Let’s face it: for logistical reasons—or, sometimes, “creative” reasons (you know who you are, guitar players)—you don’t always have access to a dedicated bass player. You could just get yourself a bass and play that, but then you’d have to invest in and learn your way around a whole new instrument. Why not just get that groovy low end from a guitar you already know and love?
Here’s how.
Playing at home is a different animal than playing on stage. Playing live requires many different choices to be made—which guitar and amp to use, which pedals to put on your pedalboard, and so on. At home, though, there are no limits. You can just reach for the other guitar or plug in the other amp, and your pedalboard can be as expansive as you want it to be. Here’s what we recommend when it comes to setting up your own practice and recording station, utilitarian and creative alike.
Some players are cool with two or three pedals loosely and haphazardly arranged at their feet in a tangle of cables and running on ever-diminishing battery power. If you’re really into effects, though, you’re eventually going to put your foot down into the world of pedalboards. Putting a pedalboard together requires you to make some choices, and it’s a rabbit hole that some of our fellow musicians never find their way back out of.
But rest easy! We came up with a few great examples of pedalboards you can put together depending on your needs and playing situation.
Reverb is that sense of place and depth you hear when sound is reflected off of solid surfaces. Architects have been designing concert halls and other enclosed spaces to enhance this effect with live music for more than a hundred years. Recorded music, however, can sound flat and unnatural if it doesn’t sound as if it actually exists in a physical space, so musicians and producers have relied on a number of methods to recreate the sonic characteristics of playing in acoustically rich environments.
The MXR® Super Badass® Variac Fuzz delivers a big, aggressive, and biting square wave tones with a nice touch of smooth compression. Its Tone, Output, and Gain controls provide plenty of fine-tuning potential, but what makes this pedal a dream come true for tonechasers is its Variac control.
The Variac control allows you to vary the pedal’s voltage from 5 to 15 volts, which also changes how much headroom is available—lower voltage means lower headroom and vice versa. Many pedals sound radically different depending on how much headroom they have.
