Pedal Line Friday – 5/10 – Al Oomens

Today’s pedal line is from Al Oomens. 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.

Greetings! I’ve been following Effects Bay on Twitter for a while now, and pedal line Friday  as well as your give-aways. I though I’d send you a picture and description of my pedal board. It’s rather small, but that’s because it was built to be exactly what I needed, and no more. It’s actually quit functional. Below, I describe not only the pedals I use, but also a little bit about why I chose them, and how they are used together. Hope you find it interesting and/or useful.

My pedalboard consists of:
– Strymon OB.1 – optical compressor and boost
– Ibanez PQ9 – semi-parametric EQ
– Earthquaker Devices Speaker Cranker – overdrive
– Earthquaker Devices Dispatch Master – reverb and delay
– A/DA GCS-2 – speaker cabinet simulator/direct box
– Pedaltrain Mini pedalboard
– Visual Sound OneSpot & small transformer based power supply

This board was put together for (mostly) clean sounds with the ability to run directly into the board and maintain the tone and feel of playing through a miked amp. While at first glance it may seem like a fairly simple board, a lot of thought went into each pedal used. All the features of each pedal are useful, and work well together with no duplication of features.

The OB.1 is the most transparent guitar compressor I have heard so far. When you switch it on there virtually no change in the perceived tone of the guitar. I leave it on almost all the time. It also features a separate foot switch for boost. You can select treble boost,  mid boost or flat boost. The treble boost gives me a nice bright sound without sounding thin.

The Ibanez PQ9 is the only vintage pedal in my board. It is from the Ibanez ‘9’ series of the early 80’s (the TS9 was from this series). I use it to duplicate the sound of the tonestack of a Fender amp. With the sweep-ablemid, I found it very easy to do. If I am running only into my amp, I just switch this off. This is a real nice, musical EQ.

For overdrive I chose the EQD Speaker Cranker. It is a dead simple (one knob!), great sounding overdrive. I already have the tone I like so I don’t need tone controls. At the lowest setting it adds just a bit of breakup for chords without drastically changing my tone. At higher levels it automatically increases the volume so the perceived volume remains the same. Still without drastically changing the tone of my guitar. If I want that mid-boosted overdrive sound, I just click on the mid boost on the OB.1.

I’m one of those players that can’t live without reverb. For that I chose the EQD Dispatch Master. This pedal combines reverb and delay. The reverb is not a spring type,  but again, it really lets the natural tone of the guitar through, even at pretty drastic settings. I keep this on all the time, usually with a little delay.

The last item is the A/DA GCS-2. This is a superb direct box. It is switchable to emulate both modern and vintage speakers, closed and open back cabinets, as well as 10 or 12 inch speakers. There is also a control to simulate different mic placement. I use the through output to go to my amp and the mic output direct to the board. It really does a great job of emulating the sound and feel of a mic’d cabinet.

The first four pedals are powered by a Visual Sound OneSpot, daisy chained. The GCS-2 uses its own transformer based wall wart supply. The pedals are mounted to a Pedaltrain Mini pedalboard and connected using Monster Cable interconnects.

It all ends up being a fairly small board, but more versatile than it would first appear. And, most importantly, gives me all the sounds I want, whether plugged into my amp or going directly into the board (or both)!