A Guitar And Gear Support Forum

I saw a bluegrass band tonight. They were very good.* Each member had quite the pedalboard. To my ear, whether they stepped on a pedal or not, the mandolin sounded just like a mandolin, the bass sounded like a bass, the violin sounded like a violin and the acoustic player sounded like, well... an acoustic player. They all toe-tapped a great deal.

Thoughts?



*That's not a huge compliment coming from me. To my uneducated ear, bluegrass is bluegrass just as mariachi is mariachi. I can't tell the difference between one song and the next. The band was tight, though.

The mandolin player has a wah-wah pedal and what looks like stacked Tube Screamers. Did they play “Enter Sandman” or “Sweet Child O Mine”?

Bluegrass has come a long way. After all these years I still cannot find a reason to have more than three pedals.

toomanycats wrote: ↑Sat Jan 04, 2025 3:45 am The mandolin player has a wah-wah pedal and what looks like stacked Tube Screamers. Did they play “Enter Sandman” or “Sweet Child O Mine”?

They went into a psychedelic jam and he used it in conjunction with some delay and a phase shifter. Got lost in the mix.

I thought there was a law against bluegrass and electricity, other than mics, amps & speakers?
Or is that just in Kentucky?

I know I've mentioned before how often I've seen guitarists with huge pedalboards that you can't even tell they're using, but that really takes the cake.

I will offer some possible justifications, though. For one thing, even my minimal pedalboard has some "if" pedals. For example, if I'm going to use my own amp, I might use pedal A, with pedal B as a backup, but if I have to use a house amp I'll use pedals A and C...but I'm not going to bother adding and removing things every time. Also, if I were playing in (say) a 1960's-ish, Stones-ish band and a 1980s cover band, I'd probably want a bunch of different pedals, but again, it reduces complexity and issues if you set up your pedalboard once and don't touch it again.