Pedal Line Friday – 3/14 – Andrew J. Clark

Today’s pedal line is from Andrew J. Clark. 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.

Hello,

This is my current set up I am using while playing in my band, Bow Tie Affair (we are a cover band in Kansas City). I primarily use a Gibson Les Paul running into a Vox AC30C2. I also use a Gretsch 5422 and Fender American Strat from time to time.

Signal Path:
Guitar > TC Electronics PolyTune, Dunlop Crybaby Wah, MXR Phase 90, Fulltone OctaFuzz, Maxon OD9, ProCo Rat ’85 Reissue, ISP Decimator > Amp
FX Loop > Joyo 6 Band Equalizer, Boss TR-2 Tremolo, MXR Analog Chorus, TC Electronic Flashback, EHX Holy Grail Reverb Nano

Description:
The path between the guitar and amp is pretty basic. I like to place my phaser before my dirt pedals, and I like to place my overdrive before my distortion. I find my modulation pedals sound better in my AC30C2’s loop. Being in a cover band, I’m often playing clean, but I like to stack my modulation pedals together to get some cool, trippy sounds that add some flavor to the song.

PolyTune – I like being able to strum all the strings at once to see where I need to tune up. When playing at a bar, the owners and staff like you to keep things moving, especially when the crowd is dancing. The PolyTune helps me tune up quickly.

Crybaby – I don’t use the wah very often, just occasionally for some funky tunes we play like Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On”

Phase 90 – I like to keep the knob around 8:00 for a subtle, slow-moving phase. Just to add a little flavor to my cleans or leads.

OctaFuzz – I recently got this and am still trying to figure out how to best use the Octave Up switch. The pedal allows you to switch between an octave up fuzz or just a normal fuzz. I’ve been using just the normal fuzz right now. I’m not a big fuzz player, but I’m hoping I can get this pedal down to do some cool Hendrix-style soloing.

OD-9 – A lot of our songs call for a light OD, just a little crisp, and the Maxon does this well. It also can give the Rat a nice push.

Rat – Primarily used for solos and crunchy rhythm tones that might require some palm muting. I like a sense of dynamics in our songs – mellow, clean verses and loud chorus. Stomping on the rat and striking the chords hard gives me what I’m looking for.

Decimator – A must-have with the Rat. I usually just leave it on unless the song lacks any distorted parts. It also comes in handy when I’m playing with my Gretsch hollow-body, which produces some intense feedback.

EQ – I use this in my loop as my solo boost. Gives me an increase in volume and lets me tweak my lead tone a bit (for example, I like to boost my mids instead of highs so my AC30 isn’t too piercing).

Tremolo – I rarely use this pedal… I like to turn the knobs up all the way and produce an echoing, choppy sound. Sounds cool when strumming a chord with some distortion.

Chorus – I try to dial this in for a subtle setting… I like to pair it with my delay and phaser when producing some atmospheric tones.

Delay – I’m a huge delay fan. I love using a subtle delay on my solos as well as my clean picking. The flashback has a lot of cool settings available with the turn of a knob and sounds great!

Reverb – I use a little reverb via my amp already, so I use the Holy Grail for more over-the-top reverb tones.

There you have it! Nothing too crazy, but I get a lot of cool tones by stacking a lot of these together and it provides pretty much any tone you would want in a cover band.

Cheers,

Andrew J. Clark