Do you use effects with your Trainwreck (clone)?

[lions den]

Keeping all effects in a wet dry setup and using line out of attenuator to derive line out signal. Running just a volume pedal and tuner in front of amp. Love the guitar direct into express sound.
Sean

[sliberty]

Ah you guys are just trying to sell us pedals

Mark

And if you buy before midnight tonight.....

[rawnster]

Ah you guys are just trying to sell us pedals

Mark

Come on Mark, it's the 21st century. There's more to music than just blues and jazz. Put some SLAP delay on that tone and you can Brian Setzer all day long! Add some triplet delay and you sit in with Edge on Bloody Sunday.

[M Fowler]

Geez I love blues and aggressive Rock I don't need no stinking pedals to play it either

I sold my maple Epiphone Blues Zephyr guitar to my friend so I can't play Setzer anymore or jazz.

Mark

[don280z]

"..pedals are not evil.."....LOL...Thats funny....
I agree with you. GOOD pedals are not evil, but the cheap ones are not always so well behaved. I was using a pedalboard with my Express until it started making funny noises (probably a bad cable) and I stopped using it because I didn't have time to work on it. What I discovered is that I can still get all the sounds I need (or thought I needed) without the pedals and added 'hiss' that I usually got from them. I do intend on fixing the pedalboard soon. I would like to have a little reverb and echo once in a while.....hopefully I don't get any 'evil' ones....LOL....

You guys are all such purists.

Just once, for me, play a Univibe sort of pedal through your Express, and rip some Trower. You'll realize that pedals are not evil

For the record, I really use my pedals very sparingly. But I don't avoid them with the Express.

The Rocket on the other hand, can handle more types of overdrive/distortion pedals than the Express can for obvious reasons. but actually, I play the Rocket when I want a cleaner, lighter sound. So I still don't push it very hard.

[rawnster]

Where's Rooster when we need him. He's got a mega pedal board in front of his trainwreck builds. ....well maybe not a mega-sized one.

[redshark]

I respect everybody's opinions but I think pedals and trainwreck amps really don't get along. In the express all pedals sound noisy, even wah pedals. Especially when the guitar volume is turned down. You can't get clean noiseless funky rhythms. With volume turned up on guitar the wah sound is more usable and less noisy.
With the rocket is true it takes pedals in a more friendly way but one thing I love about the rocket is the extended bandwidth which I noticed gets altered when fronting with pedals. It seems to me that it messes up with the lower end of the rocket. Tube screamers sound bad with the rocket and also messes up with the natural dynamics and touch sensitivity of the amplifier. Besides that I like the way the electric guitar sounds so I don't feel I need anything more than a harmonically rich clean sound and well defined dirty with good string definition .

[jezzbo]

Ah you guys are just trying to sell us pedals

Mark

And if you buy before midnight tonight.....

LOL!

I have a nice pedalboard so maybe it's time to build me that express clone.

maybe I could use an iso cab and mic that go through some delay and reverb and put that to p.a.?

Thanks again, It's nice to know your opinions

[jjman]

With my pseudo Express I use some pedals sometimes. Chorus, wah. I have trem built in otherwise I'd use that pedal. I'm still working to get decent reverb/delay potential that remains intact when the preamp reaches clipping. via my parallel loop. My Lexicon LXP-1 arrived today and I won't need to change the send strength, or put in a LL/IL switch since I can see that the loop is strong enough to drive the Lexicon properly. I had the loop somewhat stronger than Instr level already but didn't know if it was adequate to drive the 25k load of the LXP-1. The Lexicon can output more than it's input so this should help my wet mixing potential with the dry path. I'm definitely noticing nice potential there since the wet and dry are now equal strength when mixed at 50/50 on the mix pot. This weekend I'll scope to make sure I'm not clipping the return tube, and adjust if needed. Should keep me occupied for the hurricane.

[rooster]

Well, not really MEGA-sized, Ron. Say waht???

