Pedal Line Friday – 8/22 – Jez Main

Today’s pedal line is from Jez Main. 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 iany links to your band or music page.

Hi

I’m Jez Sullivan. I’m based in the UK on the outskirts of London. Ive played in a variety of bands over the years. But I’m currently bandless & looking for a gig.

This my most recent pedalboard. I also have a Guitarblog www.jeztone.com which is an outlet to vent my spleen on all things guitar. In 2008 I made an album with Nottingham alt band Heroes of Switzerland, which is on iTunes & Tonevendor.com. We fused Shoegaze ambience with Classic Rock aplomb.

I tend to use a Fender Richie Kotzen Tele as my main guitar which I greymarket imported from Japan a decade ago. I also play a PRS Custom 22. I like versatile guitars with fat necks.

My Pedalboard is currently a Pedaltrain Jr. I used to use a Pedaltrain 2, with a few more pedals but I wanted to cut my rig down in size. A Pedaltrain 2 is too big. So my rig has now evolved on grounds of space & size, while still trying to be versatile.

All pedals are powered by a Cioks AC10 mounted underneath the board. I had to put bigger feet on the Pedaltrain to do this though.

Signal Path is as follows

Dunlop 95 Wah Wah: Ive had this for 20 years, I only tend to use it as a tone filter with an Ebow & reverb. But its on the board because of sentimentality as much as anything else. Its been sprayed green in the 90’s & probably played 100’s of gigs. A talisman if you like, but I do like the sound of it in bypass mode, it takes a tiny bit of top off the signal which I prefer.

Boss TU2 Tuner/Bypass : Does what it says on the tin

Boss SD-1 Super Overdrive: A Keeley Mod clone I bought off eBay for £50, mainly used to boost the other main distortion for solo’s. Its cleaner than a normal SD-1 & a lot louder.

Goosoniqueworx 7thvn : My main Distortion. Its a 2 channel JFET ( Junction Field Effect Transistor)  unit which I run at 12vDC, at 9v it sounds good, but at 12v its incredibly punchy with masses of headroom & low end. Its high gain, but incredibly quiet. Almost as if it has a noise gate, but I suspect its just very well designed. Something of a cult classic. Easily the best “amp in a box” type unit I’ve heard. Very dynamic & touch sensitive. If I boost the front end with the SD1 its great for searing leads. The low gain green mode is a milder overdrive which sounds great with the Vox.

J Rockett Audio Designs 10 Ton Hammer : I’ve had a variety of distortions on the board, Blackstar HT Dual, Suhr Riot, Carl Martin Plexitone single etc etc, but this is the most recent addition. Its just for secondary tones. Its very very high gain, but extremely good fun. A little noisy compared to the 7thvn though.

The next two units are on a pedal riser so I can tap dance.

Line 6 M5: i used to use the Line 6 DL4 delay on an FX loop with a channel switching amp. But once I tried it direct, it sucked tone. Then I realised this was cheaper, smaller, had all the same sounds, a better buffer & more presets. My main delay unit, but theres a few other reverbs, chorus’ , tremelo & Leslie effects on it too. A great buy too.

Boss DD3: Again Ive tried loads of delays over the years, TC Novadelay, Marshall Echohead etc…but the DD3 is a great no nonsense secondary delay which I often use with the M5 together for “synchronous” delays. Set at 450 ms repeats ala Dave Gilmour. Then it goes out to the amp

This is all fed into a newish Vox AC30 C2 running loud & clean.

Regards

Jez Sullivan