Watch Emily’s Guitar.com LIVE Panel: Perfecting Your Pedalboard

Video Transcript

Note: a machine made this, so it’s not perfect, but if you’re hearing impaired and have any questions about what we said, please feel free to ask us in the comments or send us an email with the form below. 

Guitar.com LIVE Panel Perfecting Your Pedalboard

Emily: [00:00:00] Welcome to perfecting your pedalboard a guitar.com live panel. My name is Emily, and you might know me from the get offset podcast or gear demo channel. And I’m here with Eric from living room gear, demos, and grant from Goodwood audio. Hey,

Eirik – Living Room Gear Demos: [00:00:17] Hey,

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:00:18] how’s it going?

Eirik – Living Room Gear Demos: [00:00:19] How’s it going?

Emily: [00:00:21] Good. I’m glad. I hope you all are doing well.

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:00:25] Yeah. Doing really well. I’m over here in Canada and we’re heading into winter and, uh, I’m getting ready for snow.

Emily: [00:00:33] Oh, is it snowed yet? No, not

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:00:35] even close. I’m just I’m ready and waiting.

Emily: [00:00:38] Nice. And Eric you’re in Oslo. Is that right?

Eirik – Living Room Gear Demos: [00:00:41] Oslo in Norway. That’s right. So kind of the same as grant waiting for winter.

Winter’s coming that’s yeah. That’s what’s up. What’s going on here?

Emily: [00:00:53] Nice. Well in Seattle, we don’t really get a lot of winter. We get a little bit, so it’s just fall, you know, it’s just getting nice and rainy and all that. Well, we only have about 40 minutes, uh, to, to do this panel. So y’all just want to

get started and get into some, some, I don’t

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:01:19] know. Sorry, you cut out a little bit there

Emily: [00:01:22] now. No,

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:01:24] but yes, I’m ready.

Eirik – Living Room Gear Demos: [00:01:26] Yes. I’m also ready.

Emily: [00:01:33] Um, that we would start by talking our first step headboard stuff. So, Eric, do you want to start, um, do you remember your first pedalboard?

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:01:45] Yeah. Actually I do.

Eirik – Living Room Gear Demos: [00:01:47] I had a board that I used both for bass playing and guitar playing, and I think it had like three pedals and it was the boss  and I had one of those big ones micro since from electronics and.

A big Muff. I had a big Muff and I might also have had a tuner. And I used that board for actually quite a few years. And it was a really good board actually. Um, I’m thinking about maybe buying the pedals again and try to build the board again and see if I would still like to board. But yeah, that was my first

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:02:40] proper

Eirik – Living Room Gear Demos: [00:02:41] board.

I would say that’s probably 10 years ago now. Maybe even more actually. Yeah. So that was my first one.

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:02:52] Nice.

Emily: [00:02:52] What about you grant?

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:02:55] Well, I think, uh, Eric just made me feel pretty old. Um, I think my first pedalboard was about 21 years ago and, uh, I still remember it because my brother in law was literally making in front of me for this yesterday.

Uh, I had a good job in the summer in high school. And so I saved up all my money from this job. And I basically went to our local music store and I basically went in with a, with a bunch of cash. Not knowing what I wanted to buy and I just wanted to buy some awesome gear. And so I ended up getting, um, a C too, which I had no idea what that was at the time I bought a wall pedal before I ever had a tuner, another mistake.

And then I got a metal zone, which is never a mistake I have to add. Uh, and then, uh, D D six. And that was it. And then I got the cheapest power supply I could get because power supplies aren’t any fun. And, uh, and then I, I literally had no clue. And so like hearing Eric say, like, I think I might want to buy these pedals again.

It’s like, I just, I don’t think I want to buy those pedals again. I think I have other ones that I’m like, I now understand what I like to hear. And yeah. So I look back on my first pedal board and I just shake my head because I had just absolutely no clue, but, uh, but now I do absolutely love, uh, chorus pedals to see two out of all of those, I would go back to in a heartbeat.

Um, but yeah, I made a lot of gear purchase mistakes as a kid.

