My pedalboard

This is my current pedalboard setup. The signal chain is as follows: Barber Tone Press--> Voodoo Labs Sparkle Drive --> Visual Sound Jekyll & Hyde --> Boss GE7 --> Ernie Ball volume --> Z-Vex Super Hard-On --> Line6 DL4 Delay Modeler --> Peterson StroboStomp. The circus is powered by a Voodoo Labs Pedal Power 2.

The Barber Electronics Tone Press is one of the coolest compressors I've heard so far. Most people don't realize that most compressors reverse the guitars phase, which sucks the life out of every note you play. This unit uses parallel compression, meaning that you can blend your natural signal with a compressed signal, with the compressed signal being phase corrected. I bought this on recommendation of my friend Hunter Carmichael. Nevertheless, he prefers his C-Mat Mods compressor because the Tone Press is a bit too bright for him. I usually have plenty of low end, so this doesn't bother me. I have this thing on all the time.

The Voodoo Labs Sparkle Drive has been modded by Brian Wampler at Indyguitarist in Trafalgar, Indiana. Like all Tubescreamer/808 chip based overdrive units, it has too much mids for my taste, so Brian took some out. Voodoo Labs claims that this pedal is true by-pass, which is nonsense. It contains a buffer that's always in the circuit, wether the pedal is on or off. Granted, it hasn't bothered me, but it bugs me people claim untrue things. I pretty much use this pedal to give my clean signal a bit of hair.

I like the Visual Sound Jekyll & Hyde quite a bit. It has an 808 inspired overdrive and a distortion that'll allow you to get anything from blues to raging Marshall stacks, thanks to an EQ function. When I play my Teles, I usually set up the overdrive side for a lead tone for my bridge pick-up, and the distortion side for my neck pick-up, OR I'll set it up for slide guitar with plenty gain.

The pedal has two downsides: it's pretty big and shaped awkwardly, so it's a bitch to put on your pedalboard with all the other pedals, and the pedal has two switches which are easy to step on, causing either your tone to change, or loose volume, when the switch is between positions (this happens quite a bit). It can be a real pain in the ass. Visual Sound did re-design this pedal and moved these switches closer to the foot-switches. I haven't tried this upgrade, yet.

The Boss GE7 is a stock equalizer. I use it for quite a few different things. When I don't like the tone coming out of my amp, I use the pedal to color the tone a little bit. When I'm playing Strats, I use it as a clean-boost, but I can push the frequencies I want. The way the pedal is dialed in in the picture is to give my Fender blues Jr. amp a bit more definition. These amps are pretty muddy, and I've already thrown out the stock Fender speaker and replaced it with a Jensen. It sounds better, but is still a bit muddy. The GE7 does wonders. Stock it's a bit noisy, so I'm gonna have to have Brian Wampler have a look at it.

Next up is Ernie Ball VPjr. I had Brian add a volume knob to this volume pedal, alowing for a minimum volume. I can do pedal-steel type swells without having to worry about losing signal all the way. I can also go from rhythm volume to lead volume without having to precisely push the pedal.

Unfortunately this mod is passive, so I the volume pedal dropped my signal level quite a bit. That's where the Z-Vex Super Hard-On comes in. This is one of the most transparent clean boosts I've heard, but it pushes all frequencies, so I use it to make my volume pedal active, and kind of like an overall volume control for my pedalboard.

The only reason I bought the Line6 DL4 was because of the tap delay. I hate my repeats being out of time. Quite a few delay functions have a considerable volume drop, which I hate, because even though they sound good as they are, they're useless on stage. I know that Robert Keeley offers a mod for this pedal, but that a $100,= I don't have right now.

The last pedal is a Peterson StroboStomp. It's an insanely precise strobe tuner, which you can program for pretty much whatever tuning you want, using the physics of tempered tuning . It also has a active D/I with ground lift, so it's great for acoustic guitar. The only downside to this pedal, like the Jekyll & Hyde, is that the two button you use to program the unit are in line with the foot-switch, so occasionally I step on 'm, forcing me to bend over and push buttons to get the pedal in tuning mode. Also, the ground lift is located inside the pedal, so if you have to change the ground, you actually have to unplug the pedal, take it off your pedalboard and open it up.

Other pedals that I currently have, but don't have to use right now:

-Maxon OD808 overdrive, modded by Indyguitarist (took out some mids).

-Maxon Phase999 phaser.

-Analog Man Black Cat OD-1, a Bradshaw Freddy Fuzz clone. This is the only Fuzz I know that works with wireless units.

-Morley JD-10. This is the Jerry Donahue Signature Pre-amp. Amazing pedal.

-MXR DynaComp, modded by Brian Wampler to act like an old Ross compressor. It's similar to the Keeley compressor.

-Boss DD3 delay, again modded by Brian, to sound a bit warmer.

-Boss BF2 flanger.

-Morley Little Alligator, the Steve Vai signature active volume pedal, with volume knob.

-Dunlop Cry-Baby wah, modded by Brian. He made it true by-pass (it's beyond me why Dunlop doesn't do this) and voiced it to my specs.

-Visual Sound Route66 compressor/overdrive.

-Arion SCH-Z stereo chorus. An amazing pedal for 20 bucks. Brian modded it nonetheless to make it a bit more transparent.