Pedal Line Friday – 7/5 – Florent Paris

Today’s pedal line is from Florent Paris. 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.

Hi effects bay !

Here’s my french contribution for your friday’s pedal line !

So basically the first board is for both my guitars (Fender Jazzmaster & an old Alan Scott’s electro accoustic guitar), and the second board is for Voice/Toy Keyboard/Mandolin/Hurdy Gurdy… I play mainly for my solo ambient/post-rock instrumental project called Hors Sujet, and you can find all the latest news here: www.facebook.com/horssujetmusic

Now about the gear itself (attached picture)

PB#1

SHO clone  : Made by a french compagny called Crust Pedals. A great way for me to boost the incoming signal into the pedalboard. Plus the Crust pedal’s guys are really kind and did a custom paint just for me ! You can trust the Crust!

Buzz Electronics ABY box : Allows me to change between my Jazzmaster and the electro-accoustic.

Boss FV500: I’ve got this one for ages (since the beginning of my project), nothing to say about it since it does its job perfectly.

Korg Pitchblack : Super tuner, it’s the only one I’ve ever had. I often play in small places without lights (my 2 last concerts were in a tent, so…), but the lights can spread through in any dark places!

Looper Reverser DIY  This is the kind of thing that change the pedal’s order. I built this one to be able to change the path when I’ve got a sample running on my Boss RC2 & on the Kaoss PAD III, that way I can apply any effect on the samples (since they’re at the end of the path).

DIY 5 knobs compressor  I really wasn’t aware of compressor before buying this one, but now I couldn’t play without it. I don’t really use it for its “main” purpose, I always engage it when I play with Bows, screwdrivers etc…

Zvex Instant Lofi I love the immediate and typical vintage compressed sound it can delivers, and although it doesn’t fit everywhere you can get a subtil and delightful sound with it. It works VERY VERY well when the EHX Freeze is freezing a note.

Digitech Whammy Too many things to say about the Whammy. When I bought it, the dude told me “A lot of people get the whammy for its typical sound (he was talking about the tracking sound)”, I realized what he meant after a long play with it. I use the one octave up/down a lot (specially with overdrives), the one octave down gives me a strong bass sound (since I’m playing solo, it’s perfect), and I can get a lot of glitches from the 1/2 octaves up that I can sample on the Kaoss PAD III to play them reversed.

Ibanez TS9 My main sound. It gives me its lovely crunch. Always had it, I’ll never get rid of it.

Fulltone OCD My big overdrive. It’s sharp, it can gets darker, very versatile and nice overdrive. It was supposed to replace my TS9, but I often play with the TS9+Fulltone OCD.

EHX Big Muff Really awesome fuzz ! Big wall of sound, infinite sustain, and when I use it with the whammy = fat bass !

Marshall JH1 My sister bought it when she was learning guitar, 11 years ago, when she stopped the guitar, guess who took it. When this one comes, it gets dirty. I always use it with the Whammy dry+One octave down.It gives me a strong, low and fat overdrive.

EHX#1 Echo Clean delays. I do a lot of slapback echoes with it, the blend knob can be strange at the first attempts, but once you get it, you’ll love it.

Sib! Mr Echo My favorite so far.For his warm decay and the craziness of the self-oscillation (if you press the Slam switch, you’ll never forget it). I’m still amazed by the harsh noise it can produce. This one was hard to get (I had to get it on american ebay, and ask for the man to send it to France…that wasn’t easy believe me). Back in these days I get it for 80$.

DIY Belton Spring Reverb  I use this one for subtil reverb, like rooms. The tone know allows me to get a rich and bigger reverb if I put the trail to the max, but I really like the “I’m here but you can’t tell” kind of reverb I can get with.

Boss RV3 Perfect pedal. It has the 100% wet, the reverb+delay, and the delay itself.

Boss TR2 The first tremolo I had, I just consider to mod it with the “Chante-Cloche” mod (by Msm Workshop). I’m not that much of a modulation guy, but I like this one. This is the best example of “I bought it when I built the board, it’s hard to imagine it without this pedal, haha)

Another Looper Reverser This one allows me to change the order of the RC2 and the Kaoss Pad III, to avoid double overdubs. When there’s some sample played on the RC2, the Kaoss Pad has to be first to avoid re-recording RC2’s samples, and vice-versa.

Boss RC-2 + DIY footswitch Small, incredibly useful, although I don’t use all the presets it’s the main pedal of my righ. Everything goes in, a looooot of things are sampled there, and since I’m playing solo it’s a great tool to play live with. Coupled with the Kaoss Pad = BOOM.

Kaoss Pad III : Such a powerful and incredible tool for musical creativity, a lot of different effects and since it’s a tactil unit it’s a great way to experiment unusual settings. I really like the stutter effects of its looper and the sampler’s effects. I often record small and little layers, like swells or bowed strings for exemple.

EHX Freeze Just bought it last year, I’m even considering to buy a Super Ego now. This little pedal is amazing, you can go from simple layers to really weird things (by playing on the guitar’s head for ex.)

T1M Buffer : End buffer, just to enhance the tone & gain loss before the amp. And when I say “enhance”, I’m talking about a REALLY NICE enhancement with this one !

PB#2

DIY ABY box  Simple, efficient.

Boss LS2 (I plug a lot of different things into the second channel) : Very nice pedal. You can do pretty much what you want with it. I’m running a mic, a casio sk1, a Bontempi’s keyboard, a mandoline and a Hurdy Gurdy into it.

EHX Memory Boy : Haha, the modulation is really fun to play with, the analog sound of the echoes is really nice, fun pedal !

Ibanez TS9dx I bought it when my TS9 was repaired, now I use it when I sing. I only use the TS9 mod on it, the others are a little bit too dark for voice/keyboards.

The rig itself is constantly changing, and there’s some of them I keep just because I really have strong feelings for. I made the flight case myself a couple of years ago, it’s pretty heavy but I’ve got a lot of things to carry when I play live, so that’s not really a problem since it doesn’t move that much.

Needless to say that I’m always considering a lot of new gear to try, the more important thing is the sound itself and how to improve what’s in your head and how to draw it with music. If you wanna know what I do with all that, feel free to go on my facebook, my website, or even to browse my videos. Here it is, thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed !

Florent Paris | Hors Sujet
Toulouse, France