Pedal Line Friday – 11/28 – David Kerwood

Today’s pedal line is from David Kerwood. 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.

Name: David Kerwood
Band: Dave Kerwood Group

Guitars: Gibson Les Paul Traditional Pro, Fender Standard Stratocaster, Fender Deluxe Nashville Telecaster

Amplifiers: Traynor YCV40WR, Egnater Tweaker 15, Tech 21 Blonde (for going direct to PA)

Signal path:

Korg Pitch Black:  Needs no real explanation.  I like sending a clean signal into the tuner before it hits anything else.  I also own a Boss TU-2, but the PB grabs the signal faster.

Expandora Clone:  I’m not entirely happy with this one.  I was hoping to find some fuzz/overdrive tones in this box, which I can, but only at the very edge of its gain sweep (as you can see, the gain knob is almost off).  It has some amazing tones and is the most versatile dirt pedal I own, but doesn’t quite fit the need.

JHS Mini Foot Fuzz:  Great lead tone fuzz.  Cuts right through and doesn’t take up much space in doing so.  I use this the most out of all my fuzzes.

Devi Ever US Fuzz:  This fuzz is the most extreme “Velcro” style fuzz I own.  It may be coming off the board soon, because I very rarely find a use for it that heavy distortion doesn’t fit better.  Still a very cool pedal, and I’m working hard to find a good function for this one.

AMT WH-1 wah:  I love this wah.  It sounds killer and comes in a small footprint.  It’s pretty versatile and cuts just like I want it to.  Very similar to the Crybaby tone, but unique enough to be interesting.  I did discover that I still had to preserve space below for my heel, but I was able to save space by having my toe go over the edge of the pedalboard.  It would work equally well on the front line of pedals or on any kind of riser.

JMK Special Edition Orange Compressor:  One knob.  Simple.  I am halfheartedly looking for something a little more tweakable, but this thing definitely gets it done for the “quacky” compression I’m mostly looking for.

Danelectro TO-1:  The classic low drive pedal.  I use it as a boost and also to slightly dirty up a very clean tone.  I leave it on almost all the time with my Telecaster, and use it more as an effect with my Gibson and my Strat.

MI Audio Blues Pro Overdrive:  The most amp-like of my overdrives.  This is my main overdrive when looking for a Voxy sound.  It mates well with my Traynor amp.

Visual Sound Jekyll & Hyde V2: I rocked an original grey J&H from 2002 until it started failing on me a few years ago.  Then I picked this up and love it even more.  TS808 on one side and Marshally goodness on the other.  This pedal is “my” sound.

Tornado Alley FX boost:  Just a “crackle OK” circuit.  I use the Dano TO-1 to dirty up my dirty tones, but I use this boost to make those tones louder.

VFE Old School Tremolo:  An awesome trem.  Just as subtle or extreme as you’d like, and the voltage switch is a nice level of tweakability.  The only thing this can’t do well is the extreme chop/square wave type of trem, which I rarely want.

EHX Small Clone:  The classic.  I am starting to move away from the classic chorus, though, so I don’t know how long this will stay on my board.  Definitely looking into some more complex multi-stage choruses.

EHX Freeze:  This was a gamble for me- I bought it online without much knowledge about it, but I absolutely love it.  It’s a momentary sampler which is perfect for pads.  I run it directly into the M9 so I can modulate the crap out of the Freeze’s loop.

Line 6 M9:  The M9 is kind of my swiss army knife of effects.  I mostly use it for modulation and delay, but if I ever need an effect for just one song in a set, I’ll set it up here instead of buying a new pedal (and dedicating board space).  I love almost everything about this unit, although if I do really get into a specific effect (for example, fuzz or trem), I’ll search for a standalone that will generally have a little more subtlety.  I use two foot controllers made by This1smyne- the top is a “preset” switch that alternates between two extremes.  I use it for delay presets where I don’t want or need to blend between.  The second is that big knob, which works exactly like an expression pedal, but in a much smaller space.

Line 6 Verbzilla:  I originally bought the Verbzilla because I loved the M9’s reverbs and wanted it for a smaller board I was building.  I ended up just putting it on the main board set for the ridiculously ambient cave mode.  This gives me instant access to the ambient verb without having to devote one slot on every scene of my M9.

My rig is built around versatility.  I want to be able to get close to any sound with just a couple stomps and guitar control adjustments, and I feel pretty good about this setup in that regard.  Most of my playing is either for church or for my band, the Dave Kerwood Group, which both require a ridiculous range of guitar tones, from super clean funk splanky tones to heavy, muddy distortion/fuzz to poppy punk palm muting.

As I said above, if I needed to swap anything out, I’m still shopping for that perfect fuzz/overdrive hybrid, which would probably kick the Expandora and the US Fuzz off of the board.  I would like a little more tweakable compression, and a little more complex chorus.  For my needs, though, this board is really just about perfect.  Thanks for reading!