Emily: [00:04:33] Yeah. I mean, I kind of feel that same way. I think my first official pedalboard. It was for this cover band gig. I had a Nashville and I didn’t really, I had had some pedals growing up and most of the things, the pedals on that board were things I just accumulated somehow, like my dad loved going to auctions and there was this guitar store going out of business.

So he took me there for the auction and kind of toward the end of the auction, it was like, yeah, for just 20 bucks a pedal pick out the pills you want. And so I think I had a lot of those Dana lecture, lunchbox series pedals, some Boston rentals, probably a wall in there somewhere. Yeah. But I had no idea what I was doing.

I didn’t know what order to put the pedals at. I didn’t know if it mattered. I got, I had this board that was like this flat board that had integrated power. I think I got it on Amazon for like 40 bucks or whatever. And the Velcro didn’t really work at all. And looking back on that board, I’m like, Yeah.

Some of those pedals were all right. Um, I don’t think I would buy any of them again, like I think probably the, I sold almost all of them. Um, Like a memory man and a Holy grail are probably the nicer of the pedals I had on that board. But I look back and I’m like, Ooh, I wish someone had just like guided me a little bit more.

I just knew I knew the pedals. I didn’t know what I needed any of them for like, I don’t, I had no need for a chorus pedal in any of those songs, but I had one on the board

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:06:02] it’s course has never a mistake. And I’m looking over your shoulder and I see a fuzz problem. Like you’re doing pretty good. Like you’ve got some solid choices going on right now.

Emily: [00:06:12] Yeah, the fuzz probe and the diving bells and the H nine. Yeah, I’m surprised. I don’t see a lot, a lot in yells backgrounds.

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:06:23] Actually, you can talk huddles.

Eirik – Living Room Gear Demos: [00:06:24] I have laundry in the background. That’s everything that I have in this room, but is this a long time ago? Emily? Like grant is 21 years ago.

Emily: [00:06:35] Nine years, 10, 10 or nine years.

Eirik – Living Room Gear Demos: [00:06:37] Yeah. Cool.

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:06:38] Yeah, we’ve all come a long way.

Emily: [00:06:39] We should just Pat ourselves on the back for how far we

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:06:42] absolutely I’ll take that. I’ll take that.

Emily: [00:06:46] That kind of leads me into the first thing I really wanted to talk about. Um, I think one of the first questions that people get when they, when they start to get three, four or five pedals, Is signal chain.

What order? Where do I put these pedals? And does it, does it matter? Um, let’s start with grant. Do you have opinions on like signal chains or could you really quickly like give ’em a little bit insight on what people typically recommend in terms of pedal order?

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:07:18] Totally. This is, um, like with doing custom setups and all that.

This is a question we get every week is around signal chain to the point where I did a four video series dedicated to signal chain on our YouTube. And I say that because, uh, at the end of that series, I went into it knowing a lot of answers and I was proven wrong by the experiments that I did. And so signal chain absolutely matters, um, are really rough overview.

Uh, like a cheat sheet, I guess, would be starting with, uh, typically a Y and a fuzz pedal often because they don’t like to see buffers. So you kind of have to put them at the beginning of your chain, uh, after that you go into gain stages, overdrives distortions. Uh, and again, this is the typical you could then go into chorus, tremolo.

Delay reverb pitch will often be at the front as well. Um, which is the one thing I now, uh, I now disagree with, I think, Oh, that pitch, I know I’m shaking up the pedalboard world, um, pitch, uh, I would always run first and the thinking was it tracks better? So you get a more accurate representation of the people settings except.

The later a pedal is in the chain. So let’s say, uh, you put your overdrive last in a string of overdrives that last overdrive is going to have the most say on what your tone sounds like in the same way that that pitch pedal. So I was using a POG. Um, when you put the pug first, the overdrives tend to wash it out and make it less, uh, you notice the effect a lot less.

Whereas now what I do is I put pitch after my drive section, it may track a little bit. Less accurately, but not noticeable. But then when you hit the overdrive or sorry, when you hit the pause, you can’t miss it. Like it is right there in your face. You have to turn the settings back because of how much it can be there.

And so I just think, yeah, get it makes a lot more sense personally, to put pitch last in the dry section. And I’m sure people disagree with me, which is great. Uh, but that’s now what I think after doing these experiments.

