You might not be aware of this, but I have begun to seriously play my guitar again. I have been keeping it somewhat secret.
Just kidding. I tell **everyone** about the joy that it brings me again.
This week, I took off of work, because we needed to get our carpets cleaned. Suffice it to say, that we have dogs, and they hadn't been professionally cleaned in about 5 years, so they were grody.
That caused me to disassemble my pedal board and move all my gear to the garage. Instead of bringing it back as I had it, I thought why not go back to the basics.
The first pedal I bought was a used Keeley Tone Workstation. It combines three effects into one. A compressor (adds sustain), a boost or simple overdrive, and a thick, monstrous overdrive. The compressor has the option for a treble boost (very nice), and the middle effect can be a simple signal boost (think amping up the output for a solo to cut through the drums) or a chunky, early 60's British amp sound (think Vox). The last is their baked clay overdrive, with luscious overtones, and (optionally) some light modulation.
When I got this, I played with it a lot, but I wanted more flexibility, and 8 additional pedals later it was relegated to the desk.
That said, with the clean up, I plugged it in, and front loaded it with my MXR analog chorus and began tweaking.
Holy cow, this thing is far more versatile than I gave it credit for. The compressor provides near infinite sustain, great for long tapping runs, and with the slight wetness of the chorus feeding it, it is wonderful. Likewise, I have a good, quasi-clean tone from the middle boost/overdrive module. Sort of a clean channel at some volume. No clipping, but creamy smooth tone.
The main overdrive, I have it set to the baked clay side, and the tone at about 3/4 into the high register, with the drive about 85%. This give a really fat chunky distortion, that makes playing power chords magical.
I think I will keep it like this for a while.