Using Fewer Pedals

I love guitar gear. I have for most of the years I’ve been playing. So it might be surprising that I actually don’t like playing with a bunch of pedals.

I find pedals to be inspiring in a lot of ways. Even just adding a different overdrive pedal can make me play in different ways.

But I also find that too many pedals can be distracting.

If I have a univibe pedal on my board, I’m going to try and figure out how to use that pedal in the context of my other pedals. How does it sound before or after my dirt pedals? How does it sound before or after delay? I end up noodling for a while just trying out different sounds. This is, undoubtedly, fun and part of why I love guitar gear so much. There’s always something new to try.

This goes for any number of different effects. Trying them out in context is fun and also important if you plan to use the effect in a band. You need to know how they interact with your other pedals.

It’s also important to note that all that playing and testing is not equivalent to making music. It’s just making noise. Fun? Absolutely. But it’s working a different muscle than making music.

And that’s what I keep coming back to. How are all of these pedals helping me make music if I end up spending most of my time chasing sounds? It can sometimes lead to music that I wouldn’t have thought of otherwise, but I would say by and large it ends up just leading to noodling.

Additionally, I find that using fewer pedals forces me to think more about what I’m playing and how I’m attacking the guitar. It forces me to think more about the music I’m trying to make.

The only pedalboard I have is a Pedaltrain Nano+. It holds about 5-6 pedals. I’ve often thought about buying a larger board, and I may still do that someday.

But for now, I like the constraints that the Nano+ puts around how many pedals I can use. It makes me choose the few pedals that actually help me make the music I want to make. Sometimes, that’s more important than how many sounds you can get.