Emily: [00:09:32] What do you use to do? And those kinds of experiments, you just manually do it one way and then do it the other, or do you have some sort of a Looper or something else that you use to

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:09:42] signal chain order on the fly?

Yeah. So I, I’m another perk of running a business, which you guys know, being in the music industry, you have to gear that maybe isn’t as easy to get. So I basically made a stereo order switcher, so I could put two pedals, uh, in this order switcher and hit a button and it would flip them in real time. And so I can do that with delays and, and reverbs, or I could do it with an overdrive in a tunnel and all that.

And so that’s what I did. I got a heavy overdrive. And a POG and I just flipped them back and forth and I was blown away. So I put that on the video as well and recorded it so people could see what the differences as well and make up their own mind, you know,

Eirik – Living Room Gear Demos: [00:10:24] grant

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:10:25] you’re like the first

Emily: [00:10:28] you’re on mine.

Sorry, Eric, go ahead.

Eirik – Living Room Gear Demos: [00:10:30] Yeah. Sorry. I’m sorry. Um, um, I also picked. The pitch stuff later in the chain, and I’ve never heard anyone say the things you’re saying rant, actually, I, for some reason, I’ve just always ended up putting the pitch stuff at the end on my board. So yeah, I totally agree with everything you’re saying I’m using, uh, the, the drop from Digitech and I also find it.

To track even better later on my board, actually. So

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:11:04] great. Yeah. That’s awesome.

Emily: [00:11:06] Yeah. Yeah. I really like, uh, grant, um, I, I’m sorry. I think I cut off Eric when I had been saying this before. I like the point about just listening and I feel like you said something about doing what sounds best to your ears.

Did I misinterpret that?

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:11:23] No, not at all. And I think that’s like just learning how to play guitar. Like there’s no shortcuts and you can, you can try and emulate yourself after someone’s sound and that’s fine. And it’s great. And you learn a lot doing that way, but I feel like you learn the most by just.

Popping and pedals on the ground, make it messy. Don’t make it look good. Just string them together and purposely try and break some rules and like someone that, that does this, uh, you know, a lot in just music in general, someone like Jack White, like you hear him talk and, and he purposely makes things difficult for himself because it’s part of the creative process.

And I think, um, was signal chain, like start with the, the foundation, you know, A Wafa is overdrive delay reverb, and then just mix it all up and just see what sounds you get. And don’t feel like you have to stick with within the parameters of what people say is correct. Cause uh, you come up with some pretty cool creative solutions and creative sounds by just trying something new.

So I always tell customers, this is the typical, but by no means, is that right or, or wrong? It’s just a starting point. Yeah.

Emily: [00:12:37] Yeah, I think one of my favorite Everett rules too. So quote so-called rules to break in terms of signal is I really love the sound of a car before dr. Pedals. And I don’t know, I feel like it kind of mellows, mellows the vibe a little bit, and it’s really neat.

And. And this isn’t so much breaking a rule, but one of my favorite types of pedals is, um, like the bookworm effects, multichannels, um, or other pedals, the beholder by electronic audio experiments that has, it’s a, essentially a river with fuzz on the trails or distortion on the trails. And that’s just one of my favorite sounds in the

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:13:12] world.

Yeah. Cool. That’s by audio does a similar pedal and I’m blanking on the name, but, uh, like an analog delay with a builtin fuzz. And it’s beautiful. Like it’s, it’s awesome, but it’s totally breaking the rules and that’s, what’s awesome about it. And you know, people like yourself, uh, resonate with it and, uh, it’s, it’s great.

I love it. Yeah. It’s

Emily: [00:13:35] very shoe Gacy, that kind of, that kind of thing.

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:13:38] Yeah. Yeah.

Emily: [00:13:40] Yeah. I love it. That’s a whole genre of music

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:13:41] by

Emily: [00:13:42] screwing around and doing something

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:13:44] a little more pedals. Yeah,

Emily: [00:13:46] totally. Yeah, absolutely. Uh, this next one’s also for granted, just kind of the order. I have things N um, most of what good would audio seems to create are these junction boxes.

I think the audition is, is a really cool example, but what exactly is a junction box and why did people need utility pedals? Like, like what good would audio creates?

