LESS IS BETTER

“Like fellow Guitarist writer Rod Brakes, I’ve been building a smaller pedalboard this year. I needed a light, compact ’board with clean power but only the essentials, tonally, for those times where you just want to carry a small combo and a minimum of effects to a gig. I boiled those ‘essentials’ down to two drive pedals (which chop and change as needed), a J Rockett Tranquilizer phaser, a delay, a Free The Tone Ambi Space digital reverb, and a Boss RC‑10R looper, then mounted the lot on a small wooden board bolted to angled steel feet made for the purpose by Wolfmeister. With limited space, it’s tempting to choose a pedal that ‘does it all’, so I fitted a Boss DD‑7 delay that could do everything from reverse delay to modulated echoes. But when I chucked on a Red Witch ‘Violet’ analogue‑voiced digital delay in its place I realised that, even though the Red Witch was basically a one‑ trick pony, sonically speaking, I really liked the sound of it. Chewy, warm, rich… The DD‑7 gave me all the delay voices I wanted, but I realised I didn’t really want or need such versatility. I just needed one sound that I loved. Sometimes ‘less but better’ is the key.”