Ambient Guitar Sessions | Pedals

Building a pedalboard for outdoor sessions is like thinking you're about to start a journey.

The first thing you have to think of is that your pedalboard must fit in a trolley bag, because you don't know how distant is the location where you'll perform and how hard it can be the pathway.

The lighter you walk the less you get tired and the better you'll perform your music in the session.

Your slogan must be: LESS IS MORE.

Now the main question is: how can I choose the best pedals to perform ambient music in this situation?

The answer is a simple word: rundown.

I always think about the sounds I get with my big pedalboard and try to remove all the pedals that

have no essential roles in those sounds.

After having removed the needless pedals, the possible chain can be, from Guitar to Amp:

Tuner -> Booster -> Modulation -> Delay -> Looper -> Reverb

We can easily remove the tuner by using a polytune clip (Tc Electronic's clip-on tuner is good enough) applied on the head of the guitar or a portable battery powered tuner out of chain (like the Seiko or Korg).

Our new possible pedals chain can be:

Booster (or Modulation) -> Echo -> Reverb -> Delay -> Looper -> Reverb

This is an ambient pedalboard!

When there's no electric supply you must use a powerbank to power your pedals.

There are very few powerbanks in the web market. I use the Caline CP06+ which has a good value for money. It provides three hours of power supply with zero background noise. For me it's the best choice.

Here's a video to show you how to set your pedalboard with the Caline powerbank. Enjoy it!

In the next post I will write about the amps I use in the outdoor sessions.