MUST HAVE 2-IN-1 PEDALS
Okay, get ready. Grab your wife or husband. Get comfortable. Get a blanket. Make sure you take a bathroom break ahead of time. Do what you gotta do. I'm going to take you through my favorite 2-in-1 pedals, and I don’t want you to miss a second of this.
Ready? Okay. I’m going to forgo the usual introduction and just dive in, because we can.
F-Stop by Milkman Sound
Reverb / Tremolo
My good friend, Tim Marcus of Milkman Sound Amplification (the maker of the JHS Loud Is More Good Amp) put out this product a couple of years ago. It’s literally just called The Amp. Think The Rock as a guitar pedal, and you’re darn close. It’s called The Amp because it’s a small solid-state amplifier that powers a cabinet and has built in reverb AND tremolo. It's spectacular.
But this amp starts at about $700. Worth it? Absolutely. But I’ll be the first to acknowledge that not everyone has $700 burning a hole in their pockets.
Thankfully, Tim went a little nuts (read: took a level in genius) and took those effects out and put them into a single pedal called the F-Stop. The name refers to some photography term that I won't get into right now; just Wikipedia it if you’re curious. The single pedal is still a beautiful flat white paint. The tremolo is fantastic by itself, and then the reverb is spectacular. You can play them separately or combined. This is a very, very useful pedal that I think most of you could (and should) buy.
Broadcast by Hudson Electronics
Overdrive / Boost
Next up is the Broadcast by Hudson Electronics, specifically the four knob/two footswitch version. It's rowdy. It's crazy. And I like everything about it.
If you go back and watch the JHS show episode this article is based on (which I definitely recommend; it’s the only way to fully appreciate these demos), you’ll see me turn on the overdrive, and then I slam the boost on in front of it. It's madness in the best possible way.
If I could give this pedal a catchphrase, it would be, “I regret nothing.”
Prelude by Quiet Theory
Delay / Reverb
Next up is a pedal from a company that you probably haven't heard of. Yet. And I stress yet.
I’m talking about the Prelude by Quiet Theory. A guy named Bryan Laurenson is the man behind all this. He is the guitarist and a friend of mine from the band Copeland. Many of you know them already and love them, but if you don’t, take a quick break and look them up on Spotify. You’ll be glad you did. Simply put: this is an awesome pedal. It is an ambient machine of the highest order: delay and reverb. You can stack it. You can play the delay and the reverb separately. There's all kinds of settings.
Also, do yourself a favor and look up a photo of this beauty real quick. This case is basically fine art.
Dr. J Emerald Overdrive
Overdrive / Boost
The Dr. J Emerald Overdrive is possibly the best combination of “affordable” and “awesome” on this list. These overdrives are made by Joyo Pedals, and it's an entire series based around a guy's designs (the eponymous Dr. J) that they took and manufactured for him.
This is a really fantastic pedal. Think about pedals like the Full Drive or the Timmy kind of op-amp / soft-clipping pedals, and add in a really powerful op-amp boost that you can slam in front or behind. It's just a very versatile overdrive. It can do transparent overdrive all the way to the non-transparent variety.
Also, the enclosure is really unusual; it's a size you don't ever see anywhere anymore.
Visual Sound H2O
Chorus / Echo
The Visual Sound H2O is a trip. Literally. Take a journey with me to the late ’90s, early 2000s, to the place that this pedal existed before it was discontinued, before the company that originally made it changed their name. This was a simpler time, almost two decades ago, when the Visual Sound H2O was born.
Simply put: this is a gorgeous pedal. It's a chorus and an echo, all analog, totally beautiful. The case itself is kind of heavy and awkward, but I’ve gone on record already saying that heavy pedals are the best kind. Heavy means quality. Plus, the shape of the case is totally unique; Visual Sound has the corner on the market for this enclosure shape. Just take a look at their Route 66 and Jekyll & Hyde pedals if you don’t believe me.
Coppersound Pedals Foxcatcher
Overdrive / Boost
This one is from a really great company, Coppersound Pedals. We've been across from them at the NAMM show several times, and they even bought free pizza and had a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle theme going on one year. It was pretty amazing. They're good guys.
And good people make good pedals. Seriously. This pedal is excellent. It’s called the Foxcatcher. If you look up a photo of this, you’ll see that the logo is sort of a Swiss army knife with a fox tail coming out of it. It’s pretty clear. They're trying to say that this is the pedal that can do anything, that it’s the Swiss Army Pedal.**
**I’m just saying, if James Franco had one of these with him, 127 Hours would have been a completely different movie.
This pedal is very, very versatile. It has a Bluesbreaker-style overdrive, kind of like my Morning Glory, and then you have a boost on the other side. You can put it in different orders. They're fully independent, but you can still play with both modes at the same time. This is definitely a case where you’re getting solid bang for your buck.
EarthQuaker Devices Disaster Transport SR
Delay / Reverb
I’m not surprised that EarthQuaker Devices has a pedal on this list. They’re a baller company and they consistently make quality gear. The Disaster Transport SR definitely qualifies.
This is a big pedal. Technically, it has three footswitches, but it's actually just a 2-in-1 because the middle switch disengages all of it. You can stack Delay A and Delay B. You have modulation and reverb. This is kind of an ambient dream come true, traveling down a road of promises that you didn't know you needed to be kept. I don’t think I can make it clearer than that.
Wren and Cuff Super Russian
Fuzz / Boost
The Wren and Cuff Super Russian is their version of the infamous big ol’ green Russian Big Muff made in the ’90s by Electro Harmonix under the name Sovtek.
This pedal has four different modes built in, including creamy dreamer, traditional, flat, and scoop, and then he has a buffer boost that slams into it. It's pretty heavy. I mean, physically heavy, and that's a good sign. The heavier the pedal, the harder it rocks.** And then it's just downright heavy, sound-wise. So, this is what you call a win-win.
**Fairly sure Galileo said that around 1600 AD.
Source Audio Collider Delay + Reverb
Delay / Reverb
This last pedal is really new to the market (it just came out last year), and it is very worthy of the must have 2-in-1 pedal title. It’s the Source Audio Collider Delay+Reverb. They took two of their very powerful pedals, the Nemesis Delay and the Ventris Reverb, and they put the most popular settings on each side of the Collider Delay+Reverb.
It’s pretty epic. So you have a reverb on one side and delay on the other, and you get to stack them, do crazy stuff, do whatever the heck you want. You’ve got true stereo midi control. There's more jacks on this than anything I've ever seen. It's amazing. They crammed a lot of power in a very small package.
My favorite setting to use on this (and the one I used in our JHS Show demo) is the reverse delay. Honestly, I'm a huge fan of all reverse delays, and this one is massively tweakable. I also stacked that reverse delay on a big ol’ ambient reverb. Because life’s too short.
In this article (and in this JHS show episode) what I wanted to do more than anything is just bask in the fact that 2-in-1 pedals do amazing things for us. Twice the number of things, if you want to get mathematical. They bring us two new effects in a single case, and that’s amazing.
Now, you’re an adult (I’m assuming). You can make your own choices. You can buy a standard pedal or you can buy a 2-in-1 pedal. I don’t want to tell you how to live your life, but let me be your Obi Wan Kenobi here for a second and say: Yes. You do want to get a 2-in-1 pedal, because you get twice the pedal power for half the space on your board. Search your feelings. You know it to be true.
May the force be with you. I’m out.