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:14:12] I don’t think everyone needs it. I mean, that’s not the best thing to say from a business point of view, but, um, I mean, for someone that has a few pedals on their boards and, you know, covering the bases with a few pedals junction box, probably isn’t the best solution.

Um, but essentially a junction box facilitates, uh, routing, which likes signal changes. Very powerful if you use it the right way and then patching and then additional features. So a lot of people do just want their inputs and outputs on one side of the board. So it’s clear, easy to use, not tripping on cables, but then they want to have like a stereo pedalboard.

But they want to be able to run it in mano without repatching their whole board. So you can do that by hitting a button, or you want an always on tuner without using a passive split on a volume. And so you can put a buffered split in the junction. You can muting in there, you can do wet, dry, wet, you can build dis into it.

Like there’s endless things you can put in junction boxes, and it’s all essentially to facilitate your board. Working across multiple venue types, uh, multiple scenarios and making it really easy to use your boards rather than having to, uh, you know, rejig everything depending on where you end up.

Emily: [00:15:27] Yeah. Um, and one of those is called the audition.

Um, can you tell us a little bit about the audition.

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:15:34] Yeah. So that’s a very simple one. Um, it doesn’t need power, although it does have power taps on it. Um, audition is essentially designed for guys that like to try out new effects. So not many guitar players, you know, that I know like trying out new bands, um, uh, basically you put it on your boards.

You, you put the sender return. Uh, again, this is typically on the side of your board and you just patch audition in like any other pedal. And input and output Jack. And then as soon as you want to use that, send and return, Jack, you can try out a new chorus so you can try out a new overdrive and it will slot it in.

To where audition is in your signal chain. And so then you have those power taps on audition and you can feed power through it, to the pedal you’re trying out. Um, and so typically tell people, put it after your last dry effect, and then you can try it out with overdrive so you can try it out with modulation.

And the other cool feature is you can use it with your amps, uh, affects loop. So you could insert your amps preamp until the middle of your board with audition as well. And then unplug the send in return. And everything is rerouted as if audition isn’t there at all.

Eirik – Living Room Gear Demos: [00:16:45] Nice

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:16:49] glossy, Emily,

Emily: [00:16:50] this pedal. Does it live on your board or is this something that you use temporarily and then you remove that?

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:16:56] The idea is that it lives on your boards and then you just use the sender return. Jack, when you want to. Try new pedal or insert your amps effects loop.

Emily: [00:17:07] Cool. So, um, Eric, I have a question for you, um, about that. It kind of relates to the audition. Do you have, do you have a main pedalboard that you use or do you find yourself going between a lot of different pedals changing things around a lot and uh, if you’ve made any recent switches, do you like, do you want to talk about them?

Eirik – Living Room Gear Demos: [00:17:28] Yeah. So I have like a main pedalboard now. And I usually have like one spot with a pedal that I often change out. Sort of like an audition spot, sort of, um, I’m like if you asked me a couple of years ago, I was changing out stuff a lot, but I. Kind of settled down now. So I’m a bit more relaxed on the whole thing.

Uh, but I think the last pedal that I changed out, I really liked, um, uh, the Timmy overdrive. And then I did a demo of the noble tone drive, which is pretty similar to the Timmy and it had some more stuff. Stuff on it. So I decided to try that one instead. And that has been on my board since then, but yeah, I usually have like one spot, um, where I can try new stuff since I get a lot of pedals in for demos.

I often want to try them on my board. So that’s what I usually do.

Emily: [00:18:43] Yeah. Yeah. As a, as a gear demo or myself, it is kind of hard to, um, sometimes you’re typically demoing the pedal, like on its own, but you do want to be able to speak onto how it plays with other pedals. So, um, yeah, I think something like the audition is a really interesting solution for, for that, or just for anybody else who isn’t married to.

One thing and wants to experiment and try things out without having to unveil grow and rebuilt grow literally everything. Yeah. Yeah. So, Eric, um, the one, the main board that you have that you were talking about, um, is that for a specific project or a specific type of music, um, what, how did you curate and create your, your main board?

