My friend you are missing a huge component that ever pedal nerd must have.
It is the cup of life for Toan.
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Oops, sorry. My eye was drawn to your itemized list, I kinda skimmed the part above.
I have a friend who has a band in which is the singer and guitarist. He has only 2 pedals, an OD and a wah-wah. Heās very old school (though a young man) and his band pretty much plays only classic rock. He can get pretty much any sound he needs/wants with just those two. He sounds awesome (to my ears, anyway).
Anyway, good luck with your collection!
yeah there are a couple bands I see locally who all plug straight into their amps. nobody in the band uses pedals. and then I know some folks who are solo acoustic musicians who use a few fx pedals (but not a looper or beat buddy or anything like that). Iām mostly happy with how things sound straight through my amp. But sometimes I want a little more. to this point, I havenāt felt much of a want for a wah or a fuzz or any number of different pedals.
just depends on what sound(s) you want, eh? you can listen to all the sound samples in the world or play with the pedal display at your favorite guitar store. but until you have it plugged into YOUR gear, you never truly know, right?
if you notice, 2 of the pedals on my list are only there to make up for the lack of a full band. and a 3rd is at least in part in service to that. will I ever put together a band that negates the need for those pedals? I have no idea. Iām not actively looking for such a thing but if I happen to meet some people at a similar place in their music journey with similar goals, who knows?
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Last night I went to a show of a Taiwanese teenager ukulele master. Dude is legit.
@Tommy Emmanuel ft. Feng E, Classical gas live version
He plays with quite a pedalboard these days and he makes pretty extensive use of it. Everything from heavy wah when playing Jimi Hendrix stuff to what I am pretty sure was a pitch shifter to add some extra bass notes to his solo uke performance, to who-knows-what with his original stuff. I got pretty decent looks at his pedalboard. I recognized some of what he used, but not all of it. Keep in mind, this is the setup he uses for an acoustic ukulele.
Off to the sides (not in the pic) are 2 expression pedals.
Then I get an email notification this morning that the overdrive pedal I ordered has been shipped. So I guess I need to get on ordering a few bits so I can use it. All I need is another cable and a power supply. But since I do have a plan in mind for pedals (and I donāt want to take years to get the functionality I described above), I think I want to get a sort of platform I can build upon. I ordered a sort of starter board with an isolated power supply from Gator.
Pedal Board w/ Carry Bag & Power Supply-GPT-BL-PWR - Gator Cases
I found one used for a little cheaper, so this ought to be able to get me started.
Are you sure about that power supply being isolated? Maybe I missed it but Iād expect to see the word isolated all over the web page and I donāt
Good point. I thought that because there were separate outlets for each pedal that they were isolated but thatās not the case?
Here are more details on the power supply that it comes with:
Pedal Board Power Supply - Gator Cases
At this point, Iām okay with it not necessarily being āisolatedā if it means a bigger budget is necessary to get that. Maybe later, especially if I run into issues.
Contrast that listing to the Fender one for their isolated supply
https://uk.fender.com/products/engine-room-lvl8-power-supply?variant=50608275095839
You might get away with it.
An isolated supply costs more but should be something you never have to revisit
I do intend to revisit the entire board. This one is meant as a starting point. The board itself is just wood (I got the entire kit for the price of the power supply). I had considered just buying a single power supply for this one pedal, but this will at least give me a little time to work on building things out without needing to buy another power supply for the next pedal I buy.
Iām honestly tempted to get one thatās powered by a battery. Fewer cords snaking around the room and such. But I think I need to be closer to completing my current plan to be sure what will work and what wonāt for whichever pedals I wind up with.
I think my wife is going to wind up with her own pedalboard, too, at some point. So Iām sure there will be mixing and matching over time.
Re looper and beat buddy: If you are wanting to add a drum track to a loop then I suggest you check out the Boss RC-5 Loop Station. It has a bunch of drum sounds and it syncs the drum track to the loop, so it actually makes it foolproof. The display graphic is excellent. I also use it as a stand-alone drum machine.
so I donāt just want to loop drum sounds. At least for home use, Iāve got a drum machine that does that just fine (also a boss) and Iāll continue to use it for that for home playing.
what Iām after for a drum machine is something thatās more programmable so I can capture rhythm and timing variations without needing to manually activate the change mid-song and keep the timing. essentially program the rhythm for a specific song beforehand so what when itās time for that song, I just select it from the pedal interface. Itās not clear to me if this Boss pedal gives you that level of control over the percussion parts.
