djByron [Dan Byron]husband, father, christian, musician & technophile ( but not a dj )

I’ve posted some pedalboard pics on Flickr and Facebook but never on my own blog (go figure).  Anyways, here’s what I’ve got going on as of now.  Only thing I have yet to do is re-arrange the setup.  I’m planning on moving the volume and wah to the center of the board again and moving my return pedals (delays, tremolo and reverb) back to the right side of the board.  Being right handed it’s too difficult to “tap” on those pedals on the left.

- Keeley Compressor
- Keeley Katana (Clean Boost)
- Xotic RC Booster
- Zvex Box of Rock
- Diamond Memory Lane Delay w/dotted eighth mod and remote
- Diamond Boost EQ
- Empress Tremolo
- Empress Superdelay
- Elecro Harmonix Holy Grail Reverb
- Dunlop Crybaby 535Q Wah
- Ernie Ball VP JR. Volume Pedal
- Planet Waves Tuner
- Loop-Master A/B loop switch (routes clean vs. dirty pedals)
- George L’s patch cables
- SKB PS-45

What do you have on your board?

The Empress Superdelay which was just released last week has arrived on my door step!  I’m really stoked about this pedal being a delay-addict.  Once I have a few hours to spare I’m planning on posting a full review here.

Initially what drew me to this unit was two things…

1. I currently own their Tremolo pedal which is a great sounding versatile Tremolo pedal.  I’m really impressed by this pedal and figured if the Superdelay is anything like it I can’t go wrong.
2. The features and versatility of the Superdelay based on the pre-release teaser videos and audio clips won me over. They really did a great job of hyping the delay pedal up, enough to get me to pre-order it…

Here’s my current scenario.  I own a modded Diamond Memory-Lane analog delay pedal which is amazing, but it’s analog,  and being analog it has a few native limitations.  One major one being the delay time limitations of analog circuitry.  Being that it’s analog you also loose some of the other goodies found in digital units (presets/user-presets, multiple delay types and modeling).  Now seeing that I never plan on getting rid of the Diamond, I began a quest to find a secondary digital delay pedal that would fill the voids left by the Diamond, would fit in the remaining space on my pedalboard, have true-bypass and still sound great (go figure).

Today I think I found that pedal in the Empress Superdelay.  More to come!

I picked up a Vox Tonelab SE pedalboard for my electric rig back in the fall of 2004 and I love the thing. From time to time I debate if I should get rid of it and replace with some individual pedals but I just can’t get myself to do it. What makes it so great? First of all the thing is built like a tank. All metal. No cheap components here… Secondly, the tone is unbelieveable considering it’s a pedalboard. Given that nothing can replace the real thing (a microphone on a vintage amp cranked to 11) but I play mostly in small venues where that is not an option. This is where the Tonelab comes in…

ToneLabSE features the acclaimed VOX Valve Reactor found on Valvetronix series amps and the ToneLab amp/effects modeler. The VOX Valve Reactor circuit uses a 12AX7 triode vacuum tube together with an actual low-wattage tube power amp circuit, a virtual output transformer, and a dummy speaker circuit that simulates the impedance changes of a real speaker. It also reconfigures itself so that its characteristics are the same as the amps it’s modeling (class A, class AB, negative feedback circuit, etc.) This means that all of the nuances of the original amp model including sound, feel, distortion and presence are reproduced. -voxamps.co.uk

96 user programmable locations allow you to save more settings than you’ll ever use on stage. Each location has an A/B switch allowing you to save two “tones” per setting so really 96 becomes 192 settings if you look at it that way. The manual knobs are great and allow you to easily dial in exactly what you’re looking for!