Guitar Gear

After a gig with my band a few weeks ago, and with other impending gigs coming up where I’d have to use my electric rig, I decided to create two different pedal boards. Using a single one wasn’t an issue the past couple of years because, with my new band, we weren’t gigging that much and I didn’t really feel the need to have a lot of different sounds, so I’d just use my little Pedaltrain Nano, pop on the pedals I needed for a particular gig, and I was good to go. But now that I’m gigging more regularly with my band, and have agreed to join a new church band, I realized that swapping pedals was going to be inefficient. Plus, with my solo gig, I only needed a couple of modulation pedals and a looper, so putting all that on my big board and hauling that around was not a very attractive solution.

Luckily, I have at least two of every pedal I need. 🙂 Not the same brand, mind you, but two or three of the same kind. The fact that I have so many is just previous GAS. I used to be so impulsive about buying gear that even though I’d already have a pedal or some other gear that perfectly suited my needs, I’d hear something in some new gear that “spoke” to me and I’d have to get it. And with pedals, I’ve ended up with two, three, even four of the same type of pedal. This gives me a lot of flexibility, but more importantly, it allows me to run two distinct boards for my electric and solo acoustic rigs.

Which brings me to the Carbon Copy… When I got it, I really didn’t need it. In fact, I already had my Mad Professor Deep Blue Delay “DBD” (hand-wired). But I reasoned that I needed a delay for my acoustic rig, and wasn’t willing to shell out another $325 as only the hand-wired DBD was available at the time. So I got the Carbon Copy delay.

As luck would have it, it wasn’t long before the Carbon Copy was back in the box. I had developed severe arthritis in my left hip and started to gig a lot less, and got very sensitive to the amount of gear I would lug when I did gig. So I downsized. I started using my Nano board exclusively and just lived with a couple of pedals.

But now that I’m all healed and have lost a bunch of weight, and I’ve gotten a lot more busy with gigs, I don’t mind lugging a bunch of gear, so I’ve set up two boards: One for electric and one for acoustic. The Carbon Copy has gone onto my acoustic board, and you know what? I absolutely love it!

Unlike my Deep Blue Delay, the Carbon Copy is very subtle when its level knob is set anywhere less than 12 o’clock. I usually set the level at 11 am, then set a long delay time and short repeats. It’s not exactly slapback, but it adds a depth and ambiance to my guitar sound to give it almost a large chamber sound. It’s great for finger-picked songs as the lower level gives me plenty of note clarity with a nice tail at the end. And for solos, well, its subtlety definitely works in its favor. I LOVE doing solos with this pedal turned on.

Don’t get me wrong. I still love my Deep Blue Delay. That will always be my favorite, but I’m absolutely digging the MXR Carbon Copy on my acoustic rig. It would be right at home on my electric board, but well the DBD has that place, and I’ve got that board set up to where I like it.

Now that I’ve been using the Carbon Copy for a few weeks, I like it so much that if it were the only analog delay that I have, I’d be perfectly alright using it all the time. This pedal is a little gem, folks. If you’re looking for a great analog delay, this is one that I’d recommend trying out. It’s definitely much more subtle than others – you really have to crank up the level and repeats to get a definite delay pulse – but as I mentioned above, that subtlety works in its favor, especially for solos.