Eirik – Living Room Gear Demos: [00:19:36] Yeah, so. I’ve seen a thing that when I was taught touring more and playing more in the studio, my board got smaller. Um, the more I played, uh, for some reason, I think I just got more into the playing and less into pedals. The more I played, uh, now I don’t really tour anything. Not just because of the pandemic, but I just don’t tour anymore.

So, um, now my board is more, been put together to create music in my studio. I do a lot of music for four videos,

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:20:19] uh, or

Eirik – Living Room Gear Demos: [00:20:21] not like films, but for smaller documentaries and stuff like that. So, um, I used to have. A board I could do basically everything. Uh, but now I need a board that is more everything of the stuff that I like instead of like having this super versatile board that I could play, like cover bands and my own projects.

Now it’s more of like creative board and I really, yeah, really like it.

Emily: [00:20:57] Good. So, so you have a specific sound or specific Sonic needs in mind, and you’re able, since that’s what it sounds like since you’re doing most of you’re able to have a board that you can just have, like, I want it to sound like this.

I want to get these kinds of noises versus having to be a bit of a boy scout and prepared for anything.

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:21:19] Yeah. Yeah. So I have the new grant.

Emily: [00:21:23] Oh,

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:21:23] sorry. No worries. Oh, no. Yeah. I, um, I hate to be a, you know, To ruin the conversation entirely, but I don’t have a pedal board at the moment that like kind of boom, that dive bombs the question.

So I just moved from Australia to Canada for a few months, and basically everything is in the two Goodwood audio shops in Australia and the U S and so I brought over what I could carry over in luggage. And so I have a timeline, a dimension, see, An eight Oh eight absolute standard. And I think one or two other pedals.

And so my pedalboard right now is literally it’s on the floor over there and I’m doing it. What I was saying before. I just kind of flipped things around and mess around at the moment. But, um, but before I moved from Sydney, it was, um, a giant board that had a ton of effects on it. And I just go back and forth.

I get it, big barn, I get sick of carrying it and I go small as I possibly can. And it just slowly grows. And before I know it, I have a big board again and it goes down. And so I love the balance. I think one of the best things you can do for your creativity as a guitar player is to get rid of all of your pedals for a time.

And just, you have to get creative with your playing because you don’t have the options you’re used to. And I absolutely love that

Emily: [00:22:45] spot. No I’m with you. I think that’s something that, uh, we, we tend to forget. I mean, toys are fun and they’re exciting. This is a panel about the toys, but I agree. I think that it helps to, to pull back.

So a question I had for both of you, and it sounds like we might have, you know, grant might have an idea of, of this, but, uh, what is it. Would you say would be the fewest number of pedals you feel comfortable gigging with and what would they be like if you had, if you had to have just the basics, how many pedals is that for your normal show?

And what does that look

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:23:20] like? Eric, you do it, man. Start us off.

Emily: [00:23:24] Yeah,

Eirik – Living Room Gear Demos: [00:23:25] I definitely need a tuner. Uh, I mean you could, I could use a clip on tuner about tuner for sure. And overdrive. I could gig just an overdrive, I think.

Emily: [00:23:40] Yeah. Yeah.

Eirik – Living Room Gear Demos: [00:23:43] Maybe I would need reverb as well, but maybe it depends on the amp, I would say, but I don’t think I could do good play live without an overdrive pedal.

That’s that’s for sure. What about you grant?

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:24:00] I, yeah, I totally agree. And overdrive is necessary. Um, If I was going to cheat, I would say some sort of multi effects, but I won’t go there. I

Emily: [00:24:10] got my pod go and I’m

good.

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:24:12] Exactly. I’m ready. Um, I think if I had to narrow it down to a few pedals, obviously the tuner I’d probably get, um, just a middle of the road, overdrive, nothing too crazy.

And I’d use that to push the app and then you can, you can create all sorts of overdrive with your volume pot on your guitar. And then from there, I’d probably get a delay in a reverb. I’d get something really simple, like honestly, a boss D D seven and an RV five, like done. I’d be, I’d be sorted with those three pedals in a tuner.

Um, and if you would allow me Emily a fourth, I would go with the court. I would definitely go chorus after that.

Emily: [00:24:53] Nice. B a which course.

