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.
Rick has established himself as a serious player in the pedal world. Thoughtful approaches to unique effect qualities make his pedal collectors items. If you are not familiar with Matthews Effects do yourself a favor and check it out. He gave us a fantastic interview too! You can hear the episode for yourself right here. Check out Rick’s choices for his Four On The Floor.
1. Chase Bliss – Tonal Recall Analog Delay
“I love delay. And I feel that Joel at Chase Bliss has been putting us all of us other pedal builders to shame. It’s just so brilliant and has so many options. It is so much fun to play with and I definitely always keep this on my board. I have one setting that I use a lot which is a very short delay with a lot of feedback which gives you a stuttery, ambient, ethereal sound. Then, of course, my standard tape delay sound which gives a great warble to the sound, it’s great for swells. Another setting is very percussive with dotted eights notes.”
Check out the Chase Bliss – Tonal Recall Analog Delay
2. Origin Effects – Vintage Cali 76 Compressor
“I LOVE this compressor. This is the older large box version. It is big because it has these big transformers in it. They ad so much warmth and life to my tone. I am an “always on” compression kind of guy generally speaking so this is an awesome tool to have on my board. I use only slight compression which gives a more percussive character to my sound and evens out all the notes. They discontinued the transformer version of the Cali 76, but it is now in a compact version in a smaller box which of course saves you a lot of room. It’s a silicon version of the input/output buffers, which are also supposed to be great too. But this old, big box blew me away compared to other compressors I’ve had.”
Check out the Origin Effects – Cali 76 Compressor
3. Boss – ES-8 Effects Switching System
“Its a foundation thing for me. I love the freedom to do a lot of different routing, order switching, running loops in parallel in-series – which is really cool if you run overdrives and fuzz because you can put them in parallel and then get mixed back together. It provides Control on the mix gain on the output and input on those loops. Plus MIDI functionality, tap control and a ton of other stuff. You can really do a lot of cool stuff in the menu, instead of rewiring my entire board, which is super nice. Plus my pedals, especially my newer ones have an ALT OUT jack so I wanted something that people were either were buying or already had that people could control my pedals with.”
Check out the Boss – ES-8 Effects Switching System
4.Electro-Harmonix – Vintage Memory Man Analog Delay
“I like running multiple delays, and the memory man just has such a unique sound. I have a basic 1970’s one, and I love it. When it comes down to it, the filtering in the feedback loop is the magic. It’s a unique, dark, analog tone. It gives such a warm, washy sound. I love using this for swell, deep ambient loops and creating soundscapes.”
Check out the Electro-Harmonix – Vintage Memory Man Analog Delay
Huge thanks to Rick for being a guest on our show and please check out Matthews Effects. We wish him continued success!