Who doesn’t like talking about gear?!? It’s one of those things that those of us that consider ourselves gearheads can do for hours without even stopping for breath sometimes. I know I can. Heck, I’ve done it. And I’ll do it right now. So, fair warning, this post is probably going to be way too long. Or maybe I’ll break it up into pieces so it’ll be long, but not as long as it could be. lol
So the little board. The one I use at the casa. It’s also the one that I grab if I just need the basics. Sometimes I’ll call it my practice board even though I use it for more than that. It’s pretty similar to the big board. Just with smaller pedals on it.
First, we have the board. It’s a Guitto board off Amazon. It’s one of those rail types. I saw it on the cheap one day a few years ago, and I grabbed it. It’s the small one. I can fit 6 pedals on it so long as most of them are the mini-pedal size. I like the fact that I don’t have to have velcro on anything or use zipties. Weirdly, in the 3 or 4 years I’ve had it, the price hasn’t gone up. I paid $100 for it, and that’s what it still costs.
The board is powered by a Donner power supply I got on the cheap off Amazon when I bought the board. It’s advertised as an isolated power supply. No idea if it actually is, but I haven’t had any problems with it, and it was small enough to stick under the board. So I got it.
First pedal in the mix is my Nux Flow Tuner. In pink. That was half the reason I got it. It’s pink. I like pink. It does the job, and I haven’t had any issues with it. So it stays there. In my experience, headstock tuners don’t always work well. I had a regular church gig for a while where I stood not 2 feet from the loud end of a 9′ grand piano that never stopped playing. My headstock tuner would give me fits because my guitar was always resonating with whatever the piano was playing. It had trouble latching and hanging onto what I would play. So I prefer a pedal. This one does the trick.
The tuner goes into a Tone City Durple. I picked it up on a whim from Anderton’s a few years ago. I like the pedal. It’s a tube screamer without being a tube screamer. I’ve been told that it’s not a tube screamer, and is, in fact, Tone City’s take on the Lovepedal Kalamazoo. I’ve also read that the Kalamazoo is a take on specific amp that Gibson made when they were in Kalamazoo. No idea. I just know that I like the sound of the Durple, so it’s the first OD on this board.
That goes into my Wampler Tumnus. If you clicked that link, yes, it goes into the “alien silver” germanium Tumnus. I bought this one on a whim as well. Well after they were reporting that they had sold out of that pedal, I hit the page, it didn’t say it was sold out, so I clicked Buy. Seriously, it was late afternoon the day they were accidentally released early. Two months later (or whatever it was) one showed up on my doorstep. I figured, at worst, I could flip it if I didn’t like it or had buyer’s remorse.
Once it came in, I did a shootout between it and my other klones (inlcluding a v1 Tumnus and a KTR), and it won the shootout. Had it been a blind shootout, I don’t know what would’ve won because they all sounded super similar. But, playing that afternoon with them all, it sounded really, stinkin’ good!
The Tumnus goes into a Nux Steel Singer. It’s a Dumble-type OD that I really like. I got it off Reverb because I was trolling for an OD that wasn’t the usual TS, klone, or anything I already had. Came across the listing, made an offer that got it shipped to me for like $30. So I got it.
This one was originally part of the board when it was intended to be an afford-a-board, but I’ve liked it so well it has stayed. Especially for when I’m the house playing into a quiet amp, it’s my always-on pedal that gives just a little character to the tone. I tend to play pretty clean, and this pedal will drive just a touch when I dig in.
The newest pedal on the board, and it took me a while to get there, is my JHS 3-Series Harmonic Tremolo. I like a vibe-y pedal, and this board has been through several. Pedals I’ve had on it at some point: the MXR Univibe, the Lovepedal Pickle Vibe, the Kokko Vibe, the Mooer Shaky Jimi, and the Effects Bakery Japanese Butter Roll Vibe. All of them were ok pedals. The Kokko pedal added a real dark sound, but was otherwise ok.
It was my Black Friday purchase last year, so I got it for 25% off plus free shipping since I got it off Amazon. I’ve got the JHS pedal setup so it gives a swirly, swishy sound kind of similar to a vibe. At least it’s more vibe-y than it is trem-y to my ear. I really like it. It may eventually get swapped back to one of the others, but for now it’s staying.
Finally, the trem goes into the last pedal. It’s a Shark Chili Reverb. It could probably qualify as an afford-a-board pedal, but I got it after I had kind of moved on from that experiment. For the most part, to me, one reverb is as good as another. I can hear the difference in spring and hall reverbs, but outside that, I couldn’t tell you. It was cheap. It was small. It’s a reverb. That said, I really want to try one of those new Danelectro Spring Kings. I’ve got one of the big ones, and I’ve always liked it. So I want to try the mini-version of it. I just haven’t pulled the trigger yet.
So that’s it. The small board. Next week maybe I’ll do the big board. There’s a lot on it that’s really similar to what I have on the small board. It’s not identical by any stretch, but it probably just goes to show that we each hear a certain sound in our head, and that’s what we tend to navigate toward.