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:24:56] Well right now, the one I have here and I’m sure, absolutely in love with is the waza craft, uh, dimension C and I, again, I love it for its limitations. There’s four buttons.

There’s no knobs and you have to stick with presets and it’s cool. Like having to come up with ways to use it, uh, like what you said, if I needed less chorus on one of the presets, I’d have to change my signal chain and right now. Yeah, I think that’s, I think it’s brilliant. I absolutely love it. Yeah.

Emily: [00:25:23] That’s like, um, big or pedalos just came out with the Albi and that has eight algorithms and it’s just new way of in a box. And when they first told them about that pedal, I was like, man, I could just have I have that. And I could have like a, the Pelican noise works 50 50, which is two DOD, fifties, and a single enclosure with two foot switches that had those two pedals and the tuner and IO.

I don’t think I would need

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:25:48] anything else. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it’s a good thing.

Emily: [00:25:52] And, and, and that, that leads me into another question I had. And then we’ll probably have to move on to some audience questions that have been sent to me, but, uh, the idea of the benefits, like the pros and cons of these big multi effects, like the helix floor, um, the pod go.

Uh, even versus these pedals that are essentially like one trick ponies, but do that very well. Do you have a preference? Do you, do you, do you think that it’s better to have a lot of one trick ponies than to have one big multi effect unit? Do you have thoughts

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:26:30] on that? I, um, I think it’s similar to signal chain.

I think depending on the person you talk to, they are all different tools for purpose. And so for me, uh, again, I go back and forth and similar to you guys. I mean, perks of running a business in this industry is you have spare gear laying around and you can kind of make up your mind. But if I was to speak to the person that was on the fence of where do I start buying.

I would probably just think like, what is, what are your end results? Like, what are your goals as a guitar player for your pedalboard and what is going to facilitate those goals? Um, so I, I, on my board, I have a mixture of the two. I love simple overdrive, dry effects. And then for delayed reverb, I think multifactor is really handy.

And for me personally, that gets me to where I want to go. Um, but honestly I. I want to be a purist and say multi effects suck. Um, and with like amp modeling and cab sins, I want to say they’re terrible, but they’re getting so good. And I can’t like I use the, um, I use the Iridium, I have the HX stomp at home the H nine and I love them.

Like they do such a good job. Exactly. And so I just can’t yeah.

Emily: [00:27:51] All my demos with this and I practicing and rehearsing with this, I played with it. It’s phenomenal. Yeah.

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:27:57] Yeah. And if you look at some of the AB examples, even, um, on, on YouTube, like tell me, it’s basically the, the videos are like, tell me which one’s real and which one’s fake.

Yeah. And even the guys doing the demos, can’t tell the difference. Like it’s, it’s ridiculous how good they’re getting now. And so I still love it to band. I love the sound of moving air, but I can’t hate on a cab Sam or multi effects. Cause they they’re getting very, very impressive.

Emily: [00:28:23] Very good. And did I gotta say sound guys love him?

Totally.

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:28:28] Totally. Yeah. How about you, Eric?

Eirik – Living Room Gear Demos: [00:28:31] You know, I agree to everything grant is saying here. I use both. I have a check stamp on my board. I use that a lot. I use one trick ponies a lot as well. I think the only thing that I’m not. A big fan of when it comes to the HX stamp or the H nine is that a lot of people are buying them.

So after a certain amount of time, you start to recognize the sounds, even on records. Like, you know, when the DL four came out from lion six, like still, now I can like listen to a record. And yet that’s the deal for. Everyone was using it for like 10 years. Uh, so yeah, I think that’s the only downside. I think it’s great to have something on my board that can give me everything that I need when I’m making music.

It’s just helping me out to make music. So, yeah, I think it’s great.

Emily: [00:29:35] Thanks. Uh, thanks for those great answers. Um, so I had put out a couple in a couple of places, requests for questions. Uh, let’s just get into as, as many of these as we can. We have maybe about 10 ish minutes, perhaps. Um, but as first one is from Jason wiser and he wants to know, is it important to keep your pedals and chain order on the board?

Or do you prefer to arrange the location based on frequent need or proximity to other pedals and run longer cables. So regardless of where it is in your chain, do you prefer the pedals that you use the most often be, um, or put on and off the most soft and be like closer to you? Or do you think even think about that when you’re building a board?

