Lets see those pedal boards you are using right now.

Depending on the model and how many pedals you have on there they are not all that light. My Pedaltrain Pro is on its second carry bag because the weight of the board broke the zipper on the first bag.

The Pro is pretty big...I was thinking of the Jr.
 
I added an old favorite back to the board today.
The EHX Nano Metal (custom paint job) to go with my new solid state amp.

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You can throw a couple more overdrive on that board
 
Here's the latest iteration of my upstairs practice rig board:

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The point of all this kludgy nonsense is to let me dial back the input volume for the Bogner pedal while having a separate clean channel at normal volume with its own independent effects. The Memory Toy is set to mimic a reverb. I can switch from a bone dry distorted sound to a clean tone with weird reverb-y tails with one stomp on the Switchblade, which is acting as a summer, and then some nice clean repeats are there for either channel with the DD3.

The Bogner pedal is an odd bird. Might be worth its own thread. One added benefit of this setup is that it lets me avoid the Bogner's faulty footswitches. It sounds great going into the right amp with the right input level, and it sounds like poo in the wrong signal chain. I've had it for a few weeks and I'm still on the fence.
 
I'd love to try that Bogner Blue, but I'm just afraid I can nail 90% of it's tones with my Palladium. Not sure. Just guessing.

I haven't played a Palladium. Online demos sound great... the Bogner is a really cool pedal. I may be putting it up for trade if I can fix the footswitches, because I only use it for high gain and it only gets close to what I need at the top end of its range. I don't need the mid-gain stuff it does and I wish it went a little harder. But it's remarkably dynamic. The switches provide a lot of cool, subtle but meaningful variations in tone and feel, and having separate gain and volume controls for the boost section makes it almost a two channel pedal in its own right.

Here I am, talking myself into keeping it. I dunno.
 
Here I am, talking myself into keeping it. I dunno.

As electronic projects go, changing those switches should be pretty straight forward. I had the Bogner Black. Loved it, but again, the Palladium had a lot of overlap. Didn't need both.
 
As electronic projects go, changing those switches should be pretty straight forward. I had the Bogner Black. Loved it, but again, the Palladium had a lot of overlap. Didn't need both.

The Uberschall pedal? I'm curious about that one... does it bring the heat? I heard one great sounding demo (Ola Englund) but read a lot of conflicting stuff online about its distortion and overall tone.
 
The Uberschall pedal? I'm curious about that one... does it bring the heat? I heard one great sounding demo (Ola Englund) but read a lot of conflicting stuff online about its distortion and overall tone.

Yes. The Uberschall. (German, for SuperSonic.) Also had the EVH 5150 at the same time. They all had some overlap. But they're hard for me to compare in the context of this forum since I'm not a performing musician. And my loud, is not very loud, which is where all these shine.

But all three are good. They all have flexible tone shaping controls, so I'm not sure what anyone wouldn't like about their tone.
 
Yes. The Uberschall. (German, for SuperSonic.) Also had the EVH 5150 at the same time. They all had some overlap. But they're hard for me to compare in the context of this forum since I'm not a performing musician. And my loud, is not very loud, which is where all these shine.

But all three are good. They all have flexible tone shaping controls, so I'm not sure what anyone wouldn't like about their tone.

A bunch of people said they thought the Uberschall pedal was too dark, and several thought it didn't have enough gain on tap. I've seen much more widespread praise for the MXR 5150 OD pedal - I wish I had snagged one a while back before Securb's thread drove the prices up. Deals on the Uberschall seem easier to come by, but after the mixed reviews and my mixed feelings about the Blue, I'm leery of it.

I am also spoiled by my main rig. Having to play anything else for practice feels like a step down. I'm finding myself to be unusually picky right now. Would love to try all three of those side by side.
 
I don't know how anyone could say it didn't have enough gain. That's what it did best.

Huh. That's what I would have thought, and I believe you.

The Blue and the Wampler Phenom both need to get hit by a quieter signal than what my high output pickups provide. I'm starting to think that's a characteristic of JFET amp in a box designs. I have to underdrive them with one side of that Saturnworks active splitter to get the signal down to a level they can manage. I wonder if I would have the same experience with the Uber or the 5150, or the Palladium for that matter. I'm used to old school hard and soft clippers that can take whatever I throw at them and just get more gainy or fuzzy with more input... these JFETs get really unhappy when I do that. But they sound pretty dang cool when they're in the Goldilocks zone.
 
Many pedals do the crazy gain thing...it is really in the EQ of that gain, and how it might work with a band (if you are in a band). I find sometimes what is great sounding at home doesn't work when playing at live band volumes.
 
Many pedals do the crazy gain thing...it is really in the EQ of that gain, and how it might work with a band (if you are in a band). I find sometimes what is great sounding at home doesn't work when playing at live band volumes.

It certainly doesn't, and vice versa, some things open up at band volume. I have a live/recording setup that I'm very happy with. I'm only looking for something to use at moderate volume through my practice rig. But it's gotta have the right feel, it isn't just "boatload of gain + good eq = horns up". The Bogner pedal has great dynamics but I can't get as much oomph as I want to at these lower volumes. It doesn't sound good pushed to its limits. I suspect it would sound great running with less "preamp gain" through the Traynor turned up loud, especially using its less edgy Marshally tones... that's just not what I need it for. I need a pint size flamethrower that doesn't sound like mud or feel like plastic. Gonna try a Revv G4 next, I found a decent deal.
 
Here's the latest:

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I'm still working this out. The Revv G4 seems to make a great distorted channel into clean power. It's the pint size flamethrower I wanted. I'm experimenting with running into the power section of my old Flextone II head, which is loud and neutral.

I'm using the Bogner Blue pedal as my clean channel here. It's a lot better suited to this application than it is for high gain stuff, and it's cool to have control over the tone instead of being stuck with whatever my guitar sounds like into the power amp. I don't need a clean channel preamp with the Traynor, but I'm hoping I can put that back downstairs and leave the bass rig set up for recording. MXR reverb is a new acquisition and sounds great so far.

I'm splitting into the Bogner and the G4 with the Saturnworks buffer/splitter at the beginning of the chain, and flip flopping between them with the Switchblade at the end. I don't like the Switchblade as an A/B on its own because of crosstalk, but I hear no problems using it at the end to select between two separately buffered channels. Also gives me independent input level control for both preamp pedals and I can use their outputs as my channel volumes.

I'll probably hang on to the Bogner pedal for this setup, and just save up and wait for a tap tempo delay and some decent little modulation. I kind of regret letting go of my Keeley Dyno My Roto a few years ago.
 
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