During my summer in Nashvile I decided to build a pedalboard. Warning: this is going to be a guitar nerd post. For those that aren’t guitar players but are still curious - a guitar pedal is a device that manipulates the sound of your guitar. Pedals can do anything from make your guitar tone distorted, add some reverb, or make it sound like a spaceship. A pedalboard is simply a board with the pedals mounted on it. I'm going to go through the pedals I decided on and provide links to more in depth descriptions.
My rig
I’ve never been much of a pedal user, but had increasingly felt the need to have a few basic pedals so I could cover a wide range of material. After picking out my pedals I reached out to a custom builder in Kansas called Pedal Pad. They are fully custom down to the tolex (I opted for "black comet.") I chose to have the input, output, and power input all on the same side for easy set up. They make high quality boards in some unique designs so check them out here.
The first pedal on my board is my Polytune tuner. This should be a requirement on everyone's board. Find it here.
Next we have the Fulltone OCD. I fell in love with this pedal immediately. I’ve always been looking for a way to fatten up the tone of my Telecaster and this pedal does the trick. You can add some subtle dirt to your tone or crank up the drive for some thick overdriven leads. Find more information here.
After the OCD we have the Boss CE-2W Waza Craft Chorus. This is really a few pedals in one. Most importantly (for me) you can get some of those classic chorus tones (think Prince’s Purple Rain.) It also works quite well with it dialed in at a low level, just to give your clean tones a little something extra. More information here.
Last but not least - and perhaps my favorite pedal on the board - is a pedal by Hungry Robot called “The Wash.” In it’s most basic application - it’s a tap tempo delay. What makes this pedal special is the reverb circuit. You can adjust the levels to create some beautiful ambient and washed out tones. I use this pedal for a lot of swells. Dig it here.
One last pedal that is not mounted on the board that I use is a Morely Mini Optical Volume pedal. I usually run this pedal between the board and my amp. I don’t keep it on the board due to space and it’s not a pedal I always use. I found it’s much easier to use a pedal for some of those ambient swells than the volume knob on my guitar. Link here.
As you can see, my rig is pretty simple. My goal was to put the necessities in an easy grab and go format. I highly recommend getting lightly used pedals. I bought every one of these pedals on Reverb.com. Have fun!