Forum › GEAR › Pedals › How many overdrive pedals is too many? Add an EQ pedal instead? › Reply To:
Aidan
Thank you Johnny for sharing with us your long term struggles with G.A.S. (gear acquisition syndrome) 🤣🤣🤣
In all seriousness Mark, I don’t think what you have suggested there is overkill. I do however think the key thing to managing a blues overdrive sound is in how you use the pedals alongside one another.
On the board we use in the studio we typically have 4 or so individual pedals at any one time – some of which are dual or triple drive pedals. However we don’t have them all set up at the same time. The most I will go to is 3 or maybe 4 pedals stacked into one another. And even then it is more about creating different textures, as opposed to just hammering the gain on each pedal.
This is largely because most blues and blues rock tones are not as overdriven as you might think. And if you are just looking for a little grit and twang you really don’t need to dial the gain too high.
As such, I’d recommend sticking with your 4 pedals but experiment stacking them together in different ways and setting them up with varying levels of gain. Combined with the way you set your guitar up, you should then be able to dial in some very cool and twangy Tele tones.
Regarding EQ pedals – I would opt for simplicity and suggest one of the following pedals:
– https://www.zzounds.com/item–BOSGE7
– https://www.zzounds.com/item–MXRM108S
And if you’re looking at how to get the most out of your EQ pedal, I’d recommend reading this article that I wrote on the topic:
I hope that helps my man, and please keep us posted! 😁