Your best and worst pedal hot takes? 🔥

[ICTRock]

a build contest that uses what you have on hand shouldn't take more than a week

 

[YourGuitarist]

That’s an interesting take. Style and playing signature are all in the mind. Tone is absolutely in the fingers. Try changing picks, using the pads of your fingers, various combinations of flesh and fingernail, how close/far from the bridge you are, amount of force applied… all those things have a big impact on tone. Try it and see.

The signal from pickup to speaker is just additional tone shaping after the initial tone shaping done with your hands.

Let me just equip my chorus pick.

 

[ICTRock]

being the best digital spring reverb is like being the world's tallest dwarf

 

[Guardians of the analog]

If you aren't going to take the time to learn to calibrate a BBD circuit you shouldn't be building them. A DMM with a frequency counter and a cheap single channel O scope off Amazon or eBay is all you need. You can use your phone, tablet or laptop to send a signal from a free signal generator. Nothing is worse than seeing people build pedals that need to be calibrated and leaving all trimmers at noon just because it passes signal. Drives me crazy. There are service notes and documents all over the Internet that explain how to calibrate these pedals. I think they get a bad wrap in diy b cause people say they didn't sound good, but imagine if it were dialed in properly.

 

[szukalski]

If you aren't going to take the time to learn to calibrate a BBD circuit you shouldn't be building them.

Hence why I don't build BBD circuits..

 

[Cybercow]

Let me just equip my chorus pick.

You mean one of these?

 

[CheapSuitG]

I have been so tempted. But I keep telling myself that it will only result in
A)more unpopulated PCBs and/or more unhoused populated PCBs
B)more gear that I don't use regularly and don't have room for.

But there are so many vendors and cool modules out there. Every time I get the itch I boot up Cherry Voltage and remind myself that I have no f*cking clue.

I went down the modular synth DIY route the other night, booted up VCV rack and downloaded a crap ton of new modules to play with. Saved 1000s of dollars with that move.

 

[jessenator]

I have been so tempted.

I went down the modular synth DIY route the other night, booted up VCV rack and downloaded a crap ton of new modules to play with. Saved 1000s of dollars with that move.

I may or may not have ModularV that only works on an aged version of OS X… it's eye opening and I constantly have to reopen a bare bones preset I made to make sure I didn't go crazy when no sound comes out

I owned a small hardware system back in 2007, and my only lingering memory was how shocked I was by how flimsy the Doepfer 1/8" jacks were. Like the brand for eurorack. I ended up selling the system on before I got into even more debt.

 

[jcpst]

Now that I’ve building pedals for a while, the modules I bought back in the day look pretty straightforward.

 

[BuddytheReow]

Here’s a hot take:

Pedals and tone chasing take away your guitar chops. Most of the best players out there have very little gear. All you really need is a good amp and a guitar with a decent setup. And a tuner.

 

[Einzeln]

DIY pedalbuilders are middle aged men with bad breath.

 

[Fama]

My hot take is that it's fine if you just like to build pedals and make fun noises with them every now and then.

It's also fine to want to play guitar really well, even if you only play alone.

Great if you like to jam with friends. Or record music or do gigs, even.

Just do whatever gives you pleasure in this cold, cruel world.

 

[neiltheseal]

DIY pedalbuilders are middle aged men with bad breath.

My breath is fine thanks!

 

[pbrommer]

DIY pedalbuilders are middle aged men with bad breath.

I mean, it smells like coffee. But I just took a drink.

 

[jessenator]

My breath is fine thanks!

Ok, boomer

 

[tegendemuur]

My hot take is that it's fine if you just like to build pedals and make fun noises with them every now and then.

It's also fine to want to play guitar really well, even if you only play alone.

Great if you like to jam with friends. Or record music or do gigs, even.

Just do whatever gives you pleasure in this cold, cruel world.

My formative years were all about extreme metal. It was such an eyeopener when, after being surrounded by people who feel the need to record music, to talk with people who just play for playing's sake. No recording. No writing your own stuff. Just play for your own pleasure, and not focussed on proving to your scene you're one of them.

Just a hobby that allows you limitless ways to grow, get better. Be it your playing, or be it the creative use of effects, or, like lots of people here, to learn where all the stuff we like to hear comes from, and focus on developing such things further.

 

[Einzeln]

My formative years were all about extreme metal. It was such an eyeopener when, after being surrounded by people who feel the need to record music, to talk with people who just play for playing's sake. No recording. No writing your own stuff. Just play for your own pleasure, and not focussed on proving to your scene you're own of them.

Just a hobby that allows you limitless ways to grow, get better. Be it your playing, or be it the creative use of effects, or, like lots of people here, to learn where all the stuff we like to hear comes from, and focus on developing such things further.

Weekly Thursday night music club here. A jam. Sometimes with a vocalist. All improvisation.
No repertoire, play and seek connection. Sometimes it is gold. It can never be reproduced in the week after. The drummer records it sends it by whatsapp.
I listen it on Friday morning and thats it.

 

[JamieJ]

Here’s a hot take:

Pedals and tone chasing take away your guitar chops. Most of the best players out there have very little gear. All you really need is a good amp and a guitar with a decent setup. And a tuner.

Interesting take @BuddytheReow - I do agree as a general point to that the most musical people have a singularity of focus on the music but look at Joey Landreth as someone who is phenomenal musically but also is a gear slut.

 

[tegendemuur]

Weekly Thursday night music club here. A jam. Sometimes with a vocalist. All improvisation.
No repertoire, play and seek connection. Sometimes it is gold. It can never be reproduced in the week after. The drummer records it sends it by whatsapp.
I listen it on Friday morning and thats it.

Beautiful!

I learned quite recently Eindhoven has a similar jam evening once a week. Was thinking about attending, to see what options there are for people like me. In a jam context, I figure I could do the background racket from a particularly noisy Jesus and the Mary Chain set. Something much less obnoxious then what I do by myself.

 

[BuddytheReow]

Interesting take @BuddytheReow - I do agree as a general point to that the most musical people have a singularity of focus on the music but look at Joey Landreth as someone who is phenomenal musically but also is a gear slut.

There are exceptions to the rule, of course. Page, Clapton, Hendrix, Yngwie, Satriani, Dimebag. I could go on. Most of them had minimal gear or a small pedalboard.