 | The Monte Allums BD-H2O mod kit for the Boss Blues Driver is fantastic. The pedal is very transparent and can go from almost clean to warm clean to way overdriven while letting your guitar's natural character shine through. Works great with single coils and humbuckers. |
 | This one was funny. I bought the Monte Allums mod kit for the Boss OD-3 overdrive. While I initially planned to do the entire mod, at his suggestion I listened to it after installing the first four "hi-fi" caps and loved it - it cleaned up the high end perfectly and smoothed out a bit of roughness. So I never did the rest of the mod - just those four caps. I use this with both single coils and humbuckers. |
 | This is one cool pedal. The Boss MT-2 is normally very nasal and congested, but after installing the Monte Allums Sustania Tri Gain kit with the Dual Stack chip adapter it is a totally different pedal. This is my go to guy for modern rock higher gain sounds. It has three diode options - I tend to use the germanium ones the most. The coolest thing is how much flexibility the parametric EQ offers. |
 | Great OD pedal from Barber - one of the few stock pedals I use. It has four internal EQ trimpots that allow you to really alter the sound. I have one group of settings for the strat, another for the P-90s and humbuckers. |
 | This is the General Guitar Gadgets SBB clean boost which I built from their kit and named the Seventh Seal. It is great at pushing OD pedals to greater heights, pushing tube amps, and giving some clean boost for solos. |
 | The BOSS enhancer is nice at adding some sparkle to clean tones. I particularly use it with my P-90 guitar, which is a little dark the way I use it for OD sounds, so this adds some sparkle to the cleans. |
 | This
may surprise you since a lot of folks love to hate the DS-1. I bought this from a fellow amp builder years ago - he had switched the regular diodes for LEDs but I guess he didn't like the sound. I have found it mates well with the P-90 guitar or the Les Paul into my Celestion G12-T75 speaker. Really nice sound with that combination. And yeah, the "Modified" sharpie handwriting is from the guy I bought it from - I thought it was funny so I've always left it that way. |
 | Another surprise maybe. Some folks hate the DigiTech Bad Monkey pedal. I don't - I use it to push my other ODs for solos. It focuses the mids and adds a little more grit, plus you can add output to really thicken another OD pedal's sound for leads. I never use the Monkey alone, just to push other pedals or amps - it excels at that. |
 | The Dan-Echo - Not a bad echo sound for the money. Highly recommend an AC adapter though - it can flake out on you when the battery starts getting low. |
 | EH Clone Theory Chorus - not used a lot any more, but when you need that sound ... Bought this from a roommate back in maybe 1983??? |
 | EH Small Stone - Fun phase shifter sound, but only for niche applications - not used a lot. |
 | This is the modded BOSS CS-3 compressor from a Monte Allums kit. I only use it occasionally - it wasn't quite as transparent as I wanted though it isn't bad. Also, I don't use compressor pedals much now, but when I want one, I pull this out and it works well enough. For example, if I am playing acoustic and need a little more sustain and volume for leads, I will use this pedal. |
 | This version of the Pocket POD is a great value. It allows you to edit settings from your computer with a lot of control and sounds surprisingly good for practice and initial demo recording. I use it a lot because it allows me to work fast and get a pretty decent tone for writing and demo recording, especially late at night through headphones. Don't confuse this with the Pocket POD Express, which is a different beast without editing capabilities. |