Guitar Gear Forum

Been reading this forum for a while now to get ideas on pedals, pedalboard setups, etc.

Made a new travel board and having a few doubts about it.

For one, it's got two tuners. The pedal on the far right is a Shure GLX-D which has a built in tuner with the wireless. The last pedal is also a tuner, but more just to stop the pedal noise. Anyone have any better ideas? Maybe time to move away from the Shure?

The other thing is I'm kinda wondering about the patch cables. The ones pictured are just temporary. I have Mogamis at the studio that I'll swap these out with, but I'm curious what people's experiences are with like George L's and Lava Cables and the DIY kits. I don't really trust myself to put something together that is gonna last any amount of time

The board looks pretty sweet! If you're just using the second tuner to mute the pedals, I personally would either:

1. Get a Boss NS-2 or Decimator G String and put the pedal's in its loop

2. Wait until Dunlop releases the Volume X Mini in April. Then, you can use it to mute your signal AND you can do swells with the Afterneath too if you want

As for patch cables, I use the Planet Waves cable kit because I couldn't afford Lava when I first set up a pedalboard, but if I were to ever upgrade, I'd go with Lava. The Planet Waves ones are great for the price, but the ends are bulky and might not fit your travel size board. The quality in Lava is definitely worth the price though, and it's nice that you can fit pedals so close together with them. I'm sure whatever you end up with will work well for you as long as you take your time when putting them together

I thought about putting a noise suppressor in there (I have the original Decimator), but I don't think anything can contain that Left Hand Wrath (or any other HM-2 clone) without compromising the tone too much. I just checked out the G-String variant and that looks pretty sweet.

I think I really like the idea of the Volume X Mini, though. I'll keep an eye out for that thing.

Thanks for the tip on the cables!

Welcome! As far as pedal noise goes, isolated power supplies are an awesome investment. If you are having serious buzzing/noise issues; an isolated power supply will go a long way in clearing up those issues.

I shoulda been more specific on that: it's not power supply noise, it's just that the Left Hand Wrath is like bonkers distortion and the hiss, even when the Shure tuner is on (the Pitchblack kills all noise), is crazy. I was actually thinking of getting a mini effects loop for everything aside from the Shure, but I already have the Pitchblack

The power supply is actually a Cioks DC5 under the pedalboard which, so far, seems to be great. I was looking into buying the Volto, but a few reviews and the fact that it appears to be out of production lead me to invest in the DC5.

JiveTurkey wrote:Welcome! As far as pedal noise goes, isolated power supplies are an awesome investment. If you are having serious buzzing/noise issues; an isolated power supply will go a long way in clearing up those issues.

What's up Leon?


While i certainly have no issues with soldering wires, a buddy sold me a complete George L set for $25. I couldn't pass them up. I have had zero issues with them and they look nice.

What's up man? Good to see you're still alive

Dang, so you would endorse it? Hmmm. Very tempting. They're like $90 new though.

atrox wrote:What's up Leon?


While i certainly have no issues with soldering wires, a buddy sold me a complete George L set for $25. I couldn't pass them up. I have had zero issues with them and they look nice.

Welcome to the fold brother! This is the best guitar/amp board on the internetwebz!

I've been using my tuner as a kill switch for 20 year. Bought a Boss NS-2 and only used it once because, it's a tone sucker.

A threshold knob noise gate pedal, before verb & delay sounds like a great idea.

I'll give that a shot, but that LHW is pretty damn noisy, haha.

For the record the Boss pedal is actually the Harmonist. Part of my secret sauce for leads. Been thinking of moving that after the Afterneath.

delmuerte wrote:I'll give that a shot, but that LHW is pretty damn noisy, haha.

For the record the Boss pedal is actually the Harmonist. Part of my secret sauce for leads. Been thinking of moving that after the Afterneath.

I run a Left Hand Wrath deluxe myself, but a Decimator after it controls it pretty good. There is a fine balance of gain and presence on mine, but for the most part the Decimator works good with it. The trick for me is to back the presence back to about noon, and not dime the gain and treble. I keep them about 3/4 of the way up. After you play it like that for a few minutes your ears adjust and it sounds great and far less hiss. Again, mine is the deluxe so it could be a bit different but I would at least give it a shot. Welcome to the forum.

Are you using the regular Decimator or the G-string? I have an older, regular Decimator, but haven't tried it in the chain yet.

I edited my above post with some setting suggestions, but I run it with the regular Decimator at about 11:00.

I used G-String for years. It works very well, but in different conditions (like using same power supply, even if it's isolated, for FX and out front) there can be a ground loop hum. It's very picky.

Also, don't dime the level. Joe told me when he shipped me the pedal to not dime everything like you do the original HM-2 or it will squeel.

Good call, I went to that immediately. I've had this thing for a while, but haven't actually used it live yet. Just started playing with a band that is "HM-2y."

I'll do some fiddling around with it, and thanks for the tips!

On another tangent: I'm pretty new to noise gates. I usually just dial the gain back or use a tuner to on/off my sound. The first ever time I used a noisegate live was at a fest with 1,000 people watching (and, incidentally, one of my childhood heroes sidestage checking it out), while I went into my biggest solo of the set only to hear "bleep blop bloop" coming pathetically out of the amp, haha.

delmuerte wrote:Good call, I went to that immediately. I've had this thing for a while, but haven't actually used it live yet. Just started playing with a band that is "HM-2y."

I'll do some fiddling around with it, and thanks for the tips!

On another tangent: I'm pretty new to noise gates. I usually just dial the gain back or use a tuner to on/off my sound. The first ever time I used a noisegate live was at a fest with 1,000 people watching (and, incidentally, one of my childhood heroes sidestage checking it out), while I went into my biggest solo of the set only to hear "bleep blop bloop" coming pathetically out of the amp, haha.

Oh shit I bet you started sweating huh? I don't have a problem as long as it is below noon.

Yeah, been a while since I had been that embarrassed onstage, haha.

I guess some experimentation is in order. After that I just started turning it off during solos.