Pedal Line Friday – 12/11 – Dany Escobar

Today’s Pedal Line Friday submission is from Dany Escobar. 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,

I’ve been working on this board on and off for about  4 years now. There’s been a few times when I haven’t changed things on it for months but I must say I’m pretty happy where it’s at right now. I play a lot of shoegaze/dream pop tunes on my own time and my main musical focus is playing in a funky/smokey disco/r&b band(www.parallelephants.com). Fortunately this board is diverse enough for me to use it for both styles

I run my signal through this into a Fender Hot Rod Deville2x12, which is probably one of the cleanest sounding amps I’ve ever played.Nonetheless, I do love juicing the amp to get different tones. I personally do not like the drive equipped on the amplifier so I use other things to break it up which I will get to.

Guitars:
Fender Classic Player Jazzmaster (Sunburst)
Danelectro DC 59′ (1990’s Pink)

My signal flow:
1.)  BOSS TU-2 Chromatic Tuner – This is a tuner tuner. We all need one. I’ve been thinking about getting the Polytune NoirMini. That will probably happen pretty soon.

2.)  Fulltone Fulldrive 2 MOSFET – This guy has been my best friend for a very long time now. I mostly use him to break up my amp and the boost switch is a plus for lead parts. I love the crunch on it and he is usually on about 90% of my live set and it feels like I’ve acquired a comfort zone with this pedal. There’s just something slicey about that drive that sticks out. I wouldn’t go for any other overdrive/boost.

3.)  Ernie Ball VP Junior – I know a lot of people ride this thing up and down during their whole entire set. I will only roll itback for swells and atmospheric parts. Other than that, it will be fully engaged for full volume.

4.)  One Control Iguana Tail Loop 2 – This true-bypass looper is something I recently bought. I was having a hard time making a lot switches live and doing them cleanly because of turning so many things on and off. So this switcher was the best way to go for now. It does the job. I wasn’t looking for anything crazy expensive or fancy, just something that executed well and was reliable. A plus from looper is that it runs isolated power (6 of them) from it so if you’re in need for extra power, you have it right there on the looper and you wont have to buy another pedal power.

5.)  Electro-Harmonix Micro POG – This pedal brings a bit of crazy. I use it a lot for a lot of Jack White-ish lead parts in conjunction with the Big Muff. I have those two in a loop together. I will occasionally use it for shimmery sounds when I’m going for the more atmospheric sounds with reverbs and delays. Very cool pedal.

6.)  Electro-Harmonix Little Big Muff Pi – This pedal can be a bit of a handful sometimes.When I really want to make my signal scream, this is the go to pedal on my board. I have the sustain set moderately high because I love a little bit of feedback on some parts here and there. In addition, it has just the right amount of fuzz and distortion that I like. It is used sparingly throughout my set.

7.)  BOSS DD-7 Digital Delay – I love this thing.There was a period of time when I thought about selling it and going for something a little more upscale. I saw this video of Kevin Parker of Tame Impala using this pedal live and he used it very interestingly. He likes to have the delays set extremely fast, his feedback almost on the verge of running into infinity, which sounds crazy. Ever since I saw that, I fell in love with it all over again and I use it the same way Parker does except I use the mod setting for expressive and more washy delays. Also, I use a Saturn works Tap Tempo pedal to tap in the rate I want immediately without having to hold down the pedal and wait for it to give me the green light.

8.)  MXR M234 Analog Chorus – I’m a huge fan of the80’s chorus guitar sound such as bands like The Cure. I tried out an Arion Stereo Chorus and I just wasn’t feeling it. I thought it was so noisy and the plastic encasing was just too delicate for me. I went into Sam Ash one day just to look around. I decided to try this chorus out and I loved it, not to mention it didn’t break the bank. It does everything a chorus should do and keeps quiet.

9.)  Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail Nano Reverb – This thing is probably my second favorite to the Mosfet. It’s such a wonderful little spring reverb and it works so well with Fender amplifiers by filling up empty space in the sound. I use it exclusively as a big decay spring setting on the “hall” mode around 12:30-1 o clock.

10.) MXR M101 Phase 90 – Again, I’m a huge Tame Impala fan. I only use the phaser for texture and for the more trippy parts in the live set. It’s either at 8, 11, or 4 o clock for different parts depending on the song.

11.) Strymon blueSky Reverberator– This thing is magical. It literally sounds like a blue sky (if that’s possible). I use it fora huge wash mostly between song transitions or very spacey parts. I wanted something that sounded like the lead guitar part in Coldplay’s “Lovers in Japan”. This pedal nails it. I have it on the mod and room setting with the decay around 4 o clock and the mix around 3 o clock. I will probably get the El Capistan soon to accompany this pedal.

12.) Boss TR-2 Tremolo – This pedal is my most recent addition. I am a huge Norah Jones fan and more specifically her album “The Fall”. This pedal is used all over that record and is most heard on the track “Even Though”. Once I heard that song I knew I had to get it. Probably the best tremolo I’ve ever tried out. I also really like the Fulltone Supa-Trem a lot but because of space I decided to go with this one.

13.) Dunlop GCB-95 Crybaby Wah – Many of my friends know I hate wah pedals but if you play funky/dance music you might as well have another weapon in your arsenal. The wah does what it needs to do. I don’t have it on the board because I only use it with my band and because of space.

I use the Pedaltrain PT-2 and I have a MXR DC Brick mounted under the board for power. I also have a power strip mounted under to power the Strymon adapter and the DC Brick. I have also velcro’d a Mighty Bright 2 LED stage light on the edge of my board because I have horrible vision and it’s worse on dark stages.

How to connect with me:
www.facebook.com/dany.escobar.96
www.twitter.com/LeRescueBlues
www.instagram.com/therescueblues

My band:
www.facebook.com/parallelephants
www.twitter.com/Parallelephants
www.instagram.com/parallelephants