Tips and tricks

Why not use pedal couplers?

We’ve all seen them – the fixed pedal couplers that you can use to connect pedals. They come in two varieties, either straight (pictured to the right) or offset (pictured below). Obviously, as it is a solid connector it must be a better connection than using two plugs and a cable, right? Well, no. Take

Restringing your guitar

There are as many variants on what the ”proper” way to re-string a guitar is, as there are guitarists. If you can’t get it right, don’t feel bad – you’re not alone. Many of us have tuning stability problems which can be traced back to the way we string our guitars. But there are also

Building a connection box for the pedalboard

With my pedalboards, I normally just connect the guitar to the first pedal, and go from the output of the last pedal to the amp. Some boards have patch bays, which let you plug the guitar and amp cables into, with additional cables running to and from the first and last pedal. But when running

Building a rechargeable power supply

Sanyo recently released the Pedal Juice rechargeable battery pack for guitar pedals, which is a good idea. You won’t have to search for a mains outlet where you place the pedalboard on stage, and you won’t get any hum from AC ripple (more about that here), as the power source is a battery. But there

A quick guide to soldering

A lot of the mods and tips posted on this site require soldering, a skill not all of us have aquired. Here’s a quick and dirty ”how to” guide with a few tips and pointers. I’d strongly suggest you get some cable and connectors to practice on, before you start working on your guitar. Likewise

Why tuner outputs are evil…

The title is part joke, part truth. They aren’t evil, of course, but the ”tuner out” jack on your volume pedal can do serious harm to your tone. To understand why, we first need to dispel a myth. Using the tuner out jack means that the tuner is out of the signal path. This couldn’t

The amp’s effects loop

In the general effects order article, we investigated the art of putting your guitar pedals in order. I also mentioned that ”before or after distortion” is the main question for many of the effects out there, and that question becomes vital when it comes to using (or not using) the amp’s effects loop. There are

Effects order

If you’ve ever wondered in which order you should place your effects pedals, look no further. Granted, there are no rules – just because something is common practice, doesn’t mean there won’t be cool sounds to be had by thinking outside the box. But as someone said – you need to know the rules in