There is a strange thing about spending years with guitars and pedals.
Eventually, you stop asking what else you need.
You start asking what you can remove.
That has been happening to me quite a lot lately.
I have spent the past few weeks reducing, testing, swapping, listening and, occasionally, wondering why I own so many boxes that I apparently do not need.
The answer finally arrived in a rather simple form.
Two pedals.
That is enough.
Not two pedals for everyone.
Not two pedals because minimalism is somehow morally superior to having a large pedalboard.
Just two pedals for me.
I have now proved it to myself.
Dorcas
The first version is Dorcas.
Her current form is:
Jim Dunlop FFM2 Germanium Fuzz Face Mini Distortion (FFM2) → Keeley Electronics Dynatrem Dynamic Tremolo
Six knobs between them.
That is the whole thing.
The FFM2 gives me the dirt. With the guitar volume, she can move from cleaner sounds through overdrive and into fuzz without requiring me to stand over the pedalboard constantly.
The DynaTrem does almost everything else I need around that sound.
Tremolo.
Short ambience.
Slapback-like delay territory.
Boost.
And, usefully, noise management.
I bought the DynaTrem used for S$100 on 28 August.
I thought I was buying a tremolo pedal.
She turned out to be considerably more useful than that.
That is probably why she has become so important to Dorcas.
She does not simply occupy the second slot.
She makes the first slot more useful.
That distinction matters.
Mr Big
Then there is Mr Big.
She is a completely different animal.
Emanating Fist Electronics Dope Priest DP-70 issue 03 → H.B.E. Mimic Mock I
Again, two pedals.
Again, six knobs.
But this time the pedals are not trying to be clever.
The DP-70 is simply huge.
Huge box.
Huge sound.
Huge personality.
She can do the dirty work, and surprisingly, her Sustain control becomes a useful clean-boost control when I back off the guitar volume.
Then the Mimic Mock I adds the slapback.
That is it.
No complicated architecture.
No pedal controlling another pedal.
No attempt to turn the board into a programmable system.
Mr Big can just go wild.
And that is probably why I like the contrast between the two.
Dorcas is efficient.
Mr Big is indulgent.
Both are simple.
The amps help
There is another reason this works.
My two main amps are also ridiculously simple.
The Fender Pro Junior IV has two knobs.
The VHT Special 6 has two knobs.
That is not exactly a coincidence anymore.
I have guitars with controls.
I have two-pedal chains.
I have two-knob tube amps.
The whole signal path is becoming rather difficult to argue with.
Guitar.
Two pedals.
Two-knob tube amp.
Done.
The guitar volume becomes an important part of the system.
So does touch.
So does picking harder or softer.
So does simply turning something off.
I don’t need a pedal to give me seventeen versions of a sound if I can make one sound respond to my hands.
I don’t think I discovered anything
This is not a manifesto.
There are plenty of guitarists who have used very small rigs. Some have built entire careers around relatively simple setups.
And there are players who use enormous pedalboards and make fantastic music.
Neither approach is inherently better.
I am simply discovering what happens when I stop designing my setup around what a pedal can do and start designing it around what I actually do.
That has been a surprisingly effective filter.
A pedal can be brilliant and still not belong on the board.
A pedal can have one knob and still be worth keeping.
A pedal can cost very little and become indispensable.
And sometimes two completely different pedals can be enough to make me stop thinking about pedals altogether.
That last one is probably the point.
Two pedals
So now I have two separate two-pedal chains.
DORCAS:
FFM2 → DynaTrem
Mr Big:
DP-70 → Mimic Mock I
Two pedals each.
Six knobs each.
Two very different personalities.
And I suspect this is not the end.
There may be another two-pedal chain somewhere down the road.
Maybe there will be another combination that makes sense.
Maybe one of the current pedals will eventually become a guest.
That is fine.
I am no longer trying to build the final pedalboard.
I am just finding small combinations that make me want to pick up a guitar.
After all these years, that seems like a much better measurement.
Two pedals is enough.
For now.