About once a quarter, my cousins and I attempt to meet up somewhere and do a family jam. Nothing serious at all, just a reason to get together and play loud music and try out each other’s gear. It was way more frequent, but we all live a few hours away from each other, all have kids, and daily life gets in the way. But, we still try to do it whenever we can. We were texting last night trying to arrange it, and the topic came up about doing a “minimalist” setup. The challenge we set for ourselves was only to bring the bare minimum of what we think we would honestly need…well, need is subjective so it’s more so a challenge as to how few pedals we can whittle ourselves comfortably down with. Seems easy at the start, but then gets complicated the more we thought about it.
I should preface this that we each play drastically different, enjoy different genres and enjoy how much of a mix-match of stuff we have going on. You could say “Dad Rock” applies to a lot of it, but it’s a mix of blues, harder rock, some country, a bit of metal, and a dash of funk. Again, it’s a hodge-podge of different collective inspirations. Our gear varies quite a bit too. I lean heavily in the Wampler and Keeley camp, sprinkling in various things as necessary (usually effects neither of us makes). My big board has about ten pedals on it, and it covers just about anything I can throw at it. I’m running a Tone King Imperial MKII as the platform for my clean tone and some dirty tones as well. My older cousin is an Earthquaker Devices fanatic, having a board that consists of roughly 9 EQD pedals, a Klon KTR, Strymon El Cap and a HoF Mini. He’s normally going into a ’71 Fender Pro Reverb (that his father-in-law found at a garage sale for $25!!!), and is looking heavily at a Fender Twin. My younger cousin is more heavily influenced by the older, tried and true classics. He’s packing some original vintage blues driver, an original Klon Centaur, an 808, a Rotosphere…all sorts of that great stuff into either a Two Rock Studio Pro 50 or a Matchless. So, as you can imagine, when the stars align, and we can get together it’s a gear smorgasbord.
It seems for now only my older cousin and I will be able to catch up, so we were trying to pick apart our boards to see what we would bring in this minimum setup. That’s not to say it’s limited to the number of pedals, but more so just bringing absolute essentials we could get by with, not the extra stuff we only use occasionally. His was reasonably simple: Klon KTR, EQD Hoof, El Cap, and Hof Mini with his Pro Reverb or Deluxe Reverb Reissue. The only reason he’s still debating the amp choice is that the Pro needs a bit of work done to it, and despite being serviced doesn’t produce the output it’s supposed to. So more than likely it’ll be the DRRI. Relatively simple setup, boost/OD, fuzz, delay and reverb. Truly the essentials if you break it down and think about it. He hasn’t decided on bringing his new telecaster or his suped-up orange strat with Bareknuckle pickups in it (I’m partial to the Strat, those pickups are KILLER).
For me, the amp choice is clear, which is my Imperial MKII. Realistically that could cover most of what I need with the built-in features, but I still like pushing each of the channels a bit with different boosts to taste. So, I think in the end, it will be the Tumnus Deluxe, Bondi Del Mar, Pelican NoiseWorks Germanium Pelitaur, and a Boss DD-500. The lead channel of the Imperial (tweed-flavor) loves the klones boosting it, and the active EQ on the Tumnus Deluxe helps shape it to exactly the right amount of push in the right area. The Del Mar covers the TS and Bluesbreaker deal, which both sound great into the rhythm channel (blackface-inspired). The GE Pelitaur was my wild-card, which is a collaboration between Pelican Noiseworks and Spruce Effects and can do either Big Muff-ish tones, Tonebender tones (that can get a bit splattery) and a mix of both because of the design of the circuit. There’s also a footswitchable germanium boost that just adds some girth to everything with some of that germanium squishy feel when cranked. The DD-500 has been my favorite delay as of late. Granted, it’s not minimalist at all, but considering everything that’s in it, it’s quite the monster for the price. I never gelled with the TimeLine, but the menus and usability and tone of the DD-500 were just naturally more appealing for my personal use. I normally run two delays on a consistent basis, a straight digital delay with 3-4 repeats mixed low, or the analog setting with 2-3 repeats set at about 40% mix. For guitar I’m probably going with my Suhr with the three humbuckers in it just for fun. Now that I think about it, it’s still overkill with just what I listed. I may drop the Del Mar or the Tumnus Deluxe. The Tumnus Deluxe has the buffer, so that’ll probably stay. While I’m at it, I guess I could substitute the DD-500 for the Faux Tape Echo v2… it sounds great and I don’t NEED access to two delays…there are too many choices!
The entire goal of this challenge is mainly for us to play some music. We’ve all been chasing the tones for so long that it’s an attempt to decompress, go back to basics and play some tunes without losing track and just messing with gear the whole time. That’s one thing I’m guilty of completely is the whole “Less eBay more Mel Bay” thing. We all want to try the new gear each of us has, and before we know it most of our time has been sent messing around and not playing songs like we used to. Admittedly, there’s nothing wrong with that at all; it’s incredibly fun. But this is more for us to get out of our comfort zones of having a giant board (to hide behind somewhat). In reality, I know we could plug straight into the amp and be done, but we’ve got to ease into it to prevent withdrawal. We’ll have our jam in a couple of weeks, and I’ll report back. Thinking it’s time to hit the woodshed, so I don’t make even more of a fool of myself!