What Are Your Essential Pedals?

[James Freeman]

Trumpet pedal is essential?
Unless I play in a one man big band cover band I can't imagine a use for a trumpet pedal.

edit:

 

[hemmelight]

If an amp has reverb, then I'm good with just a delay pedal.
An SD-1 in front is a great "nice-to-have," of course.

 

[James Freeman]

Delay pedal is essential?
Why wold you want the audience to hear your mistakes more than once?

edit:
Recurring joke.

 

[Whizzinby]

Compressor is essential?

When you put “your” in the thread title did that mean you wanted us to reply, or was it rhetorical and you just want us to see your essential pedals?

 

[James Freeman]

When you put “your” in the thread title did that mean you wanted us to reply, or was it rhetorical and you just want us to see your essential pedals?

Just throwing some lighthearted jokes, the usual, probably should have used an emoji.
Also, I'm curious about the compressor, a long time ago I had a CS-3 and it didn't quite work with EMG's and a Metal Zone so I sold it, that was before I started to listen to good music.
Now I know more about compressors and read that Gilmour uses two for his clean sound and it is a big part of his sound.

I'm curious, how do you use a compressor with an overdrives or fuzzes, it never sounded quite right to me no matter how I tweaked?

 

[Stone]

For me a FM9 "IS" Essential

 

[Whizzinby]

Just throwing some lighthearted jokes, the usual, probably should have used an emoji.
Also, I'm curious about the compressor, a long time ago I had a CS-3 and it didn't quite work with EMG's and a Metal Zone so I sold it, that was before I started to listen to good music.
Now I know more about compressors and read that Gilmour uses two for his clean sound and it is a big part of his sound.

I'm curious, how do you use a compressor with an overdrives or fuzzes, it never sounded quite right to me no matter how I tweaked?

Just busting your chops.

Personally, I rarely use a compressor with gained up tones, unless maybe for a lead.

I like to wash out a lot of my clean stuff in chorus/verb/delay and the compressor is important to smooth out the pick attack before it gets modulated and repeated.

 

[James Freeman]

I forgot to mention a good Isolated Power Supply for the pedals.
I got a switching mode power brick that feeds the main splitter unit with ten regulated outputs and it is noisy with some pedals and quiet with others.
Apparently the isolated psu is not a myth, it really is the best way to power pedals with the minimum noise possible.

 

[the-trooper]

Shocked that pedal company named "Essential" doesn't exist.
(I googled)

 

[HotRats]

Just throwing some lighthearted jokes, the usual, probably should have used an emoji.
Also, I'm curious about the compressor, a long time ago I had a CS-3 and it didn't quite work with EMG's and a Metal Zone so I sold it, that was before I started to listen to good music.
Now I know more about compressors and read that Gilmour uses two for his clean sound and it is a big part of his sound.

I'm curious, how do you use a compressor with an overdrives or fuzzes, it never sounded quite right to me no matter how I tweaked?

Inside Helix presets I often use a compressor for clean sounds, always in parallel because I don't like to smooth out the pick attack.

I use it because is free.

Never had a compressor in my analog boards.

 

[spawnofthesith]

Well tuner is a given so I won't list that

Essentials for me:
Compressor
Delay
Looper

Non essential but continuing in order of importance:
EF
Wah
phaser
od

 

[Mooselake]

Mostly I'm 100% Helix these days so it's like my only pedal. Most of my patches have a drive, chorus, and reverb. But if L6 doesn't give us a Keeley Halo like in the next update, Ima buy one of those.

 

[northern_fox]

I'm curious, how do you use a compressor with an overdrives or fuzzes, it never sounded quite right to me no matter how I tweaked?

Slow attack and fast release post distortion is a good way to make stuff more punchy depending on the riffs. But I'm not sure if it makes sense outside of a recording/mix context

 

[woody]

Slow attack and fast release post distortion is a good way to make stuff more punchy depending on the riffs. But I'm not sure if it makes sense outside of a recording/mix context

As soon as you play in ears/silent stage you are in a mix context imho.
With a Helix, Fractal, QC or Tonex there's no reason not to go full production sounds.

 

[northern_fox]

As soon as you play in ears/silent stage you are in a mix context imho.
With a Helix, Fractal, QC or Tonex there's no reason not to go full production sounds.

Well what I meant is, what's coming out front of the house monitors but I agree. I just haven't tried that at anything louder than studio monitors

 

[Iron1]

Guitar:
Digitech Drop
MXR M108
SD1
Noise Gate of some sort (currently a Donner Noise Killer)
Reverb of some sort (luxury?)

Bass:
Digitech Drop
Idiotbox Blower Box
MXR M108

 

[TheTrueZoltan!]

Overdrive
Chorus
Wah
Noise Gate
Phaser

HX Stomp.

 

[James Freeman]

HX Stomp.

Cheater!

 

[dronerstone]

Might fit here, not sure tho...

With multi/modeling units in play, I do enjoy a good noise gate, if necessary. Very often linking it to the same footswitch as a drive/fuzz block does the trick perfectly.

But with real-life pedalboards, I'll always try and work my way around. Most probably just a matter of personal taste, but I hate them with a passion.

 

[FuzzyAce]

Generally --

OD
Distortion
Fuzz
Vibe
Reverb
Wah
Tremolo
Delay
Phaser
Flanger
Compressor
Chorus