Brian Mark - Guitaraholic

Since I'm pretty much sticking to the Iron Maiden tribute band, I've been able to knock down the number of pedals I require. So... for starters... I got rid of a lot of the bulk. No need for a second volume pedal, reverb, delay, etc. Very simple signal path... wireless into volume into A/B/Y which either goes to the EHX pedals for some synth sounds or on to the... Marshall JMP-1. That's right, I found a vintage piece of gear with tubes in it which is the same model as Maiden themselves use. Sort of takes the guesswork out of getting the right tone when their settings are well documented online. Both of the signal paths go to a side of my Marshall 8008, with an old school Digitech DSP 128+ adding a bit of verb and delay to the guitar side of things. The only other thing I have been using is a power conditioner and I'm probably going to add my Noise Clamp back in the loop at some point, but hide it in the rack. Otherwise, it's pretty straight forward and m...

As you may recall, I've been having issues getting the Guitar Wing to work with my guitar head. After a few more times of banging my head against a wall, I downloaded Cantabile 3 to see if it would do anything with the midi input. At first, again it was total frustration, but that software offers something that other software does not - an amazing developer that actually reaches out to see how you're doing with his software. After a bit of back and forth, he had his software seeing what I was doing and passing it along via my USB midi cable to the guitar head, and pretty quickly I got it working as expected. I now have a slider to change volume (volume pedal version, not channel volume as I first did), I can change channels with 4 buttons, engage the tuner, turn on and use the wah, and adjust a few other parameters. Not only does it work cool, but it looks pretty cool. And when it looks cool and works cool, I'm a whole lot happier. After getting it working wi...

Ever seen a garage drummer's set compared to a touring drummer's set? You know, the kid with 17,000 drums and cymbals so he can look like he's drumming for Rush vs the guy with a 4 piece kit, a crash, a ride and a hi-hat? That's what I'm talking about here. Last week, I posted a run-down of my pedalboard . I've been wanting to scale back a bit, so when I saw one of my favorite bands last weekend, I paid close attention to what the guitarist was using. Here's the pedalboard he had. You'll notice that it's a lot fewer pedals than my board. He had his own guitar tech at the venue, but didn't use all that many pedals. Talking to him afterwards, he felt like that was still too much to be practical most of the time. He wanted to scale back even further but wasn't sure which pedal(s) to drop. Now, before you go too crazy saying he must have had a lot built in to his amp head or some rackmount gear off stage, here is the rest of his setup. ...

My pedalboard catches a lot of attention when I play out. Here's how it's currently laid out. As you might be able to tell, I use a pedaltrain pro. I like the lightweight aluminum frame, and the included carry bag wasn't bad at all. Power comes in on a single power strip which powers 3 adapters. The center plug powers my main power supply which is mounted underneath. This powers everything except the two EHX boxes on the left. Signal comes in through the wireless receiver on the top right, goes to my MXR noise clamp, into the first volume pedal which sends it on to the angelic choir, EXH C9 and EXH Key9. That all goes out to my keyboard send, usually a small amp with a pretty minimal configuration. The trick part comes from the volume pedal, though. It has a tuner out that I send to the AIC wah and then to my guitar head. The head is controlled by the 4 button footswitch on the lower left, and then the effects loop sends signal back to the volume pedal and the cl...

It sounded awesome. Roam the stage or dance floor and switch patches with some wireless buttons on my guitar. However, so far that hasn't been the case. I'm posting this image so I can review it to see what I might be doing wrong. So to go into what I see as the potential, I'm not really one to stand still while playing guitar. I find cords limiting, so I've always opted for a decent wireless, but still feel bound by my pedalboard. Most of the songs simply need a simple patch change (clean to crunch or rhythm to lead, for example) and I don't need to do much else. After seeing the guitar wing advertised, waiting for it to mature a bit, and finally spotting it on sale, I took the plunge and bought one. It seemed amazing... just enter in the CC commands to change patches and roam about free of constraint. However, the design on the buttons for the most part is that of pressure sensitivity, which doesn't really work if you're trying to change to a sp...