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.
When Ethan is not hard at work over at Strymon, he is using his pedals in unique ways for songwriting. If you are not familiar with Strymon do yourself a favor and check them out. He gave us a fantastic interview too! You can hear the episode for yourself right here. Check out these choices for his Four On The Floor.
1. Keith McMillen – Soft Step 2 USB MIDI Foot Switch & Expression Pedal
“The first pedal that I’m going with it doesn’t actually make any sound. This is a midi controller that I use in my rig. I have a live looping rig where I have a pedal board on the floor and then I have a pedal board, like waist level with my laptop an Ableton Push, and I’ve got a bunch of other stuff to do effects and to do live looping stuff.
The Soft Step 2 allows me to control looping from my Mac book, so that is a big part of what I try to do–to create live looping performances where you feel you don’t really pay attention to the loop and you just Kinda feel the song. So the soft step was a nice small form factor and didn’t have any clicky foot switches which are nice. So I could fit that on my pedal board and not really take a whole lot of space to be able to do a whole lot.”
Check out the Keith McMillen – Soft Step 2 USB MIDI Foot Switch & Expression Pedal
2. Line 6 – DL 4 Delay Modeler
“This is actually one of the first pedals that I got into. I actually worked at line six for almost 10 years and that was kind of the place that really got me into gear and I learned a lot from working there and I really appreciate the work that went into that product. I use it a lot actually for vocals and there are some really cool effects you could get using the expression pedal on some of the delays there. Maybe the audio specs don’t stand up to the pedals that are out today, but it’s still got a really unique sound that I still really enjoy.”
Check out the Line 6 – DL 4 Delay Modeler
3. Strymon – Timeline Delay
“I don’t know if it is a faux-pax to choose our own pedal but I do use my timeline on everything. I run vocals through it, I record through it, I’ve got it on my live looping rig. It’s just, I’m biased because I work here, but I love that pedal. I just use it on everything. It’s definitely one of my pedals that I, I’ll never ever get rid of.”
Check out the Strymon – Timeline Delay
4. Old Blood Noise Endeavors – Haunt Fuzz
“And then the last one, I’ve only had this paddle for a few months. Um, so I, I can’t really tell you a whole lot about it other than I, I think that the people running the company are super creative and they do some really cool stuff. I’m not like really a fuzz person, but this one is just really fun. You can get really messed up sounds all the way to cleaner and musical. It’s fun to just run lots of instruments through it.”
Check out the Old Blood Noise Endeavors – Haunt Fuzz
Huge thanks to Ethan for being a guest on our show and please check out Strymon. We wish them continued success!