Good electric guitar tone on a cheapskate budget

This picture is old. Pedals are all different. New pics this week.

I was reading one of my favorite blogs, Guitar For Worship, and posted a comment that I said should probably be an entry on my own blog. So, here's the blog version:

Guitarists spend unbelievable amounts of money on gear. Non-guitarists (and especially non-musicians) are usually amused and mystified when they look at a pedal board. The other night an older gentleman who plays piano in the band at a church my worship team was guesting at looked at my pedalboard and said,

"That's a whole lot of doo-dads you got there. One of them things surely has to be a microwave!"

I currently have (I think) thirteen pedals on my board (I'll do another post soon with pictures and descriptions) and thus far, the most expensive one was the one that does the least: the volume pedal. It was around $100 and actually, come to think of it, it was a Christmas gift from my parents. So, I didn't actually pay for it. I just bought it!

This is not to say I don't have semi-expensive pedals though. I have a Boss DD-20 and a vintage ProCo Rat for instance. The DD-20 will, at the very least, cost you $150 used, and the Rat I have is a difficult to find model that can go for as much or more. But I went to Music Go Round in Louisville and traded in a bunch of gear that had been sitting untouched in my garage for years, and at the end of that transaction I ended up spending 4 bucks to get those two pedals.

I’ve gotten just about everything on my board from eBay or bandmates. Justin and Kevin of my band are generous and have loaned me a few great pedals. The eBay thing requires a lot of patience (instead of just going out and getting stuff at Guitar Center new) and a lot of review reading on Harmony Central and other sites of pedals you may have never heard of before. For instance, I went through the typical phasers like the Small Stone and Phase 90 before realizing the less expensive but more adjustable (and true bypass-ier) DeltaLab Phaser was a better fit for me. I found it while browsing eBay's pedals, and when I saw the price, I looked it up and found nothing but glowing reviews of this (for some reason) hard to find pedal. I ended up getting it brand new for $21.

I also love used section on GuitarCenter.com. I got a Danelectro Tuna Melt tremolo pedal there for $9.99. Ten bucks plus a little shipping! Sure, I would prefer a $250+ Tap-A-Whirl or Empress Tremolo but I a.) don't believe in using credit cards or store credit and b.) have a mortgage and bills and kids. Kids are expensive. Oh yeah, and I don't have a real job. But the truth is, the cheapo Tuna Melt sounds great. If it had tap tempo, I wouldn't even care about upgrading.

Sometimes you just have to make due with what you have or what you can afford. I play a Mexican Fender Strat through (and I’m not proud of this) a Vox AD15VT amp with a shiny silver metal grill. It has a single tube and a bunch of modeling crap I don’t use. While I'd of course love to have a $4000 Matchless or a $2000 Fender Twin or Vox AC30, I don’t have the money for a new amp. It’s just not going to happen right now. So I compensated a little by buying a Behringer (yes, Behringer) MIC200 Tube Preamp for $11 on eBay and leaving that last in my chain. While that only adds one more tube to the mix (those other ones have six to eight), it fattens up the tone a bit and sounds pretty good.

Come to think of it, that amp isn't even mine! It's my friend Britain's and he's been nice enough to let me borrow it for a while now. I had a little 15 watt Vox Pathfinder (with no tubes at all) but accidentally left it at a venue and was never able to get it back.

Anyway, I make due with the gear I have and try my best to make it sound good and people tell me I have good tone often enough. I doubt the frequency of being told that will increase drastically when I get a better amp after (hopefully) getting enough money or giftcards for my birthday and/or Christmas.(Seriously, my birthday is coming up and Guitar Center has giftcards, y'all.)

Really? That's a lot. And your volume pedal is in the wrong place.

Guitarists often spend so much money on gear simply because they're lazy. I know that won't make me popular among tone freaks, but buying a $400 pedal because your favorite guitarist uses one instead of a cheap used alternative is stupid unless you are regularly touring and make a good deal of money playing. In other words, if your band only plays once in a while and when you do you get paid crappy club money or you're playing for your church and not getting paid at all, it doesn't do you much good to spend that much money. You can if you want, but you don't have to. No one is going to be able to tell the difference between the standard tremolo settings on those three pedals I mentioned.

