I tried modeling amps such as the Spark. It just was nof for me. I prefer tactile, analog, the experience of real gear. I bought used from Reverb and Sweetwater Gear Exchange. I wanted to put together a home use pedalboard, but with decent quality items. There is nothing exofic here, nothing custom. It is still a work in progress. Boost, various flavors of drive, ddelay, reverb. No app, no DAW, no firmware updates, no planned obsolesence. Just old school tactile pedals.
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You seem to have a lot of drive / distortion on that board.
Lookin great Paul!
Nice, neat, concise. What’s not to like.
What amp do you run that into? We know it’s not a spark. 
The idea of those different drive is to experience boost, light drive, overdrive, distortion, and fuzz.
Right now it is a Bugera G5 tube head. It is a Blackster HT5 clone. I am using the clean channel. My dream amp is a real genuine Marshall. Something like the DSL1hr.
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Nice you cant go wrong with an EHX Big Muff on your board. They are great
I have heard some mostly good reviews on the Soul Food. Mixed on the ability to clone the Klone, but people do seem to love it if they dont expect an exact copy. You could do the JHS Meat & 3 Mod is you wanted to up grade with germanium.
I have other distortion pedals, an overdrives, amd stuff, but this is all I need on this set up for now. I love the big muff with the wicker setting, I am still finding new stuff with it. Its my favorite of the pedals I own now.
It will take a good while to go through all ofnthose to really get a sence of how they work togeather and drive each other. Take a good amount of time learning how you can over drive your distortion pedals. They will all do it differently and have rad sounding tones. You have a ton of cool combos to work through and play with there, take notes, seriously. 
Keep ripping it up.
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My favorite of the pedals is the Big Muff. It is grunge all the way. Put the Spark in front and stuff happens. LOL
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Word! Thats a killer combo.
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Haha nice!!
Congrats on your entrance into the rabbithole of sound! 
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I really like the tactile nature of it. No app, no emulation. It is the real thing.
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Yeah me too. I stay away from all things with an internet or phone connection. Don’t like it.
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Except of course the gains/distortion/fuzz and reverb are all emulating the effects of a hot amp in a room However, I’m just being facetious - I totally understand where you are coming from here.
Personally I think there’s a place for both modellers and ‘real’ amps - I’ve got an ABY switch on my board so I can swap between my modeller and my tube amp, but use the same gain pedals at the front.
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This is why I’ve gone down to two pedals (kinda sorta). I am trying to get away from this comment. I’m not sure I’m successful though.
It seems very hard to get away from not having circuit monkey business going on to get our beloved tones.
I think this may even be occurring in our amps too. To include tube amps in some, or maybe many cases.
I’m pretty sure I got one of these types of amps. It has switches to get ‘more’ gain/distortion. I’m pretty sure it’s circuit monkey business that creates these tones/effects, not the tubes doing the work.
Of course, ya don’t gotta turn on them switches, which I mostly don’t, but they are there and in the circuits of the amp.
Anyways, It’s an interesting comment for sure that me think about what’s taking place to get my beloved tones.
fwiw, the pedals I’ve gone with are
supro tremolo
mxr 10 band eq
peterson mini strobe tuner
and
A a/b/y switch. If ya got more than one amp that you want to play, this pedal is a real win!
Of course, ea. of my 4 amps has a factory foot switch too. 
So my minimal pedal arrangement comes up to 8 pedals too many. I will grant myself that only one factory pedal is in use at any particular time, short of when I’m playing ‘A’ and ‘B’ together. Then, I only got 6.
My conclusion is.
‘Generally speaking’, the only time ya can get away w/o any circuit monkey business is when your playing your stand alone acoustic guitar. But then, ya don’t get any effects at all (short of natural room reverb if yer lucky enough to to be playing in a room with such characteristics). Which it seems most of us aren’t hip to. Me included. I do like my tremolo and reverb.
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True. If you listen to Josh Scott (JHS Pedals) you can get a good history lesson about effects and how they came to be.
True distortion came from cranking the tubes. For the other effects, you’d have to watch the channel. There’s so much to learn…
I like watching Josh at JHS pedals. I wanted to build the pedalboard with his 3 series pedals. However they are $100 each. That is why the pedalboard is full of TC Electric pedals. Much cheaper. I figure is these budget pedals are good enough for Paul Gilbert, then they should be fine for home hobby use. LOL
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I’ll just leave this here… 
(some foul language warning )
https://youtube.com/shorts/_boPxD4Flr0?si=aStbq99F2IvWjeU0
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nailed it.
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I like it. A lot of EQ and gain options there. I have a Dark Matter pedal, but don’t use it all that much.
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Exactly. One thing I realize is that for me…this is therapy. No drugs or alcohol for me. I am treating guitar like a hobby for my self. Like a person might paint or write. Not to perform, but for the mental health.
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I thought I would jump in on Pauls post here too having just finalised my pedalboard/practiceboard.
I’ve had my pedals lying all over the floor until now and powered by 3 plug pack PSUs so always had to change leads and chords depending on what I was doing.
Finally bought a board to put them on and a 1 Spot Pro CS6. The board came from Temu ($76) and is absolutely mint and almost identical to what our shops are selling for about $250 - $300.
Having it all setup is an absolute breath of fresh air and the Trio+ is geting so much more use 
For anyone interested in the signal chain:
(Disclaimer : I’m working it out as I go)
Gtr - HS2 - Trio+ - RC1 - Nux Gtr I/P (Chnl 2)
TC Elect Impulse is on the Trio+ Fx Loop.
Trio+ Amp O/P goes to the RC1 (Gtr only)
Trio + Mixer O/P (Drum & Bass) goes direct to Nux Inst I/P (Chnl 3)
Mic XLR from the HS2 - Nux Chnl 1.
All seems to work fine so far 
Onward and upward then 
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