It's no secret that I thoroughly enjoy music, but many may not know that I also play myself. I have the privilege of co-leading the student band at our church on a weekly basis and getting to lead a group of up to 75 middle school students in worship every Sunday.
Another thing about me is I'm a gear hound… I can never seem to have enough. While I consider myself very good with our finances, I do have a week spot.
Over the last few weeks, I've been re-building my pedal board and somehow in the middle of it all, I also picked up a new guitar.
We'll start with the guitar. It's a Ibanez Artcore AS73, a semi-hollow body guitar that sounds just as pretty as it looks. Since I play a variety of different types of music, I needed something that was a little less aggressive than my current guitar (Schecter C1-Elite) and I just happened to find this guitar for a steal.
After my bank account recovered from that purchase, I went back to finalizing my pedal board… for now.
I'll break it down for you based off of the signal chain (from my guitar to my amp).
- Korg Pitch Black Tuner – best tuner I've ever used… especially on a dark stage
- SHO Clone – this is similar to an EP Booster… it gives my signal a boost while preserving the sound
- CMATMODS Brownie – this is one of the best overdrive pedals I've ever played. I keep the drive down low and use it for less aggressive songs.
- Fulltone OCD – this is my second overdrive pedal and I use it for more aggressive songs. It can go from a sweet overdrive to a crushing distortion all while sounding unbelievable. I will never have a pedal board without this one.
- Ernie Ball Passive Volume Pedal – controls volume
- Boss DD5 (with external tap tempo I built myself) – I keep this on the dotted eighth note setting and tap in the tempo of the song we are playing.
- Boss RV5 – I'm not HUGE on reverb, but I do like this pedal a lot. I generally keep it on the modulation setting but changed it up every now and then.
- Lastly, I run from my RV5 to a Line 6 POD 2.0 and essentially use that as my amp. I use the Vox AC 15 setting and I've very happy with the overall sound.