Pedal FAQ
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What pedals do you use?
For distortion I use a Nobels ODR-S. It has a very natural, tube-like distortion, and it does not interfere with the amp if the amp is already distorting. With some pedals, adding distortion from the pedal, into an amp that’s already distorting will cause a very dull, lifeless tone. The Nobels pedal works very well with an overdriven amp in my experience.
For added boost, I use a Boss PQ-4 and a Boss PQ-3B parametric EQ pedals. The PQ-4 I usually use as a clean boost, with a slight bit of bass added. The PQ-4 I usually use to add a sharp peak at about 1.5 KHz. This creates a screaming, wailing tone like what you hear on Texas Flood.
From time to time, I’ll use a Danelectro Tuna-Melt Tremelo. I used to use more Danelectro pedals, but I found that when not engaged, they sucked a lot of treble from my tone. What do you expect from a bunch of $30 pedals?
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What does reverb actually do?
Reverb takes a sound, delays it and mixes it back in with the original sound. In a guitar amp this is usually done by splitting the sound into two paths, running one side through a series of springs in the reverb tank, the combining them again. The sound that went through the springs is sightly delayed because the springs slow it down. Most guitar pedals however use digital technology to convert the sound of your guitar to a digital signal, then they use a special microchip to delay the signal and mix it back in with the original.
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What is your opinion about the ts-808 and ts-9? Thanks
To be quite honest, I’ve never been terribly excited about them. As a clean boost, I find a Parametric EQ to be more useful, and as a distortion pedal, they don’t produce enough usable distortion when you can’t turn your amp up loud enough to get distortion from it.
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What pedals does stevie use? and what is a compressor?
There’s a lot of different opinions on what pedals he used, but the one’s that are consistently mentioned are a TS-808 tubescreamer, (or 2), as well as 1 or 2 Vox Wah Wah pedals, a Uni-Vibe, and at one point an Octavia. I might be missing a few, but those are the ones I know about.
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You mention the four pedals that you primarily use, but in your video for “Pride and Joy,” your pedal board has a fifth pedal on it (on the right side- larger silver pedal). What is that pedal? Once again, THANK YOU for all of these fabulous lessons. My playing has skyrocketed in the past several weeks since I found your site!
That is my Korg Digital Tuner, older model of the DT-10.
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What are your settings on the PQ-3B? And, what songs do you play with this pedal?
Check out the gear demo videos to see what I have the settings at for this pedal. It’s general purpose is to provide some boost right around 1.5kHz to give it a little of the screaming Albert King tone.
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Hi Anthony
Do you use a drum machine when practicing. I m thinking of buying the Boss Dr. Rhythm DR-880 Rhythm Machine. Have you ever used this item or anything like it. Right now I use the GnX 3 preset drums, but it just feels like its lacking something. Any info would be great. Keep on keeping onI usually just play along with the CD, but I’ve found the backing tracks at www.guitarbt.com very useful as well.