Pedal Line Friday – 5/15 – Casey Campbell

Today’s Pedal Line Friday submission is from Casey Campbell. 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.

My name is Casey Campbell.  I’ve been playing guitar now for about 25 years and am currently a worship leader at my church here in Louisiana.

My configuration for my pedal board is rather unique, but works really great for me.  The first pedal in line is the Zoom Ms-50g shown in the upper right-hand corner.  I use this pedal for one main purpose: EQ & Compression.  My main guitars are these guys (and a Jazz Master not shown) A Mexican Telecaster and a custom guitar I made (more about this later) –

The Zoom Ms-50g allows you to save any number of effects, and so I am using it just as a compressor and an EQ; custom set for each guitar I use.  This really is a joy to use it this way because I can really sculpt what I need from each guitar, and use them at their maximum potential. From there, the signal runs to the Boss LS-2 which is a line selector.

I run my pedal board in 2 distinct loops via the LS-2.  A clean loop – for all of my clean settings which includes delays, verbs, and modulation effects.  I also have the first half of the Visual Sound VSXO in my clean loop for giving certain parts a boost or a little grit when needed.  The other loop is a dirty loop for my overdrive sounds.

List of Pedals:

Clean Side: First goes to Ms-50g to the LS-2.

Zoom Ms-50g – This is a killer little pedal for very little money.  I originally bought one for a “fill in the blanks” type of pedal, but soon came to really love it.  I’m not much of a digital multi-effects kind of guy, but this pedal really blew me away for the price you pay for it.

Boss LS-2 – This pedal totally remedied the issue I was having during part changes.  I was having to tap dance every time I wanted to go to a verse or chorus of a song.  How I have this set up, is that while I’m on Loop 1, I can enable or disable certain pedals on loop 2 quietly without having to do it all at once with every change.  So, let’s say I am playing a certain overdrive on my dirty loop, I can enable whichever combination of effects I need for the upcoming verse silently on the inactive clean loop; then when I switch over, it is seamless with one click.  Another beautiful thing about the LS-2, is that it has a volume control for both loops which will allow you to really dial in your volume and match the two.

Visual Sound VSXO – This is a really smooth dual overdrive that is built tough as nails.  This pedal will cascade both sides, or you can use each side separately.  Yes, this pedal features two inputs and two outputs.  On my clean side of the loop, I have it going to channel 1 of the VSXO with a slight grit (or sometimes just a boost) to add more drive to “clean” sounds (like in a verse).

2nd Zoom Ms-50g – I use this pedal mostly for verbs and other ambient settings, but it can do just about any effect really well.  This pedal is very underrated, and I suppose because of the manufacturer’s rep for putting out cheap sub-standard multi-effects back in the day, but they have really re-invented themselves as of late, and this pedal is killer.

Digitech Timebender Delay – This delay is my absolute favorite delay. Everything from multi-harmony delays, tape delay sims, different delay patterns (you can even custom set your own), looper, pad sounds, etc.  This delay is the industry’s best kept secret.  Not to mention, it sounds really great.  I’m really not a brand snob.  As long as it sounds great and is reliable, I’ll use it.

Earthquaker Devices Disaster Transport SR – I kept hearing that this pedal was a beautiful sounding mess of a delay, but every youtube video was less than impressive.  On a whim I went for it, and I will say that the videos online do not do this pedal justice.  It is really hard to make this delay sound bad.  A very beautiful sounding echo/delay indeed.

Fulltone Supa-Trem – The classic boutique tremolo for a reason.  I had a Seymour Duncan Shapeshifter originally in this place, but I found that I hardly ever used the tap tempo function, and I remembered playing the Supa-Trem many years ago, and was very impressed with the tone.  Still am. This pedal is really great.

From here, the clean loop goes back to the LS-2, then routed to the volume pedal (which I’ll discuss later), and then to a DIY boost that I use as a line drive to drive a cable to an amplifier isolation room which I have a Sovtek Mig-50H cranked.  The Isolation room helps my sound man out, and he loves me for it.  I can have the cranked tube tone, without the stage volume in a a live setting.

Dirty Loop Side of the LS-2:

Boss SD-1 Super Overdrive – This is my favorite OD ever.  I have had this pedal since about 1999, and I have never found anything that compares with it.  The voicing is perfect for what I want, and sounds killer with my Sovtek Mig50H.  The bypass switch went faulty in it, and so I have a Boss FS-5U wired to it to enable it remotely.  This allows me to control the SD-1, and I have easy access to it due to it being right above my volume pedal.

Visual Sound VSXO (Channel 2) – Very smooth overdrive.  At first, I was very conservative with the gain settings I was using on this pedal, but I found out that this pedal really shines in the higher/hotter settings. This overdrive really is one of the most versatile overdrive’s I have ever used.

Fulltone Full-Drive 2 Mosfet – This overdrive is a classic for a reason. Great sounding OD – especially with my Telecaster.

The signal then goes back to the LS-2, then to my volume, and finally to the boost I am using for a line driver.

Schaller F-201 Volume Pedal – I have had this volume pedal since about 1998.  I paid $80 for it, and it has stood the test of time.  This pedal has been around all over the lower half of the United States (I used to tour in a professional band for about 7 years), and this pedal is still going strong.  Feels light and cheap, but you cannot destroy this pedal. Definitely the ugliest pedal on my board, but she’s staying.

In-Vision Technologies Boost Prototype – I used to be a designer and builder for a now defunct boutique pedal company.  This boost is of my own design, and I have never heard anything that can come remotely close to it.  It just has that special “something.”  It really makes my guitar tone come alive.

Tuner:

Korg Pitch Black – I have always preferred Korg tuners.  Very accurate. Works.  I keep this out of my signal flow just in case it is a tone sucker.  I have heard that it is true bypass, but I have always kept guitar tuners out of my main guitar signal just in case.

Power:

Voodoo Labs Pedal Power 2 – What can I say.  Reliable.  Works.  Quiet. What else do you need in a power supply?

Amplifier:

Sovtek Mig50H – I remember the day I got this amp years ago.  I had an old Musician’s Friend catalog, and very little money.  This was the only amp head I could afford at the time.  It was $250.  They told me they had one left in their warehouse somewhere, and so I bought it.  When I got it in, UPS apparently had fun with it, because the box (with Russian lettering) was tore up, but the amp itself was in perfect condition.  Fired it up, and never looked back.  I love the tone.  Very organic.  I have had constant compliments on my tone, and this amp is a major part of that.

Guitars:

Fender Mexican Telecaster.  All Stock.
Fender Jazz Master with Seymour Duncan Pickups

and then this beauty:

June 2012, my dad and I took a piece of sinker cypress that had been curing in his shop since 1996, and started building a guitar. We got as far as cutting out the raw shape of it (which was patterned after a pre-war Gibson OOO acoustic). A month later he died, and I couldn’t bring myself to work on it for about a month. It has the shape of a OOO Gibson (that I free-handed with an added cut out). It’s on a 25 1/2 inch scale like a Fender, a Bigsby tremolo like a Gretsch, P-90 single coils like an old Melody Maker, a Strat neck, Schaller locking tuners, and an embedded acoustic pickup so that I can blend acoustic and electric sounds. Well, it went from a chunk of 400 year old sinker cypress that was under the mighty Mississippi, to what you see above in about 100 hours of work.  Endless sustain.  Gorgeous Tones.

That’s it for my pedal line.

Much Love Everyone!