10. Kurt Nolen: Jingle Board
I spent over a decade in the film industry as a camera/steadicam operator and cinematographer (and yes, you’ve likely seen things I’ve worked on), but before that I was a studio musician. Once I had two young children at home, being gone for eight months out of the year working on location shoots just wasn’t tenable, so I turned in my union card and took a job as Gonzaga University’s in-house filmmaker in their marketing and communications department.
Sitting at home one very snowy Saturday night last February, it occurred to me how much I genuinely missed playing music. And I was constantly needing music for projects at work. So I pulled out one of my old pedalboards, spent probably two weekends just cleaning 20 years of Velcro glue and crap off of it, and started putting together the perfect one-stop marketing jingle pedalboard that could hang out in the studio at work and lay down whatever tones I needed for the variety of projects that come across my desk. I already owned a Keeley-modded RAT, the Voodoo Lab Pedal Power 2+, the ZVEX Fuzzolo, and the Keeley-modded Boss TR-2, but the Boss DC-2W Waza Craft pedal’s augmentations to older Boss units I already owned were intriguing. Like any self-respecting guitarist, I felt compelled to buy new toys. I’ve always flown a couple different flavors of Tube Screamers in my board at the same time, and the JHS Bonsai was just the best thing I’ve seen in ages.
It was great to haul out stuff that had been sitting in a crate for over a decade, breathe some new life into it, and get back into playing on a regular basis (and get paid for it).
Here’s what’s on the pedalboard I use at work. Signal chain: Radial BigShot I/O, Xotic SP Compressor, JHS Bonsai, Keeley-modded RAT 2, ZVEX Fuzzolo, Boss DC-2W Waza Craft, Keeley-modded Boss TR-2, Boss DM-2W Waza Craft, TC Electronic Ditto Looper.
All powered by a Voodoo Lab Pedal Power 2+ and sitting on a mid/late ’90s Pedaltrain. (Hence the PP2+ having to go on top of the board, because they weren’t making them with enough clearance to sling the power supply under the board yet.)