bobbass4k

I know one guy who had a HOG (gigantic EHX pedal) but the rest of his pedals were all small Boss sized. He got a board big enough for his small pedals and added a tiny bypass looper where he wanted the hog, then carried the HOG in the pocket of the board bag and set it up on the floor and connected it to the looper. Far from an ideal solution but it'd give you room to expand without changing boards.

Pedlatrain have an online layout thing - http://pedalboardplanner.com/ I haven't used it in a while but you may find that not every pedal is in there - but a lot of pedals use standard size enclosures so you could always make substitutions if you just want to check sizing.

Personally I would put the doom before the MF, running a filter into a fuzz basically destroys the dynamics that the filter creates and you won't hear much ofthe filter at all. Fuzz into filter produces the classic synth sound and is a much more distinct effect. The cali is personal choice but yeah, in that position it will work as a peak limiter (on higher ratios).

This is true, I forgot to add that I assumed you wouldn't be using the FI and the Octavre/Doom/MF101 combo at the same time, but yeah that'd be a cool thing to try.

That's an amazing bunch, especially to start out with. There are people who'll say "there's no rules just try them in every order and see what you like", but that isn't particularly helpful when there's 5040 ways of ordering 7 pedals and there definitely ARE at least guidlines. The general guideline for effect types is: Pitch > Drive > Filter > Modulation > Time The ditto is an in interesting one, it depends on what you want to do with it. Do you want the ditto to play loops with effects on while you play other stuff over it? (The end) Or do you want to be able to add effects on to loops as they're playing? Same with the tuner, do you want it to act as a master mute (at the very end) or do you want to be able to tune while a loop is still playing? (the very start). Compressor again depends on what you want from it, if you're wanting it for peak limitng then it could go straight after the MF101 and the FI or at the end, if you're wanting it for general smoothing/colour then it should probably go at the start, but beware if you have it set too heavy it'll make the MF101 less lively. If it were me the first thing I'd try would be: Tuner > Cali76 > Octavre > Doom > MF101 > FI > Ditto

A bypass looper is a super simple pedal thats basically just an off switch for a pedal or chain of pedals that you connect in its effects loop. So in this case you could put the EHX pedals in it and then when the looper is off, those pedals are out of the signal chain even if they're on, so you could have them always on and switch them in/out with the looper. Tbh that would be quite an extreme solution for this case, but a bypass looper is quite a handy thing to have around anyways. If they have a true/buffered bypass switch internally that should take care of it completely (I'm not too familiar with these ehx pedals or that would have been my first suggestion).

It's a common problem with simple true bypass switching, it's caused by DC offset in the input/output capacitors - I'll spare you all the jargon but essentially when you hit the switch the voltage in these capacitors (which is part of the signal path) changes dramatically very suddenly, which you hear as a pop (kind of like how if you plug a lead into your bass while the amp's on). It's a pretty easy problem to avoid or at least mitigate and to be honest I'm really surprised these EHX pedals are doing it. I've never heard of a speaker/amp being killed by it though, it's a very quick spike. Short of modding them you could put them in a bypass looper (with a better bypass) so the pedals themselves are always on.

£15 from the sadly defunct dodgy guitar shop in Leeds, I bought it to gut for its parts (the BBD chips) but it actually sounds really good as a silly special effect, super hollow and metallic.

Finally got something resembling a board back together, relatively straightforward signal chain. The 3 off the board usually live on the desk for easy tweaking when going into the interface, cabsim, bass pre (logic clone with mods) and guitar pre (Hudson broadcast clone with mods).

Muchas Gracias, didn't find the extra frequency very useful but the siren mod very much leant into the "crazy woo woo noises" territory i enjoy, and the tracking mod was pretty handy. I'm impressed at how good a straight fuzz it is, though obviously it's all about the crazyness -

Got any details on those mods? Google has failed me. Just built the mini version, currently trying to stuff it into a 1590N...

I'd say have a look at the earthquaker pitch bay, not sure of your budget but it'll do simultaneous harmonies totally clean,with the option of adding gain on board. The only compromise you'd have to make is it only does 1 up and 1 down harmony, so you'd have to play the fifth in the chord you want to play and set it to a fifth below and a fourth above.

It's a fairly simple job, depending on what you want putting in where nand why. A lot of pedals are the size they are for a reason though, i haven't seen that many professional pedals recently that have acres of pointless space. There's other reasons to do it though, some great circuits come in flimsy plastic cases (*cough* Behringer *cough*), or if you want controls rearranged, true-bypassing etc. The sticking point will be graphics, most of us DIYerrs can't match the finish on professionally produced pedals (silkscreening is very expensive and time consuming for one offs or small runs so most of us don't bother). But if you were flexible on graphics it might be an option. We'd need to know more specifics though.

