Home › Forums › Discuss Your Gear › Pedals and which ones to buy
- This topic has 11 replies, 8 voices, and was last updated 5 years, 4 months ago by Michael A.
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December 6, 2018 at 11:27 am #117992
Hi All,
I’m looking for some advice on guitar pedals as which ones to collect to get the tones I’m looking for.I currently practice at home with my black star ID-core 10 amp with my Fender strat or Epi les Paul. The amp has some settings but I’d like to experiment with some pedals.
So I currently have no pedals and know very little about them as it’s an area I’ve not really been bothered about, but now I’m progressing with my guitar playing a little I’d like to build up a basic pedal board without breaking the bank.
I love the tones of pink floyd/Gilmour, blues tones like that of BB king.
So any help would be much appreciated for a pedal novice like me
Thanks
Mike -
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December 6, 2018 at 12:08 pm #117993
Hi Michael
I’ve had a Blackstar ID Core 20, ID Series 30 and ID Series 260 for about 4 years now. I’ll be honest, everything that you need is in your amp, it just takes some time to experiment with those 6 voices and the digital effects.
If you are using the Blackstar Insider software, click on the tab marked Online Community and that will take you user submitted patches. Download some of those and try to tweak them a bit. Many you will find is set up with a lot of gain but many of them have a good blues tone to them
As far as pedals, the Blackstar ID Core & Series amps doesn’t care too much for OD and Distortion pedals. You might try a compressor or a clean boost like the Electro-Harmonix Soul Food. Maybe later a Wah pedal but in all honesty, you have a great amp for practice as it is. Just take some time to get to know the controls.
If you ever want to move up the ID Series 30 amp is a beast for 30 watts. Blackstar advertises the ID Series to be Loud As Valve meaning that they are as loud as a tube amp. Don’t know if is 100% as loud but it is a very loud 30 watt solid state amp
Feel free to PM me if you’d like help with your amp
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December 6, 2018 at 12:11 pm #117994
Michael,
I did some quick research into how to get the Gilmour sound for cheap awhile ago, and one pedal that kept showing up was the ‘Big Muff’. I got the smaller sized one off of Reverb for like around 50 bucks slightly used. That and the built in reverb+delay on my amp does a decent job for me. On top of that, apparently a bunch of the guitar players from the 60s and 70s era of rock used the big muff, as well as many of the guitar players from the early 90s grunge era. I believe Hendrix was sort of the pioneer behind the Fuzz sound that you get from the big muff. Billy Corgan is one to note from the grunge era. If you listen to Smashing Pumpkin’s Siamese Dream album, there is heavy use of that pedal pretty much throughout the entire album. Cool pedal, not that expensive, and lots of fun to play with. -
December 6, 2018 at 12:52 pm #118001
I think you might like to look at the Boss Blues driver BD2 Brian uses one in many lessons and I have one and think its great. I can mimic Brian’s tones fairly closely with my St-rat Yamaha THR10c amp and my Wazawa version of the BD2 by Boss. I have a tuner pedal again a boss and a boss looper RC1. I also have a Joyo vintage overdrive which I don’t use much but is a good pedal. The BD2 would make a great start for you and the Wazawa version a bonus but its quit expensive.
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December 6, 2018 at 1:52 pm #118007
Pedals are a huge rabbit hole that I have thankfully avoided. If you are trying to stay cheap, then you won’t be getting anything from the digital pedals you can afford that is not already on your amp. The advantage is that you can turn them on and off on the fly.
Pedals come in a few basic categories. There are the ones that typically come before the amp:
These include – compressors, boosts, overdrive, distortion, fuzz. There are tons of these and people get very finicky about them.
There are effects pedals that usually come after the pre-amp. You need an effects loop to put these pedals there, and I doubt your amp has one. These are delays, reverbs, chorus, phasers, flangers, tremolo etc…
Then there are some that seem to go according more to personal preference – wah, envelope filters, pitch shifters, EQ
And there are utility pedals – loopers, noise gates, tuners, junction boxes, etc…
You could easily spend a ton on these, and not get what you think you are looking for.
If you want foot control, and don’t like the options on your amp, I recommend getting a good multi-effects pedal. Line 6 sells an HX Effects pedal that quite literally will handle all of your options for about $5-600. It has stomp capabilities and is smaller than any board, and way cheaper than what you are likely to spend chasing individual pedals. The effects in it are the same as in their top of the line Helix, which is used by many working pros. Worst case, you learn what you like and how you like it set up; then you sell the HX and buy the individual pedals you decide you like.
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December 6, 2018 at 1:55 pm #118008
yea, pedals come down to taste.. The ones I use the most are a signal boost and a noise gate.. but, for the fun of it, here is a list of my pedals..
