What do I really need? (cover band guys)

Trust me, doing covers you'll get a lot of mileage from a chorus pedal. It doesn't have to be a boutique pedal either. Heck, I used a trusty Boss CH-1 for a lot of years before buying the Retrosonic Chorus Ensemble.

Delay? I don't know ... they're fun to play with when you get bored from doing the 'standards.'


dave

 

This is the kind of band I've been playing in for years. It just depends on what you like to hear. Chorus pedals are very cool and I should get one back on my board but I'd do a few gigs and see how things go, you'll know. Some of my amps don't have reverb so I like a little delay to fatten things up but that's just me. I like a little delay in my Santana tone as well but a friend of mine has killer Santana tone without it so it's kind of what floats your boat.

Good Luck!

 

A lot of clean but strong guitar parts in the songs you listed - a compressor would help a lot. Is that what a Tone Press is? I'm not familiar....

Reverb too.

 

Maybe a Phaser instead of the Chorus..?

 

[ It's weird, I hear a lot of guitarists in party bands using chorus where I normally wouldn't, such as clean funk parts.

Hey Steeeve - I know just what you mean. I played 25 years without pedals for the most part - and one major reason was hearing guys put chorus on EVERYTHING. It just sucked. I was forced out of a band because the previous guitar player had some little stereo Gallien Kruger amp with built in chorus that he never turned off - the chick singer bummed out at my tone (Strats and Les Pauls through a 1965 Super Reverb) - she said it did not sound PRETTY, like her old guitarist!

Effects are there to make something great sound even better - but they should not wag the dog!

The Gitpicker

 

This is my board that I use in my band that's mainly a cover band. I can do almost anything with this. We can cover SRV, Arc Angels (Doyle Bramhall II), Cream, Hendrix, Beatles, Black Crowes, Stevie Wonder, Temptations, Ian Moore, Pink Floyd, Zepplin, Etc...

 

I use 2 OD's a wah and an analog delay thats on all the time set to a reverbish setting. I took the swooshy pedals off , IMO they really don't add anything in a live setting, when I do use one it's a Boss trem pedal, I like the physical movement over the modulated pitch live ( make sense? ) one a wild hair I'll drag out the rotosphere ( and use it way too much! ) IMO the right gain for the tune is the key to covers

 

I'm working on getting a pedalboard together. Here's what I'm thinking of going with

Vox wha

either an AM TS9 Silver or Barber LTD - to put the DD into the liquid zone.

Barber Direct Drive- main drive tone, the hot-rod Marshall seting in the DD manual.

Trem - my main "effect". I use a L6 Flex III with one of the bands I play with and use this more than chorus, rotary or delay.

Chorus - can use it for slow songs or crank the speed and use it as a leslie sim

Delay - slow songs or trippy breakdown sections in fast songs

RC Booster - I like to have a little volume bump for leads in a 2 guitar band. This way by the end of the night everyone's not on 10.

My main band plays most of the same stuff that every bar band plays. I doesn't require a lot of effects, but they can be used tastefully (or not) if you chose to do so. Right now I'm just using the a standard TS9 ->Direct Drive ->RC Booster and amp reverb. I have no problems making it thru a gig as is, but I miss having other sounds to mess with.

 

I've been playing in a similar type band for a long time, and I've gone through a lot of different modulation pedals. I'm always surprised at how little I use them. Delay though, I couldn't live without.

 

I find chorus is needed very infrequently for the type of tunes you mention. Delay and verb however are much more applicable for a wider variety of tunes, and especially useful on outdoor gigs where a room isn't already supplying a verb characteristic.

I strongly suggest that you go with a wet/dry delay and verb setup, with tap tempo. Wet/dry/wet is even fatter, but too much to move IMO. The clarity of your basic tone and the 3D quality of your fx are so improved with wet/dry over the all thru 1 amp approach, you will love it. Frequently, this approach includes a reasonably useful chorus.

gb