Pedal Line Friday – 4/10 – Nik Benoit

Today’s Pedal Line Friday submission is from Nik Benoit. 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 there,

My name is Nik, I’m from a small country called Luxembourg (western europe) and I am currently working on and finalizing songs for my new math rock band, called Goujat and we try to be ready for our first gigs at summer.

Since we’re a 5 piece band with 3 guitarists, I need to be very versatile in my sound. From hard riffs to clean sounds to endless atmosphere to tight rhythm parts, there’s a lot to set your effects to and so I really appreciate the possibility of saving specific sounds.

That’s why you see alot of effects with preset saving functions on my small pedaltrain 2.

With no further do, here’s my setup:

First in line is my tc polytune, pretty straight forward, followed by a fuzzhugger ab-synth which I barely use, just for the occasional noise explosion an in combination with +2 octave pitch shifts.

After the fuzz comes the Boss ps-6 Harmonist, used only for it’s pitch shifting effects in s-bend mode.

The ps-6 goes to a amp-fx made copy of the keeley 4-knob compressor, used for enhancing clean tappings.

After that is a modded version of the Boss bd-2 (monte allums blues stack mod), which gives it a really natural, dynamic, warm sound. It’s my favorite pedal in the world and I use it as my main overdrive since forever. Warm an nice if the gain is below 12 o’clock and really crunchy and loud beyond. Crank it up and it gives you a transparent, dynamic full sound.

Following is the ehx Pog2 I use to differentiate my guitar sound from the other 2 guitars, if it’s needed. Mainly, I use a preset with just one octave up an a bit of +2, to give it that typical Pog2 steeldrum sound. Also organ sounds for layers in the background.

The pog goes into the Ehx ring Thing with different presets. I’ve got a chorus sounding preset, a preset with just a hint of ring modulation to fatten up the sound and a over the top shifting pitch sound to make alot of noise.

After that, I connected the pigtronix echolution2 deluxe with the remote. It’s a hell of a pedal. I got a complete variety of delays saved, from slapback to endless delay, to stutter sound to echoes to smoothen up a clean sound and so on. It’s awesome. 6 banks with 10 slots and the first 4 of each bank (well actually 1-4 not 0-3) directly accessible via the remote.

Following is the Boss dd-3 digital delay, set at a long slow quiet delay, to fatten the sound.

Last in line is the ehx cathedral. For the most part, I use a slight, not to noticeable hall setting. I also got a freaky fast phaser like grail flerb preset and one or two other, more noticeable reverbs for other songs.

That’s it. I mostly play a partscaster with mini Humbucker trough a fender ‘the twin’. Nice clean sound, but heavy when needed.

So I really hope you like my board, since I’m a really great fan of your site. Keep up the good work.

– Nik BENOIT