My Pedalboard and Gear

I've been working on my guitar effects pedalboard for about a year and a half now. It's a passion, hobby, and future living. My upcoming solo EP is plain and simple American rock & roll and the electric guitar is the focal point as far as instrumentation goes.

I get a lot of questions like "What do all these things do?" and "Do you really need all those gadgets?" Once I even got "One of them doohickeys has to be a microwave, right?" So I thought I'd explain what they do and why I chose the ones I did.

Here are the pedals I keep on my board in order from guitar to amp. I've included Amazon links so you can get more info. I encourage you to do what I did: Be patient and search eBay, Guitar Center, and Craigslist often. Most of the pedals were used and I purchased them for far less than they're worth.

• T1M (This 1's Myne) Mini Buffer - You can lose a lot of signal from your guitar when you have several  pedals and cables to each other before you get to the amp. This keeps the signal strong. I do have several buffered pedals in my chain as well, so this moves around from time to time. With this current configuration, I can hear an audible difference with and without it. T1M is a great company run by a great company run by a great guy name Dan Burgess. I will definitely be purchasing more items from him in the future.
  
  
• Visual Sound Comp 66 Compressor - I use compression mostly for longer sustain on solos and this thing's great for that. This thing is great for my sound because it compresses the sound without squashing it. I used to use a Marshall ED1 Compressor and LOVED it, but the compression knob was broken and I found the Comp 66 for $50 on eBay. I may fix the Marshall and sell this one.
  
  
• Deltalab Phase Shifter - Phasers create a sort of swooshy sound. I don't use them very often, but when I do I want it to sound good. I've tried the MXR Phase 90 and EHX Small Stone Nano. Both were good, but both only had one knob. So I couldn't dial in a subtle enough tone with them. I also tried an Artec that was just plain terrible. Anyway, I saw the Deltalab phaser was ending soon on eBay and decided to look it up online. The reviews were unanimously positive so I got it. For $13 plus shipping! This pedal is kind of hard to find for some reason. I don't know why Deltalab doesn't get behind it. It's great and I highly recommend it.
  
  
• Electro Harmonix Micro Pog - I always wanted the ability to play up an octave. I loved the way John Mark Painter's guitar sounded when he used a Digitech Whammy. This pedal does that as well as an octave down and can mix the straight tone and both other octaves together. It can get a great 12-string guitar sound when I need it (I've used it effectively with acoustic guitar too). It's also well known for the ability to make a guitar sound like an organ. When I mix it with phaser, the organ sound is wonderful.
  

• Joyo Vintage Overdrive - When you play through an amp with it all the way up, it sounds distorted or overdriven. Basically, it's rock & roll. An overdrive pedal achieves that sound without actually having the amp louder. The most important thing about an overdrive pedal (to me anyway) is that it sounds like the actual amplifier and not an effect. This does that. It's basically a tubescreamer, but the kicker is this thing is around $40 BRAND NEW. And you can often find them cheaper than that. This isn't the best overdrive in the world, but I like it. I'll probably replace it eventually, but it works for now. I use it less than my other two overdrives.
  
  
• Joyo Ultimate Overdrive - Another inexpensive overdrive from Joyo. This one's a keeper. I have heard it's a clone of the Fulltone OCD. I've heard it's a Timmy clone. Either way, this thing sounds awesome. But as good as it sounds, it looked just awful to me. I hated the white stencil font (hate it on the new MXR Slash Octave Fuzz too) and I didn't particularly want a little red devil staring up at me while I played guitar at church. So I sanded it, sprayed clear coat on it, sprayed blue sparkly auto paint on it, sprayed more of both, covered it with blue powder glitter and clear coated it again.
  
  It's uber-sparkly. I'd call it the Sparkle Drive, but there's already a pedal with that name (despite being unsparkly), so I'm calling it the Glitter Drive. That's a terrible name. But seriously, photos don't do it justice. Oh, and I painted the knobs and button with some sparkly silver fingernail polish that Daphne happened to have out the night I finished the pedal. I love the way it turned out and now it looks like a $200 boutique pedal. Basically, I did the same thing pedal company Freekish Blues did. Only mine looks better and I'm not selling it as my own. I will do it for you though if you like. For the right price. ;)
  
  
• Pro Co The Rat - I had seen this pedal on a lot of boards from a lot of players I respected. I got a new model and it sounded terrible. Turns out you have to have one of the vintage models. This one is (I think) from the early 90s and sounds wonderful. I haven't heard the new reissue (the one in the link) yet, but it may be better. You're best bet is to wait for a used one on eBay. I'm not a distortion guy. Any time I go into a high-gain sound I just feel like I sound like I'm playing metal. This thing is a fabulous overdrive pedal when used that way. It can even be used as a clean boost. For real. Of course, whenever I feel like playing metal, I can crank this one up and go there.
  
