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Stompboxes for harmonica players

Started by Gward, November 28, 2023, 02:15:10 PM

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Gward

Greetings to all of you, I'm new to this forum and new to diy effects as well. Hopefully this is the right place to post this, if not please direct me in the right direction.

My question is what do y'all recommend for those of us who are harmonica players and are interested in adding a pedalboard to our playing techniques? I've been checking out a few other sources on the subject and most recommend reverb and echo boxes. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I've got a Fender Blues Jr that I'm using currently and must admit that I'm not a professional but love blues and rock as well as some country and folk.

Really looking forward to hearing back from you guys, thanks!

jimilee

Chorus phaser wah delay reverb overdrive. I've heard an overdrive in harmonica while I was in Memphis, very cool.


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Pedal building is like the opposite of sex.  All the fun stuff happens before you get in the box.

Gward

Thanks jimilee, any particular diy kits that are maybe documented on this forum that come to mind out of those recommendations? Any other guys have their opinions?

jimilee

Quote from: Gward on November 29, 2023, 02:51:55 AM
Thanks jimilee, any particular diy kits that are maybe documented on this forum that come to mind out of those recommendations? Any other guys have their opinions?
BYOC and stew Mac are about the only places I know of in the US with kits.  I have experience with BYOC kits, but that's it.


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Pedal building is like the opposite of sex.  All the fun stuff happens before you get in the box.

Gward

Many thanks, I'll check those out, I'm familiar with StewMac.

mauman


Gward

Thx mauman, I was on their site yesterday. This is going to be a real challenge to learn the techniques and general know how but looking forward to it.

jimilee

Quote from: mauman on November 29, 2023, 02:33:02 PM
AionFX has quality kits as well.
Oh yeah, I forgot about that.


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Pedal building is like the opposite of sex.  All the fun stuff happens before you get in the box.

mauman

I know nothing about amplifying harmonicas, so I'm curious.  Do you use a microphone?  If so, do you run it thru something before the amp?  Preamp, mixer, etc.  I am assuming that you'd need some conditioning and/or impedance matching for a mic-level input before you hit the instrument-level guitar amp?  Or maybe not.

Doorlord

I'm not a harmonica player, but I think a Boss GE-7 EQ pedal would be really handy for some lo-fi sounds. 

oeslicoalfin

I started out with BYOC and General Guitar Gadgets kits. There tends to be more off board wiring of pots in the GGG projects. The BYOC documentation for their kits is awesome. From building several Aion PCB projects, I can only imagine what a cinch it would be to assemble one of Kevin's kits. It looks like John Popper had quite the rig
(https://www.modernbluesharmonica.com/board/board_topic/5560960/773179.htm), but the last post is a decade old.

I found my harps (Lee Oskar) play well with modulation, but they didn't like boosts, overdrives, and distortion fx. I use a Shure green bullet into a Weber 5F2H amp. I could've had an input impedance issue, but I never followed through to learn why no signal passed through on harp when those pedals worked fine on guitar with that amp...

Let us know what kit you decide to build.