The "Nothing Sounds Good, Time to Tear Apart Board" Thread

[mathias]

It's time to get some new patch cables here too…

[frigid midget]

I'm at a similar place right now. All those sweet pedlols I hunted down and hand picked out of the endless sea of other sweet pedlols out there that tormented me with GAS and impossible decisions....They make no sense to me what so ever

So when I feel the urge to start buying/selling liek a madman, I tell myself something like this:
If by now you're still so depended on your precious little boxes, you're doing it wrong. Quit overthinkin shit, start playing more. It's not the peds, it's you. Your board is fine. If you can't sound half decent with what you have now, you're dealing with a case or user error.

[mathias]

Yeah, I hear that. Playing has always been my weak spot since I got into guitars late in life and don't have that magical "figure it out" ear that I've seen others use to start riffing with a song immediately… but I'm getting back into playing guitars after about a three year hiatus and working on that while redoing my gear.

And as noted earlier in the thread, it's best to keep all those nice handmade and custom pedals you spent so much time and money getting when you go through a funk like this.

Put them in boxes and put them away.

Take out the cheap plastic shit you had when you started, if you still have it, and start trying to get good sounds out of them.

Sit on the floor and twiddle knobs. Hook up a mixer in your effects loop and play with some feedback loops and contact mics and circuit bent toys (if you've got any/all of those.)

Listen to all kinds of music you wouldn't listen to.

Most of all, just do what makes you feel good and try your best to ignore the GAS thread and what people think is currently the hottest hard-to-get pedal right now.

This is coming off awfully advice column-y so I'm sorry for that. But still. Get weird and have fun.

[Jwar]

I'm just here to say that the torch has officially been passed from me to Neon. Thank you for the long run of flipping.

Time to flip my whole board.


Just kidding!!!

Seriously though I went through this a lot! And still do from time to time. My solution is playing one effect at a time or playing clean. It's a refreshing thing. Sometimes I'll just use a delay pedal and ignore everything else. It makes me happy.

[mathias]

Speaking of jwar.. when I figure out what's going to end up on my board, I might have you etch & refinish some of the mass market pedals because your stuff is rad and I'd be honored to have your art on my pedalboard :-)

[Jwar]

Speaking of jwar.. when I figure out what's going to end up on my board, I might have you etch & refinish some of the mass market pedals because your stuff is rad and I'd be honored to have your art on my pedalboard :-)

That would be great dude! I'd love to redo some of your stuff.

[GardenoftheDead]

I have "Nothing sounds good time to burn all of my gear" days.

[rfurtkamp]

Everyone has those to a degree, the key is learning to play through them anyway.

That's when you learn.

It really is.

[Clockworker]

I'm having this feeling right now, it's kinda depressing honestly. I've chased down so many pedals, and yet nothing I make satisfies me, but I still feel the desire to create. I keep hoping the next thing I get will resolve this, but it rarely does. I think I will take some of the advice here, take stuff apart and play with smaller setups.

[mathias]

I'm having this feeling right now, it's kinda depressing honestly. I've chased down so many pedals, and yet nothing I make satisfies me, but I still feel the desire to create. I keep hoping the next thing I get will resolve this, but it rarely does. I think I will take some of the advice here, take stuff apart and play with smaller setups.

Maybe try putting pedals away entirely and trying to just use your amp + guitar (or bass?) for 2 weeks or so. Every time you want to use a pedal for something, write down the idea of what you were gonna use and why in a notebook. Then revisit that notebook after the 2 weeks are up. Hey, it works for diets with binge days... might work here too.

[rfurtkamp]

So record everything you play. Make yourself play a half hour a day. Repeat for a month.

Don't listen back to the stuff until a week has passed (day 8 can listen to day 1).

It's amazing how different things sound when you're not angry in the moment.

[sonidero]

It's amazing how different things sound when you're not angry in the moment.

Or a few months or a year...

It's cool how this has become Mathias mostly giving advice to Mathais...

[mathias]

If we go back in time, I probably gave myself advice like this already. Ouroboros.

[mathias]

I had meant to document the pedalboard progression and maybe write some notes about why or what I was changing but work has been super draining so I haven't had much energy for that plan. An animated gif timelapse of a pedalboard changing might've been neat too but didn't set up a fixed camera position or anything.

[sonidero]

Oh, if I knew now what I knew back then...