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Pedalmania: The Complete Guide to Stompboxes and Pedalboards - Book/Video by Vinnie Demasi and Tom "Peck" Pecoraro
(Guitar Book). Ever since the first effect pedals emerged in the mid-20th century, the race for creating the perfect guitar tone has continued strong, culminating in an industry with a wide variety of options for crafting sounds to fit every taste and need. Author Vinnie DeMasi and veteran pedalboard builder Tom "Peck" Pecoraro guide you through this complex and evolving world of tone in a beginner-friendly guide, covering topics such overdrive, distortion, and fuzz; compression and EQ; delays, echoes, and reverb; chorus, phasers, flangers, and tremolo units; wah-wah and filters; rack mounts and multi-effect units; building basic and advanced boards; signal path essentials and rig options; maintenance and trouble shooting; recreating iconic stompbox sounds; photos of professional players' boards; and more! The book also includes access to online video demonstrations that give you quick tips on how to put the knowledge within this book into practice!
80 pages, Paperback
Published June 1, 2022
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November 20, 2022
I had some high hopes on this book being the new guitar pedal bible and it even says "the complete guide to stompboxes and pedalboards" on the cover . I have some extensive prior knowledge having read a lot about the subject via different internet articles, forum posts, countless Youtube-videos etc. So this is kinda a view from a guitar amateur who has some ideas already on how things work and why they work the certain way.
I wasn't too impressed when I got the book. The Hal Leonard-style layout felt bit weird and I expected a much thicker book (didn't pay attention to page count in advance). It was quite a quick read overall because of there being so few pages and so many images.
The book doesn't really go into depths with pedals but goes quite hardcore with showing different kinds of pedalboards and some ideas on planning a board. The pedalboard side is presented quite well with a lots of images of different pedal boards and effect placements of some selected pro artists and a lists of their cable routing plans and a list of equipment.
Pedal part itself doesn't quite catch on what the countless Youtube videos have been doing in the recent years with pedal history, clones of the original designs, some pedal placement issues (buffers before some fuzzes ie. some tuners) and how some effects work with each other, how headroom works...) The book seems to try to touch a bit of everything without going to much in-depth detail or touching much of the electronics perspective (isolated power supplies etc.) but then goes randomly on if a patch cable is "gas tight". It felt weird when the Klon Centaur was mentioned but it felt as purely because of the outrageous current pricing of the original pedals. EHX Soul Food and Wampler Tumnus are mentioned later on as being Overdrives, but fails to mention that they both are clones of the Klon which would be quite important on the category of them. Discussing certain pedals would quite much benefit on them having some sort of broad label included, if it's already quite universally acknowledged.
Some pedals felt like they were mentioned and represented because they were part of certain pedal boards (making their images available, I suppose?). Strymon and Wampler seemed to be focused on a bit too much and some other manufacturers were hardly mentioned.
If the book had more stuff in it and went into more detail (considering the approach on what the pros are doing having more purpose), it would serve as a great information package over the years and would make the "from beginner to pro"-journey make more sense. Now it all seems bit rushed and feels bit too excessive on some parts for beginners and bit too shallow to be for the pros on some parts. Also the "pedalboards of the pros" artists didn't resonate much with me, as I hardly knew the artists presented even with a quite extensive rock/jazz hobby and the artists approach on why things are as they are wasn't discussed in detail.
The book doesn't deliver enough (in my opinion) to be marketed as a "complete guide" on either stomp boxes or pedalboards. It delivers more on the pedalboards side, but the contrast between pedals and boards seem bit too excessive to my liking. I wanted to like this book much more than I ultimately did. I hope others find it more useful. I guess I'm bit too seasoned with all the prior information available online (even though it takes so so many hours to digest all that compared to a compact book format)
The book also has a code included to view some videos on the publisher site. I didn't look into those as I didn't know how it would work with the library copy of the book without attaching it to an account.
I wasn't too impressed when I got the book. The Hal Leonard-style layout felt bit weird and I expected a much thicker book (didn't pay attention to page count in advance). It was quite a quick read overall because of there being so few pages and so many images.
The book doesn't really go into depths with pedals but goes quite hardcore with showing different kinds of pedalboards and some ideas on planning a board. The pedalboard side is presented quite well with a lots of images of different pedal boards and effect placements of some selected pro artists and a lists of their cable routing plans and a list of equipment.
Pedal part itself doesn't quite catch on what the countless Youtube videos have been doing in the recent years with pedal history, clones of the original designs, some pedal placement issues (buffers before some fuzzes ie. some tuners) and how some effects work with each other, how headroom works...) The book seems to try to touch a bit of everything without going to much in-depth detail or touching much of the electronics perspective (isolated power supplies etc.) but then goes randomly on if a patch cable is "gas tight". It felt weird when the Klon Centaur was mentioned but it felt as purely because of the outrageous current pricing of the original pedals. EHX Soul Food and Wampler Tumnus are mentioned later on as being Overdrives, but fails to mention that they both are clones of the Klon which would be quite important on the category of them. Discussing certain pedals would quite much benefit on them having some sort of broad label included, if it's already quite universally acknowledged.
Some pedals felt like they were mentioned and represented because they were part of certain pedal boards (making their images available, I suppose?). Strymon and Wampler seemed to be focused on a bit too much and some other manufacturers were hardly mentioned.
If the book had more stuff in it and went into more detail (considering the approach on what the pros are doing having more purpose), it would serve as a great information package over the years and would make the "from beginner to pro"-journey make more sense. Now it all seems bit rushed and feels bit too excessive on some parts for beginners and bit too shallow to be for the pros on some parts. Also the "pedalboards of the pros" artists didn't resonate much with me, as I hardly knew the artists presented even with a quite extensive rock/jazz hobby and the artists approach on why things are as they are wasn't discussed in detail.
The book doesn't deliver enough (in my opinion) to be marketed as a "complete guide" on either stomp boxes or pedalboards. It delivers more on the pedalboards side, but the contrast between pedals and boards seem bit too excessive to my liking. I wanted to like this book much more than I ultimately did. I hope others find it more useful. I guess I'm bit too seasoned with all the prior information available online (even though it takes so so many hours to digest all that compared to a compact book format)
The book also has a code included to view some videos on the publisher site. I didn't look into those as I didn't know how it would work with the library copy of the book without attaching it to an account.
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