Still, it has had my attention as a looper. About all I know I want on the looper side is that I want enough time available for loops that I donāt necessarily need to feel restricted by keeping loops short.
Looks like it will play nice and sync with a Beat Buddy pedal, also (this shows the older version of the Beat Buddyā¦I suspect the newer version will work also).
Boss RC-5 Looper & BeatBuddy Midi Synchronization
so it doesnāt necessarily need to be an either/or question. Could easily get the RC-5 as a looper first, use it for the rhythm functions it has, and add a Beat Buddy later for more complex rhythm parts. I do need to figure out how to space out pedal purchases so I maximize my available budget but also get the functions Iām after.
Ah, OK. Sounds like you will need something more complex. I played around with an Alesis SR16 years ago and it had that facility. I did get it to sync up with the Ditto X4 looper through midi, but I wouldnāt be recommending that looper.
If you buy second hand you can always sell them later and not lose too much. There is a lot of trial and error with pedals. 
Why wouldnāt you recommend that particular looper?
Yeah, I bet there will be lots of trial-and-error with pedals. The one I suspect will be one of the more difficult ones on my list will be the pitch shifter.
when it comes to overdrives, that one is likely to wind up being a matter of how it sounds hooked up to my gear more than anything. maybe Iāll like the one I boughtā¦maybe not.
There have been a lot of issues reported with it. Mine would randomly decide to not record every now and then, so I couldnāt trust it.
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Maybe the RC-5 with an appropriate MIDI controller?
Cheers,
Keith
One thing Iād note about pitch shifters, my QC has one and Iāve used it on 1 song so far only 1 semitone down so wasnāt as noticable but going a lot lower means you have to have the volume quite loud to hide the acoustic noise from the instrument otherwise it sounds terrible. I figured Iād just use it for some tunes I want to play in D and C standard but itās more likely Iāll just buy another guitar soon for it and keep it in lower tunings.
That looks awful handy. Not sure it specifically does what Iām after with regards to drum rhythms, but as far as controlling the looper, it does seem to make that a good bit more intuitive. Iām not sure that Iād dive in completely on the looper AND midi controller at the same time, though. As I said, Iāve gotta space out my purchases to keep the budget happy.
I imagine that this might differ depending on which pitch shifter pedal youāre talking about? Which begs the question, which one have you used? I would be after one that in addition to having semitone shifting, could also do at least a whole octave so I could mimic a bass. Would be nice if it could do a whole octave and also tweak it up or down a couple semitones from there.
Mine is in the Quad Cortex which is a modeller, similar to the others that have been suggested. Most tend to do semitones and go quite low, sometimes all the way down a couple of octaves. The Digitech Drop seems to be one of the best around from what I read.
Yesterday was NPD for the overdrive pedal I ordered. The power supply I ordered isnāt in yet, so all I have are some early impressions based on repurposing an oddball power supply I had (that is very noisy).
I like it. Using it to add just a light bit of overdrive really helps Justinās solo blues material sing. Supposedly this pedal has enough adjustment to go well into distortion territory. I havenāt played with that yet, since I donāt really play any songs that use heavy distortion. But given that the noise increases as I turn either the volume or the drive knobs up, Iām not going to mess with that until I get it connected to a better power supply.
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The best way for me to do my pedals when just playing alone is to make my volume setting of the pedal matched. So basically I adjust it so it is the same loudness/decibel as my amp volume when engaged.
If I was in a band and using it only for my solo, I would maybe turn it up so my sound is a little lounder than the rest of the band so its the feature sound.
These are the best songs. Just wait until you get a fuzz pedal. Ohh so good
Yeah, thatās essentially what I did with the volume knob.
The way you describe using it in a band for a solo is why I think it might be useful to have a dedicated boost pedal or maybe a 2nd overdrive. Just depending on what the song calls for, of course. But if youāve already got a little bit of distortion from the pedal through the song and you need a little oomph for a soloā¦you need something else. Itās not something Iām going to have any need of soon. Iāll benefit from other pedals before addressing that.
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