Pedal Line Friday – 9/2 – Richard Western

Today’s pedal line is from Richard Western. 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 play guitar with backing vocals for Stone Giant. We are a Vancouver Island Slug Rock band. I can’t provide you with audio samples… sorry. I plug my Les Paul into the awesome and powerful Twosome by Blackout Effectors, which is really two pedals. One; their Fix’d Fuzz with an outstanding retro feel and the Musket, furious distortion. Then to a Korg tuner. I used to go into the tuner first but it’s such a tight fit into the pedal case I would have to unplug the Twosome each time. I mostly use the tuner as an audio cut off anyway. From there we continue our voyage into the Analog MXR Delay. The Modulation button will change your life. Next is for more subtle distortion, Turbo Rat. I use this mostly for looping rhythm. Now, the Looper; Boss Loop Station RC-30 with enough recording time to record a whole set plus two more. That feeds into my Marshall AVT-2000. It’s not the most popular head, but it is with me. The sound, mixed with these pedals are bodacious. That feeds into a Line 6 4×12 cab. That other pedal you see is only on the board in storage. When set up it sits next to the board but is wired into the Loop Station and out to a PA. It’s the best vocal effects combo. I think TC Helicon is breaking their line into single pedals now.

There’s more, one more very important piece… the board! I made it out of a chunk of plywood I had kicking around. I put one long leg on the back to angle it and a riser in the opposite angle on the top, back to flatten and raise the resting place for the back pedals. I hot glued very heavy cloth I picked up from a fabric store. It’s a long haired, shag, animal pattern fur. I’ve secured all my stomp boxes to it with zap straps. If you’re really daring, you can drill two holes in the bottom of your pedals to attach the zap straps, so you can’t see them. I only did this with one, the Rat.

-Richard Western