Pedal Line Friday – 4/19 – Toms Lazdovskis

Today’s pedal line is from Toms Lazdovskis. 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! This is Toms Lazdovskis from band Ca’Mel (Riga, Latvia).

http://www.facebook.com/camelband
http://ca-mel.bandcamp.com/album/camel

This is the pedal line I use with Ca’Mel. It’ a short one compared to other Pedal Line Friday posts, but it feels very versatile.

My guitar goes into the Mark Tremonti Wah by Morley – the beast! I love it for using it with an overdrive and lots of delay for making soundscapes or making overdriven leads cut through the band as it adds gain even with the wah boost knob to zero. I also like it for not having any on/off switch that allows me to make quick single wahs.

Then the signal goes into a Boss CS-3. I bought it to compress the signal with added gain from the wah, but ended up using it for some clean tone leads, that need to cut through, as well as boosting (compressing) volume swells with clean tone.

The next one in line is the Marshall Bluesbreaker II. The heavy one of my two overdrive pedals. Heavy enough for me.

After that comes the simple but awesome EHX Small Stone (Nano chassis). Usually the color switch is down and rate knob is around 11 O’clock. But I play around with it a lot while jamming. It gives many different sounds. I was worried, that it might have the volume drop, that some users have reported, but it turned out ok.

The next one is MXR ZW-44 Zakk Wylde overdrive. I am not a Wylde fan, but this pedal works out great for me. I use it as lower gain overdrive. It cleans up nicelly with turning guitar volume down. This overdrive comes after the phaser, because I love how the phase effect is not so dashy when overdriven. Just feels more natural for me. But the Bluesbreaker II is before the phaser for the classic phase feel.

The last one in the line is Boss DD-3, a must have for me. I play instrumental music in a 3-piece band, and the delay helps to fill the room. This is the core of my stereo setup. The cable from output goes in one amp, and the cable from direct out goes to another one, and the amps are panned and set to equal volumes. I tried this setup while fooling around, but after hearing the effect and encouraged by my bandmates I stuck to it. When the delay is off, I get the dry signal in both amps. When turned on it switches one of the dry signals to the wet delay signal. So the total volume is the same with the delay on or off. Other stereo delays put delays on top of the dry sound thus making it much louder compared to dry signal. I have considered getting another delay pedal with more options, like tap tempo or divisions, but this volume issue, has always been holding me back. And I am not ready yet for something like TC2290, that also includes variable dry signal volume. As for the other delay’s options – they get played around with a lot. I don’t use this stereo setup for studio recordings, this is only for playing live. Currently each of cables out of the DD-3 leads to a Peavy Valveking 100.