Pedal Line Friday :: Al V.

I'm a bass player who loves pedals! Inspired by the pedal work of Bootsy Collins, Larry Graham, Doug Wimbish, Guy Pratt and Juan Alderete.

That's a green 10 ft. Rattlesnake cable going into the input. Rattlesnake jumper and patch cables link up a Line 6 DL4 MkII (more for home practice. I don't get to loop much in my band). Most of my patch cables are Rattlesnake Pancake Flex Patch Cables with few EBS Premium Gold Flat Patch Cables. Two MXR M237 DC Brick power supplies underneath are powering the board. The board itself is a Gorm shelf from IKEA.

-Boss PSM-5 is a kind of a centerpiece. It's essentially a line selector that (nearly) everything goes through. I can bypass everything for a basic bass sound. Then turn on or off multiple pedals areas of specific sections.

-Bass Whammy. These days I mostly use it for harmonies to thicken up my trio's sound.

-Boss OC-2 Octave. In my current band I do more of the octave doubling like Pino/Levin/Daryl Jones but I often pull the dry signal out for the Tim Lefebvre sound.

-Boss SY-1 Synthesizer. Mostly strings and pad sounds that combined with modulation conjures up some cool wheezing vintage synth sounds.

-Earthquaker Devices Westwood Translucent Drive Manipulator. A great "amp breaking up" pedal. The "bass" control is voiced around 80 hz which makes it punch instead of being a boomy mess.

-Wren and Cuff Pickle Pie Hella Fuzz. This thing is beast! No low end loss at all!

The synthesizer pedal has its own loop that you can send and return drive pedals through. I run the drive and fuzz though it. That way you can use a synthesizer sound with overdrive or fuzz and only your direct sound will be distorted

-Earthquaker Devices Aqueduct Vibrato. Very versatile. There's a setting where the harder you hit the strings, the more out of tune the pitch goes.

-Effects Bakery Melon Pan Chorus. So many chorus pedals, thin out a bass tone. This one actually adds some low mids. Very classic chorus sound!

-TC Electronic Flashback 2 Delay and Looper. Set it on "Tape" or "Analog", then press the switch and you get an oscillating delay sound you can control.

-Red Panda Tensor Tape Delay. Radiohead in a box! Great glitchy tape echo effects.

-Red Panda Context Reverb V2. A great modulated reverb pedal. Very versatile.

-Earthquaker Devices Hummingbird Repeat Percussions V4. A great tremolo that really cuts! Adds just a touch of drive. I like to get some washy reverb happening and then chop it up with the tremolo.

-MXR Phase 95 Mini Phase. I was chasing a sound I heard from Juan Alderete. I figured I'd get the smaller phaser. It's cool you can pull so many variations out of it. A cable runs out of this back to the Return of the PSM-5.

-Boss FV-50H. I'm not a big volume pedal guy, but my new Ibanez bass has three volume controls on it. I figured I'd use that to control volume and kill the sound in between songs.

A black 10 ft Rattlesnake cable runs out of the volume pedal to my amp. Thanks for reading!

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.