Pedal Line Friday – 6/15 – Richard Western

Today’s pedal line is from Richard Western. 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.

This is the second time I’ve sent in a Pedal Line Friday (view first submission). It’s had many incarnations though. I was hoping to have some recording links to send you, so you’d know what I’m doing with these pedals.

Top left: Aphex Xciter, I won this and have a hard time thinking about a board without it. Next is the most recent pedal. It’s a custom build, straight down to the home welding of the box. I’ll get back to this one.

Let’s start at the front of the line. It all starts with a coil cable by Bullet Cables. That send the signal to a simple home build (bottom left on the floor). It’s just a on off switch for the power daisy chain; Power All. I really don’t know why no one has added a foot switch to their power supply yet. It saves me from bending down.

Bottom right: MXR noise clamp, the clampiest gate out there. Within it’s clamping grip lay the distortion/fuzz. The ultimate Twosome. I’d be lost without it. Straight up from the Twosome is the Crystal Dagger; both by Blackout Effectors. The last two in the clamps mighty grip are Ibanez Turbo Tube Screamer (next to the Crystal dagger) and Bit Commander by EarthQuakerDevices (three over from the Twosome.

Next to the Twosome is Freeze sound retainer. It’s great for adding noise or full fill notes exactly where you want it. Then comes the all powerful Carbon Copy by MXR. This little bad boy has a MOD button that adds a small amount of modulation (a slight up and down pitch shift) to the delayed signal.

Here is RC-30. Boss’s Loop Station with more storage memory then you’ll ever need. You can record two tracks of your whole show. I have my pedal line all aggressively force feeding this beast and leading out to my amp. Also my electric drums go into here and come out a separate signal. Plus a mic. It goes out with the drums.

This brings us back to my home build. I’ve put together a small amp inside this pedal to boost the signal of KORG’s Kaoss Pad (bottom on the floor). The kaoss pad rules. 99 sounds and each one has a full array of controls. The down sides to using this is it sucks you volume and has no foot controls. So this pedal I’ve made, boosts the KORG signal with a volume control, so you can set it to be the same as when it’s bypassed. This allows you to set any of the sounds and have it in a stomp box. It has killer tremolo, reverb, chorus, looping, and many more. This is my secret though, so don’t go telling anyone.

Whoa!! I nearly forgot… the tuner! It hides it’s self so well. It’s the Pitch Black.

–Ensign Riff Wolf