Pedalwissen

For many gig-goers and musicians, June is one of the highlights of the year, kicking off a summer of music festivals. Discover this month's highlights.

During May, we start preparing ourselves for the biggest shift in the live music calendar... festival season!

Here's a round up of some interesting events to seek out this month.

When it comes to modern clean guitar tones, few players have carved out a niche for themselves as recognisable as Cory Wong.

By now, the beginning-of-the-year gear releases are in the hands of the players, tours are getting into full swing, festival announcements are getting us hyped for summer, and most important of all, the rain is finally coming to an end!

"March is where the musical year really begins to get going"...

Whether you're chasing the crushing riffs of Killswitch Engage, the razor-sharp clarity of Bullet for My Valentine, or the ambience-soaked epics of Architects, the classic Metalcore guitar sound is instantly recognisable.

Over the last 20 years, Metalcore has evolved as many of the OG bands of the genre are now filling arenas around the world, but its raw, pummelling aggression still lies at the heart of its sound.

Expression pedals allow us to unlock some extra potential from our gear. We’re going to break down how expression pedals work, how to connect them to your delay or reverb unit, what parameters you can typically control (this will vary from pedal to pedal), and learn some pro tips to get the most out of your delay and reverb soaked tones.

Whether you're chasing the ultimate amp-live overdrive, perfectly swirling modulation, or velvety delay trails, the components inside your stompbox all contribute to your final sound. One often-overlooked component with a surprisingly big impact is the Capacitors.

Pedalboard hum can be one of the most frustrating and annoying issues to deal with and diagnose.

Let's set the scene. You've just spent hours building your ideal pedalboard, plugged everything in ready to dial in your dream tone and as soon as you hit the power switch on your amp, you're greeted with a loud hum.

The Timmy first appeared on the market in 2004 as the refined successor to its bigger brother, the Tim – one of the OG boutique guitar pedals. All the initial Timmy models were sold by Paul Cochrane directly through his Myspace page (remember Myspace...?). The Timmy typically uses the JRC4559 chip for the gain, although for the early V2 units Paul switched this out for an LM1458 chip, which he felt gave a smoother tone.

Picture the scene... you've just spent some time dialling in your dream high gain tone. You've got the amp cooking, stacked the overdrive pedals and achieved that perfect balance between saturation and clarity... but now there is an overwhelming hiss coming from the amp that threatens to derail your tone. What do you do?