Rig Rundown: Electric Guitar, Pads and Drum Samples

Our team is blessed with a lot of multi instrumentalists.  Last night at Life Church, our Wednesday night service, we made the most of it.  Our keys player played banjo, our bassist switched to cello, one worship leader played percussion, another lead from acoustic and I had the most fun, Electric Guitar, Pads and Drum Triggers.  

I wanted to give you a run down of the gear I was using in case you’d like to give it a try.  I would suggest being VERY comfortable with one instrument or piece of gear before you try to incorporate a second or third in the same set.  You should be able to play and lead comfortably and confidently using gear and sounds only if they serve the song.

Electric Guitar

My board is always changing.  I’m constantly switching between my acoustic rig, electric rig, pulling and placing different pedals for different sets.  This week I kept it very simple running a few delays from the Eventide Timefactor, a few others from the trusty Boss DD-20 and reverb from the Strymon Bluesky.  

Pads

We’ll sometimes use pad loops to run under songs to add a little atmosphere.  I like to run these pretty low in the mix and eq out frequencies already covered by live instruments.  I purchased these pads from padloops.com then cut them down to about five minutes and imported them into my Digitech JamMan Solo.  I’ve uploaded one in every key and use the FS3X Foot Switch to switch between presets.  Using a volume pedal is great to fade into and out of pads.  

Drums Samples

I use Roland’s SPD-SX to trigger drum samples.  For a long time I’ve made custom samples but recently purchased the Organic bundle from That Sound.  They’ve got some great ready made samples.  For this set I used a combination of kicks, claps, snaps, tambourine hits and floor tom.  I like to turn the pressure sensitivity for each drum pad off so the hits are consistent except for the floor tom with sounds great with lighter hits and bigger hits.  

To watch and listen to this service visit our livestream page and look for January 20th.

What about you?  

What gear have you been enjoying?  

Share in the comments below.