effects

Taipei Houston’s Myles Ulrich in the studio.

Photo by Mallory Turner

Taipei Houston’s Myles Ulrich joins us in naming the pedals we can’t live without. Plus, musical obsessions!

Question: What are your “always on” effects? Aka, pedals that fit and sound good for most things you play.

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This year’s highlights include an obsession with Lehle switchers, a literal charcuterie board repurposed into a stomp station, a pedalboard project to celebrate years of sobriety, and a guitarist who plays his wah like he’s riding a skateboard. Enjoy!

When it comes to the pedalboard puzzle of assembling your guitar toys into an order that works for you and your sound, putting it all together is an adventure. Each year, we love to play voyeur to approaches wide and far … and learn about obscure stomps we’ve never tried before. Enjoy!

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A top-flight OCD alternative that sings at a very accessible price.

Wide range of overdrive and boost tones. Exciting higher gain tones. Clear but robust boost textures. Very forgiving to use.

Might sound a touch meaty for humbucker users chasing near-clarity in boost situations.

$129

MXR Super Badass Dynamic Overdrive
jimdunlop.com

4.5
4.5
4.5
5
Between MXR and Way Huge, the Jim Dunlop family of brands makes a lot of overdrives—enough that I actually lost count perusing the Dunlop web site. MXR and Way Huge’s OD stables include original designs as well as reimaginations and evolutions of stompbox fixtures. But as comprehensive as their combined overdrive rosters are, until now they did not feature an answer to the very popular Fulltone OCD.
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