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:30:26] Great. So I, I am, uh, an absolute believer that you need to make your layout functional, just like the pedals that you choose. So, uh, let’s say your, your signal chain is a tuner overdrive delay reverb. It does not have to reflect that. Uh, in terms of location on your board. And so I often say like, put your delay down the front, if it has a tap tempo, cause you’re going to want to hit that all the time, put your overdrive up in the back.

If you’re using a Looper, because you can turn it on and off at the Looper itself and you don’t need to worry about that. And sometimes on a few of the boards that we. Ended up doing the overdrive that second in the chain, just out of necessity has to be way over on the left. And then the next step overdrive his bottom rights and to run an extra couple of feet of cable, uh, with the type of pedals people are running nowadays.

It really, it’s not that big of a deal. And the functionality is of higher value than keeping the pedals as close together as possible. Um, so I think the layout just like anything else is a creative process that has to suit. The specific guitar players and goals or, or needs.

Emily: [00:31:39] That’s a great answer. Thank you, Eric.

Do you have anything to add to that?

Eirik – Living Room Gear Demos: [00:31:43] No, I don’t think so. I agree. I agree on everything,

Emily: [00:31:47] right. Well, you might have fun with this next question sent by Noah Barnett. Is there a pedal board, a static that each of you has a really likes to see something like a. A color, synchronized a board.

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:32:01] That’s all you work a hundred percent

Eirik – Living Room Gear Demos: [00:32:06] really, you know, I care a lot about aesthetics.

Guitars amps, not too much on the paddleboard. I like it to be tidy. Like all of my earlier boards, they, they been like a mess and my recent build, that’s like the first tidy board. And then I I’m really happy with that and it looks good, but I don’t have any like color schemes or anything like that. Not really.

Emily: [00:32:40] Yeah. Every, every once in a while I see someone with, um, a board that’s all like black pedals and like, Oh, that looks cool. And then I think, Oh God, what if I just forgot where something was? I was like, it’s. Cause I like to be able, I like them to be different colors because then I know like the blue one just very quickly in my brain, the blue one does not.

The gray one. Does that make sense? I don’t have to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they look nice. Nice. And if you can get those to function the way you want them to. That’s awesome. But I would just. I would really struggle.

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:33:12] I think the only thing I would say for aesthetic, which again goes back to the practical side of things is I do not like sideways pedals.

If they can be avoided, which they almost like for a big packed board, it probably can’t for everything. But one that I see often, which really. Really bugs me, um, is a sideways tuner. And I’m sorry if you guys have a sideways 200, but I just, I just in my mind, exactly, but I just love reading my tuner the way it was meant to be read.

And I just I’ve tried sideways tuners sometimes out of necessity and it just bugs me. I’d rather take a pedal off the board and have a sideways tuner, to be honest, that was

bugging

Emily: [00:33:54] me, but I’ve had to do it. Alright, the next question is from Lauren Kelly and she says with so many amazing products on the market, how do you make decisions and commit to a set up it’s easy to tinker forever, but settling on a rig is difficult.

Eirik – Living Room Gear Demos: [00:34:14] I think. Yeah. I mentioned that

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:34:18] like,

Eirik – Living Room Gear Demos: [00:34:19] The more I play the less, I end up caring about the stuff that I use sort of. So I, I mean, at some point you just need to start to make music and, and move on and maybe later on you get tired of making music. And I think it’s okay to have those periods where you

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:34:42] are more

Eirik – Living Room Gear Demos: [00:34:43] into gear.

Um, but yeah, for me, it’s. Just to force myself into making music. That’s the most important thing.

Emily: [00:34:53] So eventually if you have like three overdrive pedals

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:34:57] to

Emily: [00:34:58] pick between and have you make a decision between those three, do you just, you need me to do my demo or

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:35:04] I think,

Eirik – Living Room Gear Demos: [00:35:05] um, I would just a be them or ABC them basically in, in the right setting.

Uh, if it’s at rehearsal or. If it’s just on my studio board, bring it to the studio and just try it out basically.

