Effects

By my calculations, I have gotten three people to start blogs since Becca got me to start my blog. If I was a Mary Kay consultant I would be on my way to earning the pink Cadillac.

But yeah, while I wait for the RX shock to kick in, I figure I might as well keep the blog rolling. Since last summer, I've been almost compulsively into collecting new guitar effects. Effects are great because they help me compensate for what I lack in speed or overall talent. They are kind of the guitar playing equivalent to owning a big truck. But if you don't know that that means, I'm not going to explain it. This is a family blog. Anyway, I'm pretty happy with the pedal board I've got together now. It's not quite complete, but definitely on its way. When I first started learning guitar, I had a distortion pedal and a wah but other than that I'd just play through a clean channel or whatever else was built into my amp. I don't like multi effects pedals because I'm not smart enough to figure out how to use them and it's hard to fine tune the sound I want. So I like what I've got now. I have a cry baby 535Q which is cool because you can select different tonal ranges, change the sweeping and even just set it as the original cry baby. I found a Boss compression pedal on craigslist which I really like. I like pretty much every Boss stomp box I've ever played and they are all a uniform size and shape so they fit perfectly on my board. Plus Boss stuff is just heavy duty and lasts forever so even when I find used stuff, with the exception of my stupid DD-3, I never have problems with it. But the Compression/Sustain is good for slide stuff and it works well with the Dyna Drive. The Dyna Drive is cool because it's an overdrive pedal that responds to how hard you hit the strings and I just think its an awesome pedal. They didn't sell really well and I'm not sure why. Then I go into a Turbo Distortion which is probably the most used pedal I have. Then I go through a Boss phase shifter which I like, but I think after playing the MXR phaser I made the wrong choice. But thats alright. Then I go through the Tremolo which is an awesome effect for anything 60s or surf sounding, and you can do a lot of Tom Morello sounding stuff with it. The only Electro-Harmonix pedal I have is my Clone Theory which I got mainly because of the Vibrato setting. It's just creepy sounding. The chorus settings on it alright but I'm not that into chorus unless I'm feeling like playing some Crowded House. Then I do into the DD-6 Digital Delay. I'm kind of happy my DD-s died because this one has a reverse mode on it which sounds pretty cool and psychadelic. I also have an AW-2 Auto Wah which I don't think they make anymore but its fun to set the rate really fast and come up with weird stuff. The most recent pedal I bought is the Loop Station which is really fun to use but I'm still trying to figure it out. You can create layer after layer of stuff which can sound pretty crazy when you add theses other effects. Brady introduced me to the MXR blue box which I definitely think will be my next purchase just so I can play the fool in the rain solo. The only thing that sucks is I'll need to get a new pedal board. And I'm sure the one I get won't be as cool as this one and won't have sleazy skull and crossbones all over it. But yeah, that's pretty much it. My RX shock kicked in.