  
• Electro Harmonix Big Muff Pi - This is a fuzz pedal. It's hard to describe what a fuzz pedal without simply saying it makes the guitar sound fuzzy in addition to sounding distorted. It has the capability of being (as I think Andrew Osenga once said) "offensively huge" sounding. But there's a sweetness to it. It can sound almost flute like when used with the volume pedal. I sometimes utilize it when creating ambient soundscapes but otherwise rarely use it. When I do, I absolutely love it.
  
  
• Goodrich 120 Volume Pedal - I use this for volume swells. I had an Ernie Ball VP Jr. and it sounded just fine, but after it broke I found this on Craigslist. These pedals are used by pedal steel players usually, but it's catching on with electric guitarists like me because it's more sensitive and there's no tone loss if you use a tuner with one of its outputs.
  
  
  
• Boss Tuner - I leave it on all the time so I can see if I'm out of tune as I'm playing. If I need to tune, I just push the volume pedal down. Eventually I'll to replace it with a TC Electronic PolyTune. But that's a low priority for now.
  
  
• Danelectro Tuna Melt Tremolo - I love the sound of tremolo. Buddy Miller is a big influence and he almost always leaves tremolo on. This pedal cost me ten bucks used from Guitar Center. At one point I bought a Pigtronix Tremvelope to replace it, but I just didn't hear a big enough difference to keep it. So I sold it for my new reverb pedal and went back to the Tuna Melt. This pedal sounds great but I am going to replace it with a Cusack Tap-A-Whirl eventually.
  
  
• Boss DD-20 Giga Delay - Delay is the maybe most important part of my sound. I'm hugely influenced (as most guys my age are) by U2's The Edge, and just like him, I use delay on just about every song I ever play. This thing is awesome because I can save 5 different sounds. When I play at church I can program each of the songs into a different preset. It also has external tap tempo, so I used what I had lying around the house - a sustain pedal for an electric keyboard. It's huge on the board, but it works well, it fits, and most importantly it's free.
  
  Last summer I took a bunch of musical gear that was cluttering up my garage to Music Go Round in Louisville. They asked me if I wanted cash or a trade in. I found the DD-20 and Rat in the store that day, so I asked for the trade in. So the grand total for both pedals was FOUR DOLLARS. It was one of the happiest moments of my recent life.
  
  
• MXR Carbon Copy Delay - On the EP we used Andy's vintage EHX Deluxe Memory Man - the one with four knobs. It sounds so unbelievably gorgeous in every setting. Well, this is about as close as I've heard to it. Maybe not, but it was free because it belongs to Justin Paul Mitchell, my bandmate from KNAPSACKHEROES! He also is loaning me the tuner and the pedalboard itself! Thanks Justin!
  
  There's a modulation button that engages a vibrato/chorus sound to make it sound like an old tape delay. It lights up when its engaged. As someone said on HarmonyCentral.com, you need welder's goggles to see the knobs when its lit on a dark stage. Because I always leave it on, I plucked the LED light out. There are two internal controls for the modulation. I wish they were on the outside, so I'm going to make it that way. But in a perfect world, Dunlop (the company that makes these) would release a new version that looked like the Cusack Tap pedals with tap tempo and five knobs. One can dream (or ask Dan from T1M to do it).  
  
  
• TC Electronic Hall of Fame Reverb - Someone once asked me what I my favorite pedal was and at the time I didn't have an answer. Now I think I'd say this one. I could replace my Carbon Copy with a new Memory Man (or even better, an old one!) or my overdrive with a Fulltone Fulldrive or something, but I have never heard a better reverb pedal than the Hall of Fame. The reverbs on this thing can trail on for what seems like forever, a lot longer than the Boss reverbs. And it has the Toneprint technology, which is really cool. (I can change the Toneprint setting by holding my iPhone up to the guitar!) I use mostly the "Hall" setting and the "Big Room with a View" Toneprint. My only regret is that I didn't know about the special edition version TC did with Pro Guitar Shop. It's called The Trinity and has a trinity symbol on it. I mean, come on! It's the exact same pedal but it has an extra setting, it's prettier, and has a Father, Son & Holy Spirit symbol on it. Dang it. And it was the same price. Was. Because they're all sold out. Anyway, this pedal is so good that I'll probably buy other TC Electronic pedals in the future.

That's what I keep on my board, but I also use these from time to time:

• Boss RC-2 Loop Station - I use this sometimes when I'm creating ambient music. I can play something, record it with this, and loop it so I can play over it live. I can do that several times to create a whole bevy of sounds. Nobody does this better than Phil Keaggy, but I've also seen KT Tunstall, Riley Armstrong and Howie Day do it well. As far as ambient guitar loops go, check out Andy Othling and Karl Verkade. I don't particularly love this pedal, so eventually I'd love to get a better looper like a Boomerang Phrase Sampler.
  
  
• DOD FX60 Stereo Chorus - I don't use the chorus effect often because I can achieve it with my delay pedals' modulation settings. I borrowed this from another member of my band, Kevin Tetuan. It sounds great, but I don't keep it on the board.
  
  

I use two different kinds of patch cables from pedal to pedal. The blue ones are George L Cables. I got these used on Craigslist (and found out I knew the guy when I got there!) for a bargain and they do the trick. They were already assembled, which was great. People say all sorts of stuff they can't actually prove about how these cables or Lava cables or (insert other trendy company here) are the best. The truth is, yes cables do matter, but not that much. 