Emily: [00:35:23] Yeah, I know that for me, I really like to support the smaller builders. Um, I think it’s easy to become sort of friendly with a lot of these people who make pedals. So that for me personally, sometimes my decision comes down to which brands do I like.

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:35:44] Totally. And I think pedals as well, like people can rag on people with giant pedal boards, but you can understand why they get to that point because buying a new pedal, uh, in one, in one side of the argument kind of forces you to sit down and it can be inspirational and cause you to play differently or approach a song a different way.

And so I think if you’re struggling to choose just. Ask yourself that question, like which one do I always gravitate towards? Which one is always wanting me to, or forcing me to play a little bit differently or whatever it might be. Um, cause at the end of the day, I mean, you don’t, you can’t buy gear to be a better musician, but you can use gear to inspire you to approach music.

Differently. And so I think it’s just as with everything, I think it’s just finding that balance of, um, how many pedals should I have and at what point do I just say, like Eric said, which I totally agree with, like you just got to sit down and practice, like just get better at guitar. And so I think it’s finding the balance between that.

Emily: [00:36:50] Great. Well, I think we have time for one more question and both Phillip pits and Evan Turner asked about, um, the actual board itself. Um, Evan says there isn’t as much info on pedal boards out there as there is, uh, pedals themselves, the pedals themselves. Probably you say that. Um, so do you all have like a preferred type of pedalboard slots?

Um, temple boards, homemade versus store-bought, um, flat versus slanted. Do y’all have a preference,

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:37:27] Eric?

Eirik – Living Room Gear Demos: [00:37:28] Yeah, for my main board, I have a Schmidt array board, like a double Decker. And my daughter just woke up. So I’ll be back in three minutes.

Emily: [00:37:40] Sorry.

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:37:43] Uh, yeah, no, all good. I, um, I’ve used everything from, uh, painted plank of plywood to, um, you know, the angled flat boards, all that type of stuff.

Um, and I, I personally really do enjoy using a flat board. I think there’s, there’s multiple camps of what board do you buy. And even if you think about custom setups, you can start with a fixed size. So an angled board would be a fixed size pedal board, but then you need to fit your pedals. That fixed size.

If you get a flat board, you can do your ideal layout that serves your purposes. And then you can get a flat board made to that size that you have determined will work best for you. And so in my mind, a flat board is awesome because you can custom size it down to half an inch. Um, and then you can make it work for your needs again, and you can get risers and you can hide your power supplies on a flat board.

But I think, um, personally, if I had to choose a flat board would be the way to go for me. Yeah,

Emily: [00:38:49] I have a flat board from, um, I guess Dan Dolan and I’ve had that board so long that I don’t even have any of the pedals that I originally had. I’m not sure I own any of the pedals still that I had on that board.

Um, though I might’ve sold some and then just rebought them later because I do tend to do that. Um, yeah. So, Eric, what about you? Do you prefer a slanted board or a flat board? And do you have any other. Pedalboard preferences.

Eirik – Living Room Gear Demos: [00:39:20] Yeah, I have, um, like a double Decker. That’s my main board. Uh, it’s slanted, I think.

Yes it is. It’s slanted. And I also have like a mano simple board in my studio that I use for the video stuff. And I do like the, how to sound like videos. Then I build a board like every time. I do that. So, yeah, I’m not sure if I have like a preference, but I definitely like, and like the double Decker that I have, there’s a lot of real estate on that one.

It’s easy to access the pedals on both floors and yeah.

Emily: [00:40:03] Great. Well, um, that is, I think all of our time, can we just really quickly shout out to, uh, all the viewers out there for the guitar.com live panel, um, Eric, where can, where can people find you on the internet?

Eirik – Living Room Gear Demos: [00:40:17] YouTube living room gear demos. That’s the place where you find me, right.

Grant – Goodwood Audio: [00:40:22] And grant, uh, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube is at Goodwood audio. Nice.

Emily: [00:40:29] And I’m Emily I’m from the, to get off set podcast. Uh, you can check us out at, get off set podcast.com also on the YouTubes. Um, but thanks so much for the guitar.com crew for, for having us and to all of you for watching. Thanks for joining us at guitar.com Live 2020. I hope y’all enjoy the rest of the conference until next time. Goodbye.