Some people buy expensive pedals and/or are afraid to play cheap ones (like Boss or DOD or Danelectro) for the same reason some people buy a Mercedes instead of a Kia. It's all about the status when they both are going to get you there. But it's even dumber to buy an expensive pedal than an expensive car because next to nobody is going to look at your pedals. Truth is though, the only time I look at someone's pedals is if someone sounds really good (or maybe really bad so I can avoid that gear) and if I see them using cheap stuff and thought they sounded great, I'd be way more impressed!

I heartily recommend Joyo pedals. I bought the Joyo Tubescreamer clone (and aren't all good overdrives basically Tubescreamer clones?) new for around $40. I should be getting the Joyo Ultimate Drive in the mail in a few days. Amazon has ridiculous deals on them. Like $28 deals. For real.
 
There are so many other things you can do to make your sound great that don't involve spending tons of cash. I am not an expert by any means, so this list is far from definitive, but here are some things I learned to be true.

• Play a good guitar: this is one place, where buying a cheaper model is not always a good idea. If you have a crappy guitar there's no amp in the world that will make it sound good.
  
• Use a good tube amp (even if it's not the expensive tube amp you really want). If you have a crappy amp there's no pedal in the world that will make it sound good. And yes I know that I just told you I don't really have a tube amp.
  
• Set up your guitar properly. Take it to a proper luthier (if you can find one) or Guitar Center (if you can't). If you can't afford that look up how to set up a guitar on YouTube. I set up my Strat really nicely after thanks to a collection of videos from Expert Village on YouTube and also found out I'd been stringing guitars incorrectly for fifteen years! Which leads me to...
  
• Learn how to properly string and tune your guitar.
  
• Try lots of different strings until you find the kind that best fits your sound.
  
• Change your strings often. The Edge changes them (well, he pays someone to change them) after every single show. Don't have to go that crazy but once a month wouldn't hurt.
  
• Practice. 
• Learn about eBay sniping.
  
• Play with good picks. Or better yet, be like Lindsay Buckinham and learn to play with just your fingers.
  
• Speaking of Lindsay Buckingham...the man is living proof you might not need a ton of pedals. Lately he's been using a Boss (Yes, Boss!) Super Overdrive and two Boss DD-5's (I don't know why he doesn't just get a DD-20). Seriously, that's all.
  
• Look up shielding a guitar on YouTube too.
  
• Buy good cables. Look, I can't afford (or justify) George L's either, but I can at least get two quality Planet Waves cables to and from my board.
  
• When it comes to cables, the shorter the better.
  
• Don't put your amp on the ground. Put it somewhere higher. If you can't get one of these, find a chair. Or a pew.
  
• When you're EQing your tone, make sure your ear is in line with the cone of the speaker.
  
• Practice.
  
• Really get to know the pedals you have. Sometimes "practice" means tweaking knobs for hours on end.
  
• Put your pedals in the correct order. Check that link. I disagree with putting the tuner first and you can put an EQ last if you like, but that's a pretty good start.
  
• Research the pedals you already have. Chances are there are mods (modifications) you can do or have someone else do to make them sound even better. These may be as simple as cutting a wire or resistor or it may be that just by opening up the pedal (like I did on the Carbon Copy Delay) to find there are extra controls inside.
  
• If you or a friend can't do a mod, send it to someone who can like Dan at This 1's Myne.
  
• PRACTICE.
  
• Buy a buffer (or two or three). I use Dan's Mini Buffer and it only cost me $39.
  
• Always keep the tools you need with you. And buy multi-tools like this one to save space.
  
• If you use a capo, make sure it's meant for an electric guitar. Better yet, just buy this one.
  
• Read this.
  
• And this. And all of the Guitar Tone links in that post.
  
• Definitely read this.
  
• Oh and in case I haven't mentioned it, practice.
  
• And tweak. Tweak. Tweak.

P.S. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could have tone showers? You know, engaged couples get wedding showers, new parents get baby showers, why can’t I get a guitar shower?

P.P.S. I’m totally "registered" at Amazon if anyone ever cares to anonymously donate gear.