Playing your board, but with someone else's settings

[Alan W]

I had a great weekend. We hosted a mini-reunion on my wife's side of the family, and a niece's partner I really like, Adam, is also a guitar/bassist. He was totally enjoying my set up, and I really enjoyed hearing it—both his playing, and by the board being played with very different settings than I typically use. They left yesterday, and late afternoon I sat down to play, without adjusting any pedals. It was a bit strange at first—but I really got into it. One of those "hmm, played right through dinner" times.

If nothing else, I learned that I really need to explore more—just because I tend to be very subtle with, say, delays, they can actually work way up in the mix. I'd usually go there for a few beats, and blend it back down, but with a long drawn out atmospheric reverb behind it (something else I generally steer clear of), once I figured out my timing it was just a delight.

Anyone else do this?

 

[HamishR]

Sort of... I have an overdrive pedal I use all the time but never liked it with my Strat. Love it with every other guitar I might plug into it, but not the Strat. As we all do, I listen for all the parameters of sound that the knobs control, ie if the pedal has a Bass knob I'll adjust until I feel the bass is about right, etc.

But one time recently I just set everything at noon, just like a friend of mine does with every pedal. And it sounded really good with my Strat. Not at all how I would normally set it, but I liked it. I'm still not quite sure what to make of this!

 

[jwin615]

Back in my invincible days, a friend and I would sometimes play a "game" late nights after a few 40s.
We'd pool our pedal together, one would come up with some riffs and the other would build the pedal board for that riff and set the settings. This obviously led to some fun goofery as well but non-the-less, it was fun and I'm sure developmental for both of us, somehow. We'd then record the outcome on his multi track and swap places. Each of us overdubbing at least once. Trying to come up with complimentary riffs and sounds like this was really fun, kind of pivoting from musician to producer. We'd still bounce ideas off each other(pause this bar, half time here, delay swell here kind of stuff).