Does anyone ever get annoyed with guitar pedals?

[lancimouspitt]

Most guitarist I have jammed with have been great about dialing in a sound and keeping it there with the exception of two. One played a very heavy,droning chorus for every song. The other had a huge pedal board and was constantly messing with knobs. Even during shows.

 

[podiumboy]

I used to be a lead guitarist in a band throughout my twenties, and I had this giant effects board with hundred of different possibilities. I had the hardest time controlling my volume and tone, depending on the effect. I twiddled with knobs for years and couldn't get the right balance. At one gig I got fed up with it and just switched to my amplifier's 2 built in channels, a clean one and a distorted one. Sounded great the whole time! While I definitely needed more than that, it taught me that unless you're trying to be The Edge or David Gilmour, sometimes less is more. But those guys have guitar techs whose only job is to make sure they sound good. I'm definitely no sound engineer, and I just had a terrible time of it.

Now I feel the same way about bass playing.

 

[CS]

As someone who plays bass and guitar, with or without pedals, I have the following perspective.

There are people who assume that people use pedals because they have to. There are people who have to. I'll use what fits the application. Any so called musician that spends more time on knobs, sliders or patches than playing needs an attitude re-adjustment. Sometimes that works with a word or two, sometimes it works by working with someone else.

 

[FretNoMore]

As someone who plays bass and guitar, with or without pedals, I have the following perspective.

There are people who assume that people use pedals because they have to. There are people who have to. I'll use what fits the application. Any so called musician that spends more time on knobs, sliders or patches than playing needs an attitude re-adjustment. Sometimes that works with a word or two, sometimes it works by working with someone else.

I have a lot of pedals and other music gear and, outside of rehearsals and gigs, sometimes spend more time tinkering with my toys than actually playing. So what, it's on my time, and I have fun. I don't need an attitude adjustment. Then again, I don't call myself a musician, I don't play for a living, it's just a hobby.

If you talk about rehearsals and gigs, then I do agree though.

 

[MD]

Does anyone ever get annoyed with guitar pedals?

Yes, damn uppity a$$ pedals. Always mouthin' off. Startin' trouble. Goin' behind your back with s**t, and blaming others for their deviance. Nasty, snotty things, with no morals, or any sense of self respect or personal ethics. You just can't trust them. Don't get me started on power tools!

 

[newmusicmichael]

As someone who plays bass and guitar, with or without pedals, I have the following perspective.

There are people who assume that people use pedals because they have to. There are people who have to. I'll use what fits the application. Any so called musician that spends more time on knobs, sliders or patches than playing needs an attitude re-adjustment. Sometimes that works with a word or two, sometimes it works by working with someone else.

Exactly. I use pedals because they give me the sound I want for a particular piece. I typically have one setting for each pedal, then might use one pedal for any particular track. Might mess with it occasionally to see if I find something I like better, but for the most part it stays locked in every time I play the song, because it gives me the feel I'm looking for.

 

[Shimmi]

So feel like a hypocrite... I just started playing with pedals... I borrowed my friends Digitech (BP70?)however I feel it has way too many options, I think I'll just get a few pedals to switch up. All in ones seem like it takes way to long, this cats got 70 different distortions and each one can be adjusted... Although its fun to play with I just want to step it and play not click 34 times to get the right effect, cant imagine what that'd be like at a gig...

The distortions are a lot of fun though... seriously, I can see why guitarist and bassist a like spend so much time adjusting them. I feel it takes away from practice though, this Digitech has much fewer options that my old guitarists did(His I think had well over 300) however practice still has a good chunk of time lost in just playing with pedals.

 

[Dash Lashes]

So this is just a basic question, I do not like playing with pedals on my bass and only a few times I found the use of a pedal necessary for a song. (Song 2 by the blur and I used a delay/bluesy pedal for one of our slower songs

My ex guitar player uses pretty much every godamn sound effect in the world, has a digitech 3000xl something or another with 5 channels and billions of microsound managing options I would never have the patience to learn.

In retrospect I am glad I'm not going to have to listen to him playing the old power chords on 6 different pedals and changing the distortion every other practice. Not going to miss it one bit.

Anyone else ever jam with a guitard that it seems the whole practice/jam session was a 2 hour long sound check?

I remember one day he let me play his guitar(I don't play guitar but I can fool most people that don't know music) And I play some random bass riff I made only with a pic and I teased him "geez, you can suck as bad as me and this pedal just cleans everything up huh?" I was mostly kidding but he gave me a really dirty look... last time I ever touched his things lol

oh that's sad. did it occur to you to find another band?

 

[Shimmi]

oh that's sad. did it occur to you to find another band?

Yeah, we broke up a few months ago. I decided to keep the band name and logo/merch. I'm just getting new players/new sound. He wasnt a bad guitarist it just urked me how he had the DIGITECH ULTIMATE SOUND SPECIAL 3000 that had too many options to play with... really cut practice time down.

but I got a new drummer, new guitarist and a few other people I'm talking to so I have high hopes this will be a much better setup. I still miss the doushebags, but we all wanted something different.