OK, but I do use pedals. And I will add that running an Express clone has caused me to get these things working as best as they can. Here they are: Blackout tuner>Clyde wah>early Mojovibe>two ODs to choose from: TS9/PlimSoul>Octron into a Fuzzy Drive>Digitech Hardwired Reverb>amp. All powered by a 1.7 amp 1 Spot.

Everything is TB but the verb pedal is on 24/7, which means I have a buffered signal sent to my amp. Which means Glen would not get any benefit from his 40' of cable. (I run a 15' EvidenceAudio cable. In fact my whole pedal board is either EA cable or Carol cable, (the type used by KF in some of his amps - both very low capacitence cable - sorry Glen!!)

But yeah, it works fine. I use the typical tube compliment, 3 vintage 12AX7s, J/J KT77s. Noisy? No, not at all. But I do concur that there are a lot of folks out there putting pedalboards together who either don't hear very well or who don't have a wallet for quality effects. I understand the light wallet but the last thing you want is to add noise to the front of an amp - especially the Express. Of note: I have 500K PEC pot as my Express volume pot, and I rarely turn it up past 10 o'clock at a gig. Here is the balancing act then. FWIW, I agree with Glen and others, if I was turning my amp to 1-2 O'clock and potting down, there is no way I could use these pedals very effectively - certainly not the ODs or the Fuzz stuff.

OK, all of that said, I will offer up another thought: KF did not live in a world that had as many pedals to choose from as we do today, nor was it as difficult to find a truly great speaker (real deal G12Ms!!), nor were the venues so politely small. Consequently, I don't believe he was building amps that were meant for pedal use. And this is something you might want to think about. If you are going to use pedals to get over in a typical club gig of today, you also might want to consider some compromises - just like many giging guys here do. Either with preamp tubes - not my preference - or the volume pot, or a MV. Just saying. If you want to use the REAL thing and have the REAL experience, well, I get it. Give it a go, Brother.

[Structo]

Any pics of said pedal board?

[rooster]

Er, sure. The box that says 'Pedal Racks' is a TB box that controls the OD or Fuzz. The pedals are on, at least the Octron and Fuzzy Drive, so when I step on the first switch, the Fuzz is on. The other switch controls the ODs, and here I make a pre-selection, either the TS9 or the PlimSoul. So the path is what I described earlier, Tuner>Wah>Mojovibe, then the signal comes back to the PedalRacks switch where I choose my OD or Fuzz, and then out to the reverb pedal and from there to the amp.

The Power supply is tied up for transport, lying on top of the open space around the wah and tuner. For the pic I just opened my case and lifted the board out a bit. BTW, the baseplate for the pedals is and 11" X 25" X 1/4" black Lucite with all the pedal being held in place with industrial 3M nylon velcro tape.

[redshark]

FWIW, I agree with Glen and others, if I was turning my amp to 1-2 O'clock and potting down, there is no way I could use these pedals very effectively - certainly not the ODs or the Fuzz stuff.

This is the key of it all. If you want to use the express the way it is supposed to be used and clean with your guitar volume there's no way it would work. The noise-ratio gets bigger when the amp's volume is past noon and you want a cleaner sound using your guitar's volume. Once the signal of the guitar gets limited the white noise of the pedals fronting is more noticeable. FWIW I don't use cheapie pedals cause I don't like them, The little stuff I have is maxon analogman modded and I used Teese wah and arteffect wah both with true bypass and it's noisy, even using batteries.
Also some people like to use grid resistors in the express coming from the input jack. I tried it and that would probably help the cause of using pedals but I decided I didn't want to use any so my express is completely stock.
I tried as rooster said also the double cable thing "a la Glen" but decided that the lava coily cable (twisted) is even more efective to add capacitance to the input and darken the amp a tad BUT..... I decided I like better just to use the mild setting in the bright switch and use a better low capacitance cable that gives the amp clarity.

[jezzbo]

Thanks again for your thoughts.
I'm initially thinking about using an express clone like it was supposed to be used. (but keep my pedalboard nearby )

[garlin]

delete