It is the new year 2016 and time to reconisder the pedalboard! Not sure why but always seems like a good thing to do at the begining of the year and blog about it. I know how much you guys love to see pictures of pedals boards and read about them. So here firstly is the picture in action.....

Atomic Amps Amplifire Pedalboard

Take the next step in your guitar playing

So, up until New Years Eve and the gig I had on that evening, I was supremely happy with my set up. Yes I was a very happy camper! Here is a picture, my setup then featured my trusty and loyal TC Nova System which I have gigged with since for ever, with the new and wonderful Xotic SL Drive (slowly becoming my favourite all time pedal) and The Rothwell F1 Booster, which is a great boost pedal into my Fender 68' Deluxe Reverb (read all about it here) which is simply just an amazing amazing amplifier.

So why even consider change?

Well, I guess we all suffer from G.A.S. from time to time and New Year is a time of year when this particular affliction is very catching!!! Also, because I am still always trying to improve my set up (and ultimately make it simpler and lighter!!....Ligther being the big one for me and my stairs!). But, I have noticed at a lot of smaller gigs recently that my guitar was dominating the on stage sound and was quite loud and turning it down took my amp away from the sweet spot (don't get me wrong it still sounds amazing, but I have grown to love the sweet spot). Given the nature of some of the venues and stages I thought it was perhaps time to give the modelling route a go again, firstly to try and get the on stage volume down, secondly to get a bit more consistency in my sounds and thirdly to make things a little bit easier to set up etc. (the lazy me!)It was at this time that the Atomic Amps Amplifire came into my life, as usual I watched all the videos and I was hooked. But never one to but something off the internet without trying it out first, I went down and tried it out and it was instant love. Please read my full review about the reasons why.So, the Amplifire became the centre piece of my pedalboard and enabled me to get rid of a number of pedals because the onboard effects are fantastic. So this is the signal path.....Line 6 G30 wireless unit goes into my Vox 847 wah pedal, then out of the wah in to the Xotic Effects Sl Drive (I still wanted to keep this on because it sounds so fantastic, and it works really well with the Amplifire!), this then goes into the Amplifire where I have a number of presets. For most gigs there are five presets which cover most bases. With each patch the Amplifire enables you to have 3 effects, I have these set to Boost - Modulation - Delay. I use the Tech 21 Midi Moose to switch between the presets, this gives me a ton of flexibility easily at my feet.My main presets are

• Clean (Fender Deluxe Reverb)
• Meaty Clean with compression (Fender  Bassman)
• Crunch (currently this is thr Rumble aka Dumble amp but I am finding this doesnt cut through well on stage as it is currently set up so need to tweak more)
• Dirty (Freedman HBE)
• The 80's OTT lead (5051)

In the loop I have the Rothwell F1 booster, this is to give the the option to boost the overall level of the preset either for a solo or if the circumstance requires with really affecting the sound of the patch, just making it perceptually louder.