Sans Pedals!

[myboss57]

So, I know this has been discussed in the past, but just wanted to bring it up as I've recently enjoyed the "freedom"!

The band had a gig a few weeks ago and at set run-through beforehand I noticed that my Pedal board was not getting any juice. All the cables were plugged in, I checked the outlets and everything. So I played the set without pedals. I have/had on my board only a tuner, a boost, and the Strymon El Cap (used a little in two songs).

We get to the gig, I've decided that I'm going to just go with using only the tuner (on battery) and that's it. Had a great set, sounded great, blasted the OD120 and sounded/felt lovely. I've fallen in love with the sound of the amp all by its self again (not that I ever fell out of love with it, mind you). The El Cap has been sold, the booster might just stick around unused until who-knows-when again since it was cheap to begin with, and the tuner is all I'm using now. I've gotten back into the habit of pick attack and guitar volume control to clean things up or "boost" my sound. I love it!

Anyone else experienced this or play straight in?

[nerd]

How did you get away with cranking that beast for od sounds? Did you not drown the rest of the band?

[myboss57]

Ah, well I should clarify, not full bore cranked. But I played with my volume about 3/4 of the way up, and the gain about a little past halfway. So plenty of Overdrive, and plenty of "cleans" with the guitar volume rolled off a bit.

[ScottyDanger]

I also play without pedals most of the time. I have a fully populated board (tuner, volume pedal, OD, compressor, fuzz, delay) and it lives under my desk next to my amp. After a while, I got sick of always bending over to tweak stuff that just muddied up my sound anyway, and it's easier to just plug straight into the front of my amp and rock out. I play like 90% clean anyway, so it's not a big deal. I use my amp's trem and verb and that's it.

I just rigged up my board again now that I have a looper, and I'm shuffling pedals in and out trying to settle on something that won't muddy everything up, yet still give me some fun sounds. Right now it's just tuner-comp-delay-looper.

[a.hun]

Anyone else experienced this or play straight in?

Oh yes, I've just plugged straight into my OR120 for many gigs. But then of course I'm a bass player!

Know exactly what you mean though. I don't gig on guitar, but do play it a lot, and usually prefer going straight to amp. Maybe a bit of reverb for cleans, but usually nothing more than that. Depends of course, I like to mess about with a lot of different sounds, but where I can I'll just get them from the amp.

For bass I'll usually have some external EQ along, maybe a compressor too. But I'll often not use them at all. With a really good sounding amp I very often just prefer the sound / feel going straight in. If using my Hiwatt the straight in sounds are so good that I'll only use external tweaking for alternative sounds, not for 'improving' the core sounds because you basically can't. Sure you can change things but you also always seem to lose something in the process too. Same with my newish Genz Benz Streamliner head - I'll sometimes hook up a compressor and external preamp like a Tech21 VT Bass, set up something nice, switch them out to compare and realise it is still nicer without and just unplug them.


Andy.

[Borderline Productions]

Life as a bass player, all you need is a tube pre-amp, EQ, and some compression. Genz-Benz and Eden heads will have a tube-preamp and active EQ already in them. So all you need is compression and lots of wattage.

[myboss57]

It's definitely been nice playing without pedals again. I may, eventually, pickup an Eventide Space pedal to screw around with. I like having some effects like reverb or delay to create atmospheric stuff from time to time. But also, it's fun to just keep it simple and rock!

I guess I never had a lot of pedals and a huge board, but I felt like I was easily going to head that route eventually.

Yeah, I do miss the good old days of being a bass player and just never having to worry about anything except making sure my strings were in fairly good shape, and that my cables weren't knotted up! Plug n play!

[kaipartai]

Yeah, pretty much straight in, tuner is a must for gigging, and do use an old Dod Bi-fet preamp pedal for clean boost if I'm to play leads or solos, actually the amp,(OR15), sounds better with it in the chain, even if it's turned off!

[myboss57]

Yeah, pretty much straight in, tuner is a must for gigging, and do use an old Dod Bi-fet preamp pedal for clean boost if I'm to play leads or solos, actually the amp,(OR15), sounds better with it in the chain, even if it's turned off!

I'm not familiar with that pedal, that seems odd that the amp would sound better with it though, especially with the pedal off.

[kaipartai]

Yeah, pretty much straight in, tuner is a must for gigging, and do use an old Dod Bi-fet preamp pedal for clean boost if I'm to play leads or solos, actually the amp,(OR15), sounds better with it in the chain, even if it's turned off!

I'm not familiar with that pedal, that seems odd that the amp would sound better with it though, especially with the pedal off.

It's not that strange, it's really just a clean boost pedal, and I assume that even when off there's a ever so slight a boost! The pedal is very transparent otherwise, even when on! Very good buffer pedal if one was to have a very long chain of pedals.

[Wendigo]

I'm the same now. I used to have a few pedals but now I just always feel it cheapens the sound compared to just guitar->amp. I have a wah, a chorus and a phaser but they are off 99.9% of the time.

[a.hun]

Life as a bass player, all you need is a tube pre-amp, EQ, and some compression. Genz-Benz and Eden heads will have a tube-preamp and active EQ already in them. So all you need is compression and lots of wattage.

Yep, full valve preamp (3 valves) in the GB Streamliner, so I can get good compression right there with the gain / volume controls if I want. Not that I generally use a lot anyway live - often no external compression at all. (I'm not allergic, I just usually love controlling dynamics myself!)

It is a really good amp. Unlike most of the GB amps (which have loadsa knobs giving microscopic control over your tone) it has very few controls, very simple layout. And like really good but simple all valve amps you can get a lot more different sounds than you'd think with those simple controls. About the only of the recent class D 'micro amps' which does a really good impression of an all valve amp. And it really does - I've read of ex SVT guys who have moved to this amp and swear it can even outdo the Ampeg at it's own game. I'm certainly impressed.
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Andy.