Pedal Line Friday – 6/27 – Al Russell

Today’s pedal line is from Al Russell. 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 have been following your site for a few months now and really like being able to see what other people are using and how they lay out their boards.

My name is Al and my full time job is as a brewer at a craft brewery. I have been playing in bands since I was 15 (I am now 31) and currently play in my churches praise team. When not playing worship music, I like to play a little bit of everything, but am especially into classic rock and stoner rock. I am currently trying to get a guitar oriented 80’s cover band together, because that would just be way too much fun.

Here is the info on my pedalboard:

Misc:

Board: My dad is quite the craftsman and built this for me from scratch when I was 16 or 17. It has served me well ever since. I have made some modifications over the years, but the basic shell is the same and it is both burly and easy to use. I just wish it was not quite so heavy.

Footswitch: When playing through an amp, I use my Traynor YCV-50 Blue’s drive channel for all of my dirt and kick the boost on for leads, so the foot switch is an important part of my setup.

Power: I use a T-Rex Fuel Tank Chameleon to power all my pedals. I chose this because it’s versatile enough to power just about any pedal out there.

Cables: I know a lot of guys are into the George L solderless stuff and it makes your board look really neat and nice, but I used to work as a stagehand and prefer good old patch cables. It makes it a lot easier to swap something out if a problem arises during a performance and I trust soldered connections way more than solderless.

Pedal Risers: I actually discovered these from following this site. I only have one currently and use wood blocks for the other two back row pedals, but they work so well that I will be buying more.

Routing:

For direct/headphones: Boss TU-2-> Budda Bud-Wah-> VintageFX ColorDrive-> Joyo ACTone-> Earthquaker Dispatch Master-> Boss DD-20

For playing through my amp: Boss TU-2-> Budda Bud-Wah-> VintageFX ColorDrive-> Traynor YCV50Blue-> Loop send-> Earthquaker Dispatch Master-> Boss DD-20-> Loop return

Routing notes: I actually re-patch my board to route it one of two different ways. Pictured is my setup for going direct or using headphones. When I run it through my amp, I put my Dispatch Master and DD-20 through the effects loop and bypass the ACTONE. Ideally, the dispatch master would be after my DD-20 due to the fact that it has reverb, but it’s easier to setup a stacked delay with it in front of the Boss and it sounds just fine in that position anyway. Also, the DD-20 has a headphone out so that makes it super easy to run it last and plug some cans in for silent jammage.

Pedals:

Boss TU-2: Just a great tuner and also works as a buffer to push my signal through the true bypass pedals at the beginning of my chain.

Budda Bud-Wah  (Rev. B): Out of all my current pedals, I have owned this the longest. I originally bought it because I was having tone suck issues with my Crybaby and this was true bypass. It turned out to be a great sounding wah and has served me well over the years. Not sure what the new ones are like, but this one’s a dandy.

VintageFX ColorSound: My wife bought me this as a present. It is modeled after the old Colorsound overdrive and I use it mostly as a slight clean boost to add some character and gain to my dirty sounds. It’s also fun to crank up the gain once and awhile as it yields a nice singing lead tone in the higher registers and a wooly stoner tone on the lower stuff.

Joyo ACTONE:  I currently work 3rd shift and after a lot of research, I bought this as the cheapest/best sounding solution to having a headphone amp. Turns out that it sounds so good, I go direct through it at church every week.

Earthquaker Dispatch Master:  My newest addition. I was looking for a reverb pedal when going direct (my amp has a nice, large spring reverb tank) and stumbled across this. The reverb sounds a lot like a vintage plate to me and is very sweet sounding. It can get HUGE and the fact that it also has a great analog sounding delay is just icing on the cake. When I am messing around and start twisting knobs, this is my go to pedal.

Boss DD-20:  In my opinion the best delay in it’s price range. Sounds great, super versatile, lots of features and well built. I especially like the analog, tape and modulation delay settings. I used to have a phaser and a chorus on my board, but with some tweaking the modulation setting on this pedal ended up replacing both of those effects.

I dig the site. Keep up the good work!

-Al