Pedal Line Friday :: Sam N.

I like to keep my pedal board pretty simple. I play mostly country, rockabilly and some surf instrumental stuff, and love the sound of clean! Honestly, I could probably be just fine going straight into my amp (Fender Twin Reverb Custom 15) with my Fender Telecaster B-Bender. But, I do use a few pedals, most pretty intermittently.

My signal chain is as follows:

Boss Chromatic Tuner->Keely Katana Clean Boost->Ibanez Tube Screamer->custom tremolo (built by Hank at Rattlesnake Cable Company)->MXR Phase 90 Phase Shifter->Boss DD-3 Digital Delay->Ibanez Analog Delay.

Most of these would be pretty self explanatory.

Boss Chromatic Tuner does what it does.

I run the Ibanez Analog Delay on all the time, for a nice slapback echo. I'll modify the knobs for a real rockabilly sound by doing full delay mix with a single repeat.

The Keely Katana (labeled "Ouch" by my bass player) is for a clean boost only, for taking leads.

Ibanez Tube Screamer for distortion when needed (like in a Link Wray tune).

The tremolo was built for me by Hank, and it's fantastic! Has a wonderful vintage sound and look, and honestly, sounds WAY better than the onboard vibrato on my Twin Reverb.

The MXR Phase 90 is great for the Waylon Jennings type sound. I had a MXR Phase 100, but really, who needs two knobs on a phaser? Not me!

I use the Boss DD-3 Digital Delay for 1 thing: the cascading delay trick made popular by Albert Lee. With a single repeat and the correct delay time, you can play an eighth note run where the repeat creates a staccato effect, so it sounds like I'm playing twice as fast as I really am. It's a cool trick.

Again, I really just love the clean sounds of a Fender Telecaster and a Fender Twin Reverb. My pedalboard really just enhances that sound with a few cool tricks to throw in now and then. Hank just did a custom build on all of my patch cables, so my pedalboard has just gotten a major upgrade!

Sam N, guitar slinger
The Revelators, The Idle Ranch Hands
Missoula, MT

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Submit Your Pedal Line!

About a million years ago, I used to run a blog called EffectsBay. On that blog, the most popular feature I would run was Pedal Line Friday. This is where readers of the site would send pics of their pedalboard and a short (sometimes long) write-up of routing and thoughts about specific pedals and the reasoning why they liked it, etc. Readers. loved this. It was a great way to learn about new applications or techniques regarding pedals. It also brought a little inspiration and knowledge about pedals you were not familiar with. It also brought a great sense of community - people like sharing and absorbing cool things, right? It was a super popular feature, and I loved putting them together.

All you have to do is send a pic of your pedalboard (or pedal line - it doesn't have to be on a board) along with a short (or long) write-up of the board. We want a list of pedals (manufacturer/model), routing would be great, and, most importantly, why you use those particular pedals. Also, this is a great way to promote your band or musical project - include that information as well!

You can send the pic and the write-up to pedalline@rattlesnakecables.com.