Pedal Line Friday – 4/20 – Steve N. Mavronis

Today’s pedal line is from Steve N. Mavronis. 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.

Here are some photos of my Pedaltrain Mini pedal board for your Pedal Line Friday feature. My signal chain is: Fender Yngwie Malmsteen Stratocaster guitar into Boss NS-2 Noise Suppressor to Neo-Classic 3080 Compressor and Neo-Classic 741 Overdrive (both in the send/return NS-2 effects loop) to MXR Carbon Copy Analog Delay to Boss RC-3 Loop Station out to Marshall MG15FX Series 4 home practice amp, only using the clean channel and no on-board amp effects. I’m only a home guitar music enthusiast so this small effects rig is a perfect fit for my small row house environment.

The 2 Neo-Classic pedals are completely from scratch first time DIY builds that I made (in 2010 and 2011) of a 1979 ‘gray spec’ DOD 250 Overdrive and 1977 ‘script spec’ MXR Dyna Comp with no changes from the original circuit schematics and sound except the addition of true bypass, LED power indicator, and Boss style DC jack. You can get more details on these ‘non-commercial’ DIY effects projects on my Neo-Classic FX showcase website including interior gut shots. No one else has these pedals except my good friend American neoclassical shred guitarist Dean Cascione who I had made an extra copy of each as my special gift of appreciation for the music he creates, which inspires me to want to play better. Dean liked my gray 250 clone so much compared to others that he recorded all the guitar leads on his 2011 instrumental album Neoclassical Fire with it which made me feel honored! He will be recording his next album with both of them on his Furman SPB-8C pedal board. Of course with both of these type of gain increasing pedals used on at the same time a noise suppressor is recommended if higher settings are dialed in.

My next favorite pedals are the MXR Carbon Copy Analog Delay and the Boss RC-3 Loop Station. I like moderately low slap back echo type delay with an almost reverb like effect at the same time. I’m also having fun with the RC-3 creating loops to play along with as well as backing tracks copied to it via USB from my PC. It’s a great practice tool. I hope others find this relatively tame and simple setup interesting. It gets the job done without the temptation of effects overkill that a large pedal board rig would spoil me with.

Steve N. Mavronis