Recently I truly haven’t had a lot of time to play lately, so when I do I’ve been trying to kick the habit of messing with my board and pedals so much and just focus on playing. That being said, I still like to use some varying flavors of pedals, but not like I normally would if I had my full board on hand. My solution was simple, and it went against everything I know about proper board setup and powering them: I sat 3 pedals on top of my amp (Compressor, OD and Envelope Filter), used a OneSpot to daisy chain them, and let loose and played like crazy. I set and forget them and only adjusted the Q of the filter occasionally and that was it. It was kind of liberating, and it was really nice having the pedal right there *if* I wanted to mess with it.
This kind of followed suit with my growing desire to minimize my gear and try to stop tweaking my settings constantly. If the knobs are there, inevitably I’m going to mess with them. Having them on top the amp wasn’t beneficial at all for cutting them on and off, but quick changes on the fly were drastically improved. I saw a rig rundown for Billy Sheehan and noticed he keeps his pedalboard on top of his amps as well, and I totally get it now.
So my question is, could I get away with just those three pedals at the jam we’re having at my buddy’s house next weekend? I’m seriously considering it. I do know that it is a bit noisier because of daisy-chaining, so a tiny board and a isolated power supply may be in the works. The main thing is having a solid amp to do this with, because if you’re not in love with your amps base tone then it’s not a situation that could easily work as well on some amps. The Bravado takes pedals like a champ, so that part is sorted.
What do you think of the idea of just a couple of pedals on top of the amp setup? What amp/pedals combo would you choose?
