Pedal Line Friday – 4/24 – Alec Duncan

Today’s Pedal Line Friday submission is from Alec Duncan. 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.

Hello there Effects Bay & readers! I’d like to show you my bass pedalboard that I use for noisy pop music here in Baltimore, MD! I play a passive Musicman SUB4 into a Carvin B1000 and Low Down Sound 15/6 cabinet. I use my pedalboard to play dirty synth lines and heavily modulated volume swells to provide a very deep, very groovy low end.

Pedal chain is:

Korg Pitchblack Tuner – Still my favorite tuner in shape, options, and pricing! First in chain to ensure the best possible tracking for my low E string.

Boss OC-2 Octave w/ SYNTH MOD – Picked up this bad boy from a fellow bassist in DC, the Boss OC-2 is instrumental to my sound and is a wonderfully versatile pedal on its own. The synth mod (unknown when it was done or who did it) generates a gnarly square wave on the affected signal. I run my OC-2 either with the synth mode off and some direct level in for a pseudo-organ/analog synth tone, or I run it with the synth mode on fully wet with no direct signal to make nasty acid-rap kind of lines, inspired by one of my bass heroes John Davis (of Jojo Meyer & Nerve)

Sitori Sonics Bass Fuzz – Massive, simple bass fuzz that I bought on a whim and ended up loving! The one knob is for gain/volume and the tone is a classic but overwhelmingly powerful open fuzz tone. I’m hoping to replace this soon with a Copilot FX Orbit to have a gated, modulated fuzz pedal with waaay more control options.

Moog MF Boost – A recent addition that I couldn’t be happier with. This powerful boost pedal has an extremely warm (read: not very transparent) EQ flavor that I use to add a bit of treble to my octave tone. I primarily use this pedal in conjunction with a Moog EP-3 Expression pedal to act as a volume pedal for lush swells.

Pigtronix EP-2 Envelope Phaser – Whenever I take this amazingly versatile machine off my pedalboard, I immediately put it back on when I realize how often I desire a synthy envelope filter, phaser or BOTH. This pedal can do all three options and although I pop it on less than the other pedals on this board, this pedal is so well made and powerful that it inspires me to be more creative in my effects use.

Tech 21 Bass Boost Chorus – Absolutely the best chorus pedal I’ve ever used. I am hugely inspired by Simon Gallup of the Cure and Peter Hook from Joy Division/New Order and it’s amazing being able to cop their shimmery lead tones with even more power and control options behind it. With the multi-tone button pressed and on the extreme settings I use this on, I am able to get bursts of flanger effects that scream out of the mix. I use this pedal the most in conjunction with my bass fuzz and OC-2 in setting 1 to make crazy, thick, danceable organ basslines.

Tech 21 Boost RVB – I first purchased this pedal solely because I wanted a reverb pedal that could go 100% wet and because I was so in love with my Bass Boost Chorus. Tech 21 has always been a pretty attractive company to me and I love how much support they provide to my fellow bassists. Once the Boost Reverb pedal arrived, however, I never realized how useful such a controllable reverb could be on the bass guitar. I only wish that there was an expression pedal input to control the “Mix” knob so I could switch from ambient volume swells to subtle & tasteful trails to my clean bass tone on the fly.

All above pedals are powered by a Voodoo Labs Pedal Power 2 Plus, and are connected by wonderful EBS Flat Cables.

-Alec