Effects? Yeah sure, why not? Pedals, hell yeah! Rack stuff? Why not? Remember, even Jimi and Jimmy used FX and got away with it. FX are a lot of fun to play with and are cheap tone changers. Besides the pedals on the board, I have more pedals laying around but as I sometimes sell or trade some, it’s useless to list them here. The pedals on the board(s) have been chosen after a lot of testing, trading, swapping, buying and selling. I also have some rack units laying around that I sometimes use.
You can read about the rack FX in the Rack-section so I will concentrate on the pedals and pedalboards in this section. These days, pedals are big business, there are so many manufacturers, it’s impossible to try them all so you need to look for information about them. Luckily, there’s a wealth of information on the internet for you to dive into. You can get pretty much any effect in any size of pedal with any amount of extra functions. That being said, I still think using pedals is an easy and affordable way of tweaking your tone.
As with pedals, the pedalboards these days can be very minimal to extremely complex. With the availability of switchers and loopers as well as floorboard multi-fx units, you can have a serious advanced system at your feet. It all comes down to what you need and want. Some people swear by simplicity, others go all out and use mammoth boards.
Personally, I like it all. I have 2 boards that I use besides the one that comes with the rack. One board has a midi-based looper/switcher so I get the advantage of presets. The other board is my test/review/whatever-I-fancy-today board and it gets changed on a regular basis.