What I mean is yes, if you have better cables, it will sound more pure. In other words, if you were to turn off all of your pedals it would sound more like what you'd sound like if you were plugged directly into the amp from the guitar. But guess what, I'm not worried about sounding like that. If I was, I wouldn't use effect pedals to affect my tone in the first place. Plus high end cables like George L's are freaking expensive. I can't justify paying a couple hundred bucks for cables when I haven't gotten all of the pedals I want or fixed up all the guitars I have. Nobody can tell the difference. No one. That said, the black cables I use are Hosa pancake cables. They sound just fine and they are incredibly compact, so it's easy to fit pedals more closely together. I noticed the other day that Andy Othling uses some too, which made me feel even cooler.

For lead cables from the guitar to the pedalboard and from the pedalboard to the amp, I use Planet Waves Custom Pro cables. These are stereo cables (hence the two black lines at the end of the plug, rather than one). I've been told that stereo cables are better shielded by nature, but I kind of doubt that's true. I simply bought these because they had the best reviews. These are tricky though because a lot of pedals won't accept a stereo plugs. But I was lucky that my set up did. I had a reverb pedal in the past that didn't and it was a big reason I ended up getting the Hall of Fame (so, thank you Planet Waves!).

As far as guitars go, the one I use the most is my placid blue Fender Stratocaster. It's a made in Mexico model that sounds spectacular. It's the guitar I used the most on my EP. I also used a ton of Andy's guitars including a Les Paul, Danelectro, Gretsch, and a Fender Tele.

At home I also have a black and white Indiana Tell City telecaster. I had wanted a black and white tele for a long time. I'd wanted a Tell City for even longer because I lived right across the river from Tell City in Lewisport, KY from the time I was in 2nd to 4th grade. I got this in a small town music store in Kentucky for $65. I still can't believe it. It sounds great and plays well. I just love the Strat sound more, so I don't play this as much.

The red guitar in the middle of the picture is an Epiphone ET270. This was my very first guitar. When I was in middle school my mom found it in a storage closet at the school where she worked and brought it home to me. I learned to play guitar on this thing and didn't plug it into an actual amp for the first several years. Unfortunately, it doesn't work at the moment and one of the tuners has broken off. It was never the best guitar in the first place, but I plan on getting it playable in the near future. I was pretty stoked when I realized that Kurt Cobain played one.

The guitar on the left is an Epiphone Nighthawk. I got this for Christmas (I think) when I was an older teen. It's okay. Actually, I always hated it. Maybe it can be fixed up. We'll see.

I tried a lot of amps last year and decided to use Christmas money to get a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe. I thought long and hard about a Vox AC30, but decided that I liked the boom of the Fender's low end and the clean tone in general. This isn't to say I wouldn't ever get a Vox or something else, but in this price range I really loved the Hot Rod sound.

So, that's it. Of course, there are changes from time to time, but I'm trying to really get to know this gear. I love the way it sounds, so it'll stay this way for a while for the most part.

Thanks for reading this. If you still are, you're either a guitar nerd like me, or you care about me personally. Either way, thank you.

You can hear the board in action (well, some of it...I had no volume pedal on it at the time for instance) in the video below on the blog.

 

Video - A day in the life of Eric Coomer

Nick Waugh, bassist from my band KNAPSACKHEROES!, is a great friend and it turns out he's a great videographer as well. Check out this video he shot of me over the course of a few hours in downtown Nashville. The soundtrack is of me playing ambient electric guitar, which was challenging because I had broken my volume pedal the night before. I think this turned out great.

Eric Coomer

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.

So long but not "so long"

It's been so long since I cared enough to write on this blog. I grew weary of writing about myself. So I started focusing on worship and music and music in worship and alt worship. So I started mostly just posting one music video and one movie trailer every week. Then I got tired of that. 

Here's what's going on with me:

• Daphne's due any day with our second child, Evan
• My office/studio is gone in favor of a room for Evan
• Jackson, our first child, is 3½ and the pride of my life
• We're attending McKendree UMC in downtown Nashville and love it
• My band, KNAPSACKHEROES! is still working toward superstardom.
  *Or at least toward getting a freaking album done
• Pray for my dad. He currently has pneumonia and it's not looking good
 

Lastly, in the recent year I've fallen back in love with the electric guitar. Well, I never fell out of love with it, so I should say I've fallen more deeply in love with the electric guitar and much more in love with effects pedals. 

So, in addition to continuing to post trailers and music, you should expect to read about my thoughts on guitar gear...all this despite the fact I currently don't play guitar in my band. I have been playing at church a lot and though I'm leading worship once a month, I've found it incredibly freeing to play while not actually being the leader on other Sundays (we have a great leader in Anthony Mangin - and he has really great guitar tone).

Anyway, stay tuned for whatever. I shall not say "so long" to you just yet.

Look for more updates at the official Eric Coomer website.