(All of them are Electro-Harmonix, yea fan boy lol)
Hot Tubes – tube pedal (for clean signal boost, though it does go distorted and acts like a tube amp would)
Silencer – noise gate (takes the hum out from pickups)
deluxe Big Muff – (for those Gilmour days)
Oceans 11 – (reverb stuff)
Mel 9 – (a mellotron kind of pedal with all kinds of neat stuff, saxophone, orchestra, strings, flute, etc done with guitar)
B9 Organ – (for keyboard stuff done with a guitar, I use the Hammond B3 sound mostly)
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Ernie Ball Volume Pedal – for quick volume control and note swellingThe one pedal I need is an expression pedal which works on the pedals that have expression input. It’s like using a wah pedal, kind of, but, not really.
Don't practice till you get it right, practice till you can't get it wrong.
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December 6, 2018 at 2:04 pm #118010
I agree that pedals are a money bit and from experience with Blackstar amps –
His amp doesn’t like OD and Distortion pedals. They don’t – and won’t – work well together at all. Just like the Yamaha THR10C, he has all of the effects that he will ever need the amp that he has
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December 6, 2018 at 3:42 pm #118013
Hmmmm….. I also have a Blackstar ID Core modeling amp, and I use all kinds of pedals with it, no problem, and to my ears they sound great. I am well aware that the amp has a host of effects built-in, and I know how to use them, but I just like the efficiency of using pedals. They are super easy to turn on and off, and super easy to adjust individually. So it’s just a matter of personal preference. Plus they make great Christmas presents. What I like:
Fulltone Full-Drive 2 – overdrive pedal preferred by many blues guitarists. This is the one I use the most.
Boss DD-7 Digital Delay – not essential, but fun to play with. I wish I had a Strymon Timeline, but $$$$$.
A compressor – any one will do. It makes the quiet notes louder, and the loud notes quieter.
Boss AW-3 Dynamic Wah – This one is really fun to play with.
Boss LS-2 Line Selector – Lets you turn the pedal chain on, or bypass it completely. I use it all the time.Hint: If you want a long rock-style sustain, go from guitar through compressor through overdrive. As the sustain from the guitar starts to fall off, the compressor boosts the volume and keeps it constant for longer. No modeling amp can do this trick. Try it when you’re practicing your squealies.
Sunjamr Steve
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December 6, 2018 at 7:03 pm #118040
Give me an amp with reverb, and I’m good to go. I have several overdrive pedals, and they come in handy in certain situations. Totally clean is all I need for the band I’m in right now. I remember reading an interview with Pete Anderson. Dwight Yoakam’sguitar player. They recorded the first album in California. Went to Nashville for the second one. The studio folks were asking him about his pedal board. How did you get that great sound? His answer was Tele into a Twin.
I don’t remember who said it, but when asked about tons of effects, someone said something like…”I’d rather plug into my ass than a rack.”Jim J
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December 7, 2018 at 6:57 am #118086
Thanks for the input guys much appreciated.
I will have to have a good play around with the Blackstar amp & its voicing’s. It didn’t come with any instructions as I purchased it second hand & was not quite sure what was going on with it as the lights light up green & red and also a manual button. The vid above explains a bit more on the settings which is a big help thanks.
Not linked it up to anything on the web and to be honest not sure how to or what to look for 🙁Looks like the question of pedals is a bit of a minefield in itself.
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December 7, 2018 at 8:55 am #118092
Thanks for the input guys much appreciated.
I will have to have a good play around with the Blackstar amp & its voicing’s. It didn’t come with any instructions as I purchased it second hand & was not quite sure what was going on with it as the lights light up green & red and also a manual button. The vid above explains a bit more on the settings which is a big help thanks.
Not linked it up to anything on the web and to be honest not sure how to or what to look for src=”https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/11/svg/1f641.svg” />Looks like the question of pedals is a bit of a minefield in itself.
Michael
Here are the links to the manual, Insider software download and the Blackstar web page about the amp.
Like the Yamaha THR10C, your amp has a lot of potential and you will find a lot of great tones with it. You’ll be surprised that a 10 watt amp can sound that good.
If you are on Facebook, I’ve also included a link to a Blackstar Appreciation group that is run by a session guitarist in Europe.
And again, PM me if you have questions
https://blackstaramps.com/pdf/handbooks/id-core-v2-handbook.pdf
http://www.blackstarinsider.co.uk/
https://blackstaramps.com/uk/products/idcore-stereo-10
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1428349310511261/?ref=bookmarks
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December 9, 2018 at 3:15 am #118555
Thanks very much for the web links much appreciated
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