board Games

This issue, pedal expert Adrian Thorpe helps a reader deal with the enviable dilemma of wrangling a ’board full of vintage effects

I’ve been a guitarist since the early 80s and started collecting guitar pedals almost as soon as I started playing. Handily for me, this was when nobody wanted to use pedals any more, due to the advent of rack multi-effects and electronic synths. As a result, I managed to accrue around 100 really tasty vintage pedals including an EHX Ram’s Head, Triangle and Op-Amp versions of the Big Muff, Arbiter Fuzz Face (both silicon and germanium versions) and some amazing vintage modulation pedals, such as the Boss CE-1, EHX Electric Mistress and Mu-Tron III envelope filter.

The problem I have is they are too big, too noisy, have weird power requirements and, in some cases, they’re just too valuable and fragile to gig with. Can you recommend any options for me to use them effectively in a live setting or are there any modern versions that will give me similar tonality but without the negatives? I’m really fussy with my guitar tone…