Pedal Line Friday :: Leo A.

I am by no means much of a musician, touring or otherwise, but I do have an ear for good audio and an engineering background. My pedal path had me trying everything from budget to mid-priced gear with no loyalty to any particular brand. At one point I thought Boss was going to be my savior; quickly I found out this not to be the case. I also put a lot in the Effects Loop, first on my Quilter Cub US then my Friedman Runt 20 Combo. Didn't pay much attention to cables either. Well, all of this thoughtlessness ganged up on me - my tone was dull and truly sucked. This put me on the path to understanding buffer quality, values, and placement, pedal quality, how picky one must be about the effects loop seeing things (everything in it touches your tone all the time), and cable quality - which led me to Rattlesnake.

Importantly you'll see I've got 10' Rattlesnake (tan) for board-to-amp input and a 10' Snakeskin Snake Head w/ Neutrik 90 for the guitar input. WAIT FOR IT - here comes the next important part - the One Control 1 Loop Box. It serves as my failsafe, one button press (power only used for the LED) bailout for bypassing the board and being guitar-cable-amp. No matter what else goes wrong on the board, I can bypass the whole thing and bridge the two Rattlesnake cables together passively. So the board itself, when it is looped in, has my fuzz first in line from the guitar, for all the pedal-guitar impedance goodness. Next is my OD Glove overdrive, again close to the guitar with no buffer, for impedance goodness. Once I leave the Glove I go to a "utility" pedal, the Empress buffer+. Man if you don't know about this jewel, read up on it. It becomes a set-and-forget high quality buffer, clean boost pedal, input gain selector, noise filter, and input loader. After that you'll find the usual trem/phaser/delay/reverb stuff. Oh and the tuner hangs off the buffer+, with a long press of the BOOST switch to mute the guitar while you tune. The Poly Blue gets used on our Black Keys covers and is fun to add an octave or four when the mood strikes. It's my only DSP pedal. The upper right is a storage spot for occasional use pedals out of line/get plugged in to the lower left replacing the trem. The plain black pedal is the channel switcher for the Friedman. The board itself is a Rockboard with a Truetone CS12 underneath.

So yea, no use of the effects loop for me. Maybe someday I'll put a HIGH QUALITY EQ in the loop, NOT on the board, but attached to the amp and of course plumbed in with two very short Rattlesnake cables.

Leo A.
Littleton CO

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.