Pedal Line Friday – 3/7 – Adam Parkes

Today’s pedal line is from Adam Parkes. 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.

I am a complete pedal geek (as you can tell) I have been playing for 18yrs I have gone through a lot of different pedalboard sizes as my collection has grown. And I’m always on the look out for new pedals.

I play in a funk rock band called Mezzotonic. Think chili peppers, Ratm and jamiroquai and you get the idea.

My board is set up to make things as easy as possible to turn pedals on and off, and certain pedals are placed in a where I haven’t got to stretch to opposite ends of the board. The pedals on the top row are all on pedal risers, so I don’t catch the pedals on the front row.

The pedalboard is from a company called Diago. The power supply and the pedal risers are also from diago.

Direct line: guitar to amp.
1: boss TU tuner. Standard tuner never let me down.

2: Cry baby wah wah, I love my wah I’ve had this wah from the age of 16 and is the first pedal I ever purchased.

3: Marshall ED1 compressor. This is always on and I love what it does to my tone, it pumps up the sound a little and adds a slight warmth. It’s set with quite fast attack but with a light compression so I can keep dynamics of my playing.

4: CAE Line Driver/boost. This is also a leave on. I use this to boost (buffer) my guitar signal through my pedalboard,
To combat high end loss I get from running through all the my effects pedals, cables etc

5: MXR modified OD. Believe it or not, this is my first overdrive pedal and infact I never thought I had a use for one. That is, until I got one. It’s such a great pedal plus it has 100hz control knob so you can cut and boost at that frequency as you desire.

6: MXR 78 modified distortion. I have never been able to dial a good hi gain sound out of any amp I’ve ever had. But this pedal makes up for it does all sorts of tones from 70s classic rock right up to nu metal. Plus it has little push button that adds a ton of harmonic overtones.

7: boss line selector. There are many uses for this pedal, I use it to link in the top row of my effects and the whammy to the front end of my amp. It has an adjustable volume control on each loop. That loop then gets sent back to the outout of the  pedal.

8: MXR micro amp. Just a good old clean boost. I use it for boosting my solos. This then goes straight in to the front of the amp.

Boss line selector loop.
Marshall chorus pedal. Does great slow swampy chorus to fast vibrato.

Boss phase shifter. Man I love this pedal. First heard it on gorilla radio by RATM, ever since then I had to have one. Superb pedal.

Boss flanger. Not much to say on this one don’t use it all that often 30 seconds here and there or for and intro on the odd song.

Boss tremolo. I mainly use it on arpeggio style intros, or on slow open chord sequences.

Moogerfooger ring modulator. This is by far one of the most difficult pedals I’ve used it can do really interesting stuff though. But you have to work hard to get things sounding good and not to crazy. I have it set to do a more lumpy sounding trem type sound for live performances. Then get a bit more creative with it in the studio.

Last in the loop is the Digitech whammy pedal. To me this one of the best pedals I own I’ve had it for about thirteen years and to me every  guitarist should at least try one.

Amp effects loop

Strymon timeline. This is the best pedal I own. It’s not only one of the best delay pedals I’ve ever heard but it’s a complete inspiration box. I also have the ernie ball volume pedal which I use as an expression pedal for the timeline. I use a split trs cable ( stereo one end, that then splits to two mono ends) I plug the mono ends into the input and output of the volume pedal then the stereo end into the exp insert on the back of the time line. I can then blend the delay in and out as I see fit, per patch.

Check out my band “mezzotonic” www.facbook.com/mezzotonic
We also have an iPhone and android app.
You can also check out my videos on YouTube here http://youtu.be/7nYxRub0Qk8

Adam