only keep one fuzz this may be it because it will do almost anything and fit anywhere in a signal chain. Between this and the octave pedal I have a blue box on steroids!

Line 6 Uber Metal: Won the metal pedal shootout to make the board: I usually use for heavy riffs but it does great lead tones if you use a neck humbucker and roll the tone back it almost does a Rat sound. The Gate is magical, also the Buffer in this pedal is awesome, Ran it through a true bypass loop and you could hear the difference, gives me tone back at this point in the signal chain.

Pigronix Disnortion: I use the upper octave alot but the Overdrive on this is awesome. Great crunch tones and if you push the tone all the way up on the OD it bypasses it completely. Fuzz is set to the highest EQ setting almost like a top boost.

Electro Harmonix Small Clone: My 5th or 6th chorus pedal but this one is a beauty: Great warble, works well with other pedals: Specifically Comp and Delay

Empress Tap Tremolo: I set this to a rounder less choppy trem and use the tap feature to match it up with any loops I have created.

Earthquaker Devices Hummingbird: Does the extreme choppy stuff better than any trem ever: Level knob lets it really cut through.

Boss SYB-3 Bass Synth: If you can hear the theme to inspector gadget in your head you have a good understanding of how I have this pedal set up, great synth sounds, levels can get a little tricky.

Ibanez DE-7 Delay Echo: Tried to take this off my board a few weeks back and my youngest 17 Months old now, looked sad picked it up and put it back in place: She loves the knobs, plays with them all the time, and she was right to put it back, great delay sounds if you need one versatile delay you can’t go wrong with this one for the price.

Analogman Modded Maxon Ad-9 Delay: My analog Delay!, best I have owned: Analog man fixes the volume dropout, set for a short delay with many repeats, has to sit up front because the switch is not my favorite (you can’t toe tap this) It will self oscillate pretty effectively.

Digitech Timebender Delay: I use the presets to store some extreme delays with some upper octaves, it does some awesome stuff, more than I yet fully understand. Also has a looper with a visual cue to when the loop is finished, for ambient stuff without a big riff it is better than the loop station.

Boss RC-2 Loop Station: My main looper i love to layer parts through this, feels like it has unlimited looping abilities although I may hit the end some day.

I run a bullet cable Black coily (so I am not a complete GMD copy) into the front of the board, and the cables are a combo of Livewires, Homeade, and Core X2 pedal board kit cables (they are super easy to use sound great but are crazy stiff): I like the cables I have, they don’t break and sound good: not the most high end but I would put the sound and ease of use up against anything.

Power is 2 Visual sound one spots: Tried a few others, these are the best and Visual sound customer service is awesome: I cut off most of the long chord so I didn’t have to coil it all up on my board.
The Time Bender and Disnortion have their own power supplies.

I use this board for jamming with friends, jamming with myself (thanks to the Rc-2) and for any guitar opportunities that come up.

Case is from Rondo Music and I replaced the bottom velcro with Carpet:

If Needed I have a satellite board with an – EQ MXR KFK – Boss NS-2 Noise Suppressor – Whirlwind ABY switch – MXR Bass DI: This is basically available if I go somewhere where they are insistent I don’t need an amp and want me to run into their PA system, I usually use a smaller Valve Junior Combo of the the Whirlwind and the Bass DI goes to the house.

Everything seems pretty indestructible, my daughter likes to crawl over the pedals and tweak knobs and I never have signal issues.
Runs very quiet as well: Good combination of true and buffered bypass. I think the issue people might have with buffered bypass is that they place their fuzzes after buffers: My russian muff and Fuzz Factory will not tolerate this. But the buffered pedals need to be there or I have major signal losses at the end of the chain.

2 Things to add:
1: Of all the pedals I show here the only 2 I bought new were the mastotron and Uber Metal, I have been very fortunate with used gear and we have a great music shop in town that has awesome used pedals. Music City Vestal NY!!

2: While I haven’t dealt with everyone on the list the pedal builders I have dealt with are awesome, particularly the people at Z-Vex (which is normally Zack himself) Fuzzhugger Effects and Visual Sound: Awesome customer service!

If anyone has questions or wants to just chatter about gear You can find me at:
pedalnerd@nullyahoo.com
or
Hbombgraphics on both the gear page and twitter.

More pics of all my gear and projects also on my facebook
Ben Winn