Do you think that uninspired or "vanilla" boards with Timelines, Blue Sky's and JHS everything else are as bad as boards with cheaper pedals with character? Because i get so mad when I see "good " boards that have the same 5 expensive "boutique" from Strymon or Walrus Audio pedals on them, but have absolutely NO character, not to mention, the player most likely will never even begin to tap the pedals full potential.
Yeah, I agree with you… those superboards get very boring after a while. I mean, it’s basically the non-affordable version of “I need one of everything, but I won’t use it creatively, it’s just so I can join the elite pedalboard club”.And frankly, I think that this vision (criticizing trends and expensive but souless stuff) has given WAY more views than posting cheap pedalboards ;D I had tried being a “pedalboard critic” before here on Tumblr and it did not hit off. The “cheap boards” was just a gimmick to get attention :D
(I’ve been writing A LOT of long form text a work – but don’t worry, my native tongue isn’t english –, so I’m kind of in the mood for writing and your text inspired me! yay!)
Now, continuing the rant!!!
The thing that gets me mad the most is the volume pedal. People have been doing volume swells for years with the volume knob, or placing the volume whatever on the chain, and it always worked great. But the fact that there were no “rules”, meant that each person had a different sound. Same with Delay/Reverb. Now it’s almost a sin to place it anywhere but on the FX-Loop or after the drives…
Today, however, everyone does the same thing or has the same board: bunch of light overdrives –> Ernie Ball Volume Pedal –> Timeline –> BlueSky/BigSky.
And everyone sounds the same, and has to “ask TGP before trying”, so nobody stumbles upon nice sounds.
I honestly think that pedals and boards (by “boards” I also mean just pedal combinations) are sort of an artform in itself. I know it sounds crazy, but why do people post pictures of them online? Why do people obsess about which overdrive to choose? Why do they need peer approval? I know that the end result is the music, but those pedals *ARE* things that inspire us, among other stuff. They inspired Jimi Hendrix, David Gilmour, Jonny Greenwood, Ed O'Brien, Tom Morello, Omar Rodriguez Lopez, Josh Homme, Kevin Parker.
And some might say those people would make great music with a wire nailed to a piece of wood, but that’s not true. It wouldn’t be the same. Guitars, pedals, amps DO INSPIRE people to achieve greater art.
Some people are hating me on anonymous ‘asks’ because I’m becoming sort of the Pitchfork of pedal world (AKA the asshole critic), but I’M COMPLETELY HONEST WHEN I SAY THIS: there’s some beauty in those “tools”. I think that we’re free to treat whatever we want as art, or criticize whatever we want.
Why do we only have to say good things about other people’s boards? Why can’t we criticize the trends that we see as bad or just plain boring? :P
I recently came across this post by a dude named Mike O'Toole of the band Make and Do Mend (sic?), which is the COMPLETE OPPOSITE OF WHAT I THINK:
The first thing to remember when crafting a pedal chain is to go into DYNAMIC effects first, then go into the TIME-BASED effects at the end. I see a lot of people mix this up and it really frustrates me.
What frustrates me is sameness. It is predictability. The fact that I can look at someone’s board and immediately recognize who they copied their board layout from and not being surprised by watching videos. Is it a Jeffrey Kunde layout? An Eric Johnson layout? Or a Jimi Hendrix layout? Well, Hendrix boards are kind of a dying breed those days.
I think that my biggest gripe is that about 15 or 10 years ago I could log into the GuitarGeek.com forum (which recently got absorbed by Guitar.com) or other similar board, look at people's boards and wonder what kinds of sounds they’d make. Or even look at the rig diagrams (https://www.guitar.com/rigs) and think things like “What the fuck, I have to listen to Mahogany! Their guitarist has like FOUR REVERBS!”.
Before I listened to them I had no idea a guitar could sound like that. That inspired me to go crazy on reverb back then.
Or Bethany Curve. What the hell, the guy has modulation after reverb? I had to listen to them… Check it out:
The GuitarGeek Forum itself was great. Everyone had a limited budget, and the boutique world was still being born, so they had to make choices very carefully.
Of course I’m romanticizing things, because GuitarGeek was A LOT about shoegaze, although there was WAAAAAAAAAAY more diversity that say, TGP.
Today the “spiritual successor” of Guitar Geek is probably I Love Fuzz, which has non-traditional stuff and isn’t even afraid to embrace digital technology (the Dr Scientist BitQuest is as digital as it gets and it’s a hit over there).
I sorta have the most stupid hobby of all. Apart from consuming an UNHEALTHY amount of music (my Bandcamp account has more than 400 albums and yes I do listem to all of them), I’m guilty of also liking to see and hear people using pedalboards. I like gear demos. I like to get inspired by how other people use their gear.
We’re living on the golden age of pedals, gear and stuff. It’s never been better and the quality and creativity of the builders keeps going up.
But, as you put it rather succinctly: “the player most likely will never even begin to tap the pedals full potential”. So it’s probably the worst time in guitar history to be someone who enjoys talking shop and seeing pedalboards.
So yeah, I agree with you 100%.
tangentwithtanner
blakekathryn
kianamaiart
snowghoul
ellievsbear
izzy806
2087
gummygunk
origamiaround
