Rant about pedal mods.
Hey there! First post. Decided I'd write these on a whim and see where that takes me. Can't plan to save my life. Anyways, I came across a troubling attribute of the gear nerd community. People seem to like to mod their pedals right after they get the pedals. I'm not sure what that means, really. Did you just hear this pedal modded? Or do you think the mod will make the pedal inherently better? The latter is a big issue I think. You see, a lot of guitarists don't really know what their pedals are really doing, or how to get a better tone with what they already have or have access to. There's a general consensus that more money equals better tone. That's not always true. Electro-Harmonix just came out with a Klon Centaur “Klone” called the Soul Food. It only costs $70, and sounds absolutely fantastic. Personally, I have a Walrus Audio Voyager on my board, a $170 Klon-like boutique drive, and my brother bought the Soul Food. We tested each pedal out, and managed to get nearly the same sound (and definitely the same caliber sound) out of each pedal at the same settings. My guess is that the EHX is made of less expensive components that don't sound that different. The thing is, JHS came up with a mod for the Soul Food. Likely it changes the way it sounds a good bit. I haven't heard it personally. Now it seems like it's the cool thing to do to have it modded. There's people buying the Soul Food from JHS already modded! Mods don't make anything inherently better unless it's utilitarian like making the status LED on a Tube Screamer bright white instead of dim red. The best conclusion I can make is that these guitarists that are buying a Soul Food to turn around and have it modded nearly immediately think that a modded pedal is inherently better, and will make them sound better. That's not necessarily true. I can only think that if you buy pedals to mod them just because you think the mod will make it better, you don't know what you're doing. Take some time, play with the pedals as is, find which one you like. If there's a mod you like, sure, go ahead and mod your pedal. But please understand that mods aren't going to magically make everything better. I know I'm not touching on a lot of mods that sincerely make the pedals sound better, but the point is about the attitude behind modding pedals. Gotta put thought into the sound you want before the status. Thanks for enduring my rant. Tone talk to follow!