My Current Pedal Board

If I’m writing a blog on guitar effects pedals, I should really show my own pedal board. I’d like to add a Voodoo Lab Pedal Power 2 unit to power everything, but otherwise I am really happy with my current line up, which I have had for about 6 months now:

In The FX Loop

• Analogman Chorus – Very versatile chorus pedal that covers all the bases. Thick and lush or light and airy with a passable rotating Leslie simulation. $150 used from The Gear Page. ($250 new).
• Voodoo Lab Tremolo – Perfect reproduction of Fender amp trems from the ‘60s. $80 on eBay. ($129 new).

In Front of the Amp

• Area 51 Wah – Italian Drop in Kit retrofitted into an old Dunlop Wah casing. Killer boutique wah. $199 new.
• Tone Factor/Mojo Hand Analogue Filter – Auto wah/envelope filter that’s ideal for funk. $85 from The Gear Page ($150 new)
• Barber Tone Press – One of the best compressors you can buy and useful for increasing sustain on single coils. $95 from The Gear Page. ($150 new)
• Electro-Harmonix Small Stone Phaser [with Analogman Mods] – Version 2 from 1977 in great shape. One of the definitive phasers from the ‘70s. $80 on eBay + $100 of mods.
• KR Products Mega Vibe – As used by Frank Marino and Steve Stevens. Probably the best recreation of a Hendrix vibe; I don’t think these are being made any more. $295 new.
• Paul Cochrane’s Timmy – One of the most transparent overdrive pedals made, great for mild, tube-like distortion. Hand made and a long waiting list for these. $160 on The Gear Page. ($129 new but 3-6 months waiting list)
• Mojo Hand Huckleberry Fuzz – Very versatile fuzz/distortion box. $55 on eBay. ($150 new) 
• MXR Carbon Copy Analog Delay – Recent reissue that sounds great with plenty of tonal options from short slap back to spacey echo to self-oscillation madness.

All pedals are connected using a Bill Lawrence Wilde Cable Kit.

Electro-Harmonix Small Stone - Analog.Man Mods

I am a phase junky and I always have a phaser on my board. Always. After a lot of research I decided to upgrade to an Electro-Harmonix Small Stone version 2 - one of the classic '70s phasers.

If you include the new Nano series I think there are five versions of the Small Stone and #2 is supposed to have the warmest circuit. I found one on eBay for $75 in very good condition. As advertised, it had a very lush and warm tone - unlike any other phaser. But it was a H-U-G-E tone sucker. It really cuts the higher frequencies and even at low volumes you can hear it sweeping - even when it is not engaged. If ever there was a poster child for true bypass this pedal is it. But the tone was so good I didn't want to give up on it - even though there was a noticeable volume drop when engaged.

So I sent it along to Analogman for his true bypass, volume and feedback mods. It's guys like Mike that enable you to have your tone and crank it. An adjustable trim pot is added to the circuit so you can easily set the engaged volume to taste. The Feedback mod tones down the squeal and feedback with another trim pot when the "color" switch is up. On reflection, the volume mod is essential, but the feedback mod didn't do much for me so I would suggest not bothering with that and saving yourself some money. I also had a red LED added so you know when the pedal is engaged - a huge oversight by the EH designers.

All in all, these mods bring an already great sounding vintage pedal up to modern day specs and usability levels. Customer service from Analogman was also excellent - I had the pedal back within a week. It now reigns supreme as my go to phaser on my main board with it's deep, rich and chewy tones. Love it.

Product Review - Boss FT-2 Dynamic Filter

In the late 1980s and early 90s, Boss decided to discontinue a number of esoteric pedals like the Dimension C, Xtortion, Slow Gear and Dynamic Filter because they were not big sellers. Fast forward 20+ years and due to their relatively low initial sales, these pedals are quite collectible among analog pedal enthusiasts with a price to match. The Boss Slow Gear for example regularly sells for over $200 on eBay. When I saw a Dynamic Filter come up for auction a couple of months I was very interested mainly because the guitar player Alex Gunia from Matalex (a killer German fusion band - check out the "Jazz Grunge" CD) had one on his pedalboard and I really liked his guitar sound. $75 later and the Boss FT-2 was mine.

According to the promotional verbiage the Boss FT-2 is an auto wah pedal that fits into the company’s line of auto wahs between the TW-1 and the AW-2. I think this is a little misleading because in essence the Boss FT-2 is an envelope filter and produces quite a different effect than an auto wah.

There are four controls on the pedal: Sensitivity, Cut Off Frequency (high – low), Q, and Up/Down/Manual modes. You also have an “Exp In” jack, which provides the option of plugging in an external expression pedal so you can control it like a traditional wah, although I did not bother to do this.

The keys to this pedal are the Cut Off Frequency the and Q, which controls the peak bandwidth. By finding the right setting you can get some decent “quack” from this pedal, especially with single coil pickups, but try as I might I never really found “the sound” to make it a keeper. The pedal is an obvious choice for funk guitar, but it is more subtle and less usable to my ears than the Electro-Harmonix Dr Q or its Micro Q-Tron, which I think are much better sounding effects pedals in this genre.

When engaged the Boss FT-2 also destroys your tone – not really surprising because it is a fairly aggressive filter effect. My favorite setting was using full on distortion from the amp – it produced a very subtle wah effect, which could spice up solos and with the distortion cranked tone loss was less noticeable. I did try this pedal with my Ibanez bass and I think this may be where it shines best. Despite being a rare and somewhat collectible effects pedal, it didn’t make it on to my pedalboard so back to eBay it goes.