So far… My  pedal arrangement is this, a digital delay-flanger-fuzz pedal and two Jamman loopers. I’ve got the pedals and one Jamman hooked to a DI box that I route to my amp and to the house. The other Jamman is connected to a pedal switch and I’m going to record loops into channels for the “A” and “B” and bridge parts.

Before, it took forever to get set up with a next of cables and connecting cables. I later put the pedals all on a self-made pedal board but it was a little too big and clunky. Recently I rebuild a new pedal board that fits in my tool box. It’s still a work in progress but I am optimistic about how much easier it’s going to be to set up for shows in 2011.

I still have several bugs to work out, last open mic didn’t go that well. But the good thing about playing acoustic guitar is you don’t need the pedals to play and sound great. It’s going to be a big learning curve to get the bass lines rolling. As learned before, monitoring is essential because if you can’t hear the beat everything goes to hell.

We’ll see how it goes

Now that I’ve got the cheesy analogies out of the way – I usually change my strings right a day before a gig. I’m a hard strummer and I’ve grown attached to the warm tone delivered from the D’Addario Acoustic Strings Set, Phosphor Bronze, Bluegrass. They use genuine phosphor bronze alloy that keeps its flexibility an maintains its brilliance for many hours of hard play. There is nothing worse than popping a string in the middle of a set. After experiencing that once I concluded that the expense and time in restringing is a hell-of-a lot better.

Besides that, I can definitely tell when they are loosing their brightness, starting to dull up a bit. So its nice to put on new strings anyway for a new audience anyway.

Tip – Be sure to play the strings for at least an hour before going in front of an audience with strings that will easily go out of tune.