What are your four ‘must-have’ pedals? That is what we ask our guests to share with you in our Four On the Floor podcast segment.
Tony knows a thing or two about effects pedals. He created PedalGenie.com, a subscription based pedal delivery service boasting over 2,000 pedals from 135 pedal manufacturers, delivered right to your door. It is as he says, “Netflix for pedals.” It is a great way to really dial in the tone you want without a huge commitment. If you are not familiar with Pedal Genie do yourself a favor and
1. Empress – Compressor
“As a bass player, this is almost always on, and always on my board. As the founder of a company that provides pedals to people, you can guess that my pedalboard is very fluid. But the Empress is there all the time. I have tried a lot of compressors but the Empress won out. It has the most knobs–always a plus, but the three biggest features helped it win out. First, it is super low noise but has plenty of gain on tap to lift when needed. Second, it has an LED display that shows the input level, the signal being compressed and the crossover in the middle with a different color so it’s really useful to help you dial in the compression, or at the times when I’m crushing the signal I can see why. Third, It has a side chain jack which I think is fantastic and makes it really flexible. I put a seven band EQ pedal in the side chain and I use that to crush the bottom end and leave the high end a little open that way my bass fills at the end of a verse pop out more than they would otherwise. This is not a bass compressor so I would keep it on my guitar board as well.” Check out the Empress – Compressor
2. Digitech – Jamman Solo XT Stereo Looper Phrase Sampler
“I had a really specific need for a looper that would also play one-shot samples. So in a sense, a looper that wouldn’t loop but would play once and then stop. Funny, but for all the things I use a looper for, looping is the least of them. The first use I have for this is creating one-shot samples for things like intros to songs, vocal snippets in a breakdown, or sound effects here and there. It’s very much like a trigger. The second use I have for this pedal is moving it to the front of my chain so I can play a lick in it, and then loop that back when I’m testing pedals, dialing in settings for songs. this allows me to have repeatable dynamics to set the pedals to. Trying to play and twiddle knobs can be frustrating. Thirdly I use this pedal to keep a series of drum loops that I practice to. It has a plenty of memory for me with about two hundred slots, but it does have an extra SD memory card on board should I need it.” Check out the Digitech – Jamman Solo XT Stereo Looper Phrase Sampler
3. Bogner – Burnley Distortion
“This remains to be one of my favorite distortions since I started playing with pedals. It is somewhere between a mid and a high gain distortion. It just has a great tone to it. It’s clean, as in not noisy, which is probably the result of the Neve transformer magic. It has a great warmth to it. There is a jeweled light that shows varying colors as your signal is thrown into it which is cool to watch. Great sounding distortion.” Check out the Bogner – Burnley Distortion
4. Boss – MS-3 Multi Effects Switcher
“This has become the center piece of my pedal board. This unit has a built in 3 loop switcher as well as a myriad of multi effects. Along with control outputs, expression inputs and MIDI outs, I fell in love at first sight. The ‘dirt’ effects in this box are awesome. A lot of people think that is sacrilege but, whatever–It sounds GREAT. My favorite thing to do with this is dial up a really nasty fuzz and use the expression pedal to fade the fuzz in as the song progresses. Early multi effects pedals looked more like toys in many cases, plastic-like, giant buttons…they looked like “My First Pedal” I can plug my analog pedals into this and use as a switcher as well. I use the MIDI on the MS3 to save presets on my Source Audio pedals because I’m always patching and running things together. With one of the control outs, I run a cable to my Jam Man (above) and I can use the footswitch on the M3 to bank up and down on the Jam Man. I can’t say enough good things about this pedal.” Check out the Boss – MS-3 Multi Effects Switcher
Huge thanks to Tony for being a guest on our show. Please check out Pedal Genie pedal subscription. We wish him continued success!