Man I just typed a long philosophical essay and the power went out for a minute and came back on! Aaargh! Well here goes again...
His argument was that instead of buying pedals for different tones, you should take something like the SD-2 and get the most out of it and in that way you will train yourself to get the most out of any gear you buy.
He's right for the most part (although I don't like the SD2). Most of us want to buy something new when we feel the need for another tonal variation/ flavour, probably because of how many pedals/ digital modellers are now available. It seems very few guys do quick pickup selector/ Volume/ Tone control changes to give tonal variations while playing. Most guys seem to want to stomp on something for a tonal change, when in most cases you could probably get most of what you want from just a few pedals and on the fly guitar setting changes while playing. Is this becoming something of lost art (not that I'm accusing anyone in particular of not doing this)? It just seems alot of the players I know seem content to leave their bridge pickup on and the Vol/ Tone controls at full all the time. Your thoughts on this?
I used to use a massive pedal board (16 pedals in total), but I've cut it totally down based on the fact that I would generally only stick to a few of the myriad tones available because of the tap-dancing I'd have to do to switch sounds. If you don't have an effect-loop pedal/ controller (which I do), it makes it very difficult to manage even a small pedal board live.
I'm thinking of buying a few George L's heads and some cable to make up a few patch leads. I want to reduce the noise levels and improve the signal quality so I can get the best tone out of this setup before I start adding my other pedals.
The George L's will probably improve your top-end transparency because of their lower capacitance and might make a difference to noise if your current cables aren't decent. Good luck getting them from Andy McGibbon's - I waited more than a year so I made another plan. You could try the Bill Lawrence cables off his website, much cheaper and basically the same.
What would improve your tone alot would be some pedals that are true-bypass (or mod your existing pedals), instead of the low-quality buffers in your current pedals (except for the ZVEX stuff of course). If you go that route make sure you have a really high quality buffer at the front of your chain to boost the signal through all the cables. In fact if you get a high-quality buffer like the MI Audio Boost'nBuff or the Radial PB1 Power Booster you should notice a difference in signal strength/ transparency even with your existing setup.
On the Box of Rock, I almost flipped my lid when I tested it on my AC-30. It sounds really bad through that amp. It does get a lot better tone on the Ashdown, but it rocks on the marshall. I guess it's got to do with the design of the pedal.
I think it's the character of the amp rather than the pedal's fault. I've tried similar pedals and various Fuzzes through AC30s with similar results. If your pedals allow you to turn down the highs (like nearly off) and keep the rest of the frequencies more or less intact (basically a proper EQ rather than a tone control), those sorts of pedals can sound great with an AC30. It's just got to do with the jangly/chimey nature of the amp's tope end. The Top Cut control can also help. Those amps always tend to impart their character on what you're putting through them, rather than the pedal imposing it's character on the tone of the amp, like you'd find with alot of amps. But that's why I like 'em!