You could do it with a very hollow flanger blended in, it wouldn't get you that honkiness but you could try and cover that with the clean tone. Depends on the chorus pedal but you'd struggle to get there with just a chorus.

A very fortunate find, though I'm extremely surprised I've not come across you before to be honest, having seen Blacklisters, FOTL, TSPSI and various other bands I'd definitely put you on support bills for over the past few years. Unless I have and forgotten... Which is not entirely unlikely Edit - You're from Leeds? I feel very bad now. My new band detection powers have failed me.

A single 6 line bloomberg article that cites no sources? Pretty much since RoHS was introduced people have been moaning about an "EU ban" on leaded solder, they don't do themselves any favours by making conclusive information difficult to find, but it's there - https://echa.europa.eu/fi/-/ten-new-substances-added-to-the-candidate-list Lead is on the SVHC Candidate list under the REACH regulation, meaning distributors have more obligations when selling it but is NOT an outright legal ban, it's a first step to moving to the "authorization list" which is a much stricter level of control and would potentially cause problems with supplying it. REACH has more legal teeth than RoHS, which is essentially optional. Consumer aimed retailers like B&Q etc. are probably not providing the necessary information, but this is a far cry from being in breach of an outright ban.

As I understand it's only on the REACH SVHC Candidate list so far, which just increases the obligations of selling it to certain consumers (mandatory SDS etc.). I work at Farnell, compliance isn't my area and it makes my teeth itch, so I'm not going to claim any more specific knowledge, but RoHS/REACH is reviewed constantly by an entire team of very boring but competent people. If we couldn't sell it, we wouldn't.

Tin/Lead is still readily available. You have to go looking a little bit more, but it's still perfectly legal to sell, It's just a supply and demand thing. Businesses etc. all want to be RoHS compliant so the demand for it plummeted, but you can still get it from more hobby-focused places. CPC/Farnell sell multicore, or the RS or Rapid own brand stuff is good.

Amen on both, I record a riff on the loop pedal and just feed that in. Doing test probes on amp also a bad idea, I use an old pair of headphones. It's pretty safe, 9v dc will just give you a bit of a buzz, you get used to it after a while to be honest. The bigger risk is to the pedal be very careful with the probe, any accidental shorts while power is on could blow something up or render it useless.

I've always thought of gear4 as an online shop. Having been to the York showroom I certainly wouldn't expect them to have stock of everything they're listing online there without confirming first. Can't say I really see the problem.

A percolator is as good a starting place as any, beware though as the circuit is quite tempramental, the original transistors are obsolete and the sound will change quite drastically with your transistor choices, I'd maybe go for a components kit from somewhere like fuzzdog, as they'll come with "known good" ones.

Super important completely hypothetical question - If I wanted to do a cover of an obscure song using the original vocal stem that has been freely published for remix purposes is that kosher within the spirit of the thing or is it too "remixy"?

The "There's no rules, just listen to the universe maaaan" answer is never as useful as people seem to think it is, especially for beginners. You only need 6 pedals before you're looking at 700+ potential combinations. On my most recent 22 strong board that spikes slightly to 1120000000000000000000. I know I have better things to do with my Sundays. As a rule, Octavers track much, much better with a clean, strong signal, always first or just after the compressor. I like gain early, other people vary but I generally prefer running gain in to everything else (pre-amp, amp sim pedals being the general exception). As radiophonic said, phaser (and chorus etc.) into gain will sound more pronounced but I've never found much use for those sounds. Filters after drive is a lot more pronounced and what I go for usually, if you want that big synth sound you need to go octave > fuzz > filter. A fuzz produces an extremely compressed signal that essentially jams an envelope filter open, if you put a filter first the fuzz obliterates the dynamics and I've always found it way too subtle. I then run modulation, the order varies but I tend to run the more subtle effects like chorus first and tremolo usually goes last. Time effects like delay and long reverbs go last as generally you want the delay to apply to the whole signal, though delay before other stuff can be a fun effect. There's other things to consider, if you're running a long chain a good buffered bypass pedal near the end and in the middle is a very good idea. Compressor is largely taste/the effect you need, if you're after general tone shaping first is a good idea, if you're using it as more of a limiter for big peaks then you'll usually want to go last or directly after the problem pedal.

I have to do most of my componenets ordering at work so it's just practical, I got sick of ordering expensive ICs for new builds only to discover I had one in the back of the ICs drawer. it only works if you remember to update it though...