3 Pedals that are Great with both Amps and Interfaces

When I was first getting into running my guitar signal through amp sims and other DAW plugins, I had a natural question: If I can run countless virtual "pedalboard" configurations in my DAW, did I waste a shitload of money building my pedalboard? At first, I had some cognitive dissonance about this. "I wouldn't have spent money building a pedalboard if I knew today what I know about digital setups," I told myself. "At least I am learning a lot about guitar tone."

From a purely economic perspective, it made a lot of sense, especially since I saw expanding flexibility for tonal experimentation as the point of buying pedals. Gradually, I started to realize that this mindset reflected an incomplete view. A pedalboards is not just about your tone itself; it's really about building a custom control surface for your tone. A DAW will always offer more options than your physical board alone. But the constrained, bounded space a physical pedalboard gives you for tone shaping is a feature, not a bug. How many features does your DAW have that you don't fully understand? How many times have you been overwhelmed by the sheer amount of decision making required in normal parts of life?

With a pedalboard, we actually get to be in control about what kind of decisions we want to make when we interact with our guitar signal. It's somewhat rare in life to have this kind of control. So I think adapting the control surface in response to downstream technological change is a better answer than giving up that meta-control. To that end, I want to share 3 of my pedals that stick out as being noticeable helpful in both contexts.

1. Xotic SP Compressor

Sure, you've heard you can use a compressor to "help your dynamics." But for me, that means different things depending on whether I'm going into the amp or interface. Xotic's SP Compressor has useful controls for that with volume and blend knobs (in a addition to a 3-way, Hi-Lo-Mid switch for compression). The blend knob lets you mix the compressed signal with the dry signal. It is a key part of this compressor's flexibility, and it is one of the main features that stood out to me when comparing it to other compressors in this form factor (I wasn't considering the usecase w/ an interface yet but I didn't have much room on my board).

When I am playing into my Marshall amp, I like using this almost as more of a boost in a lot of situations, especially when going for a high-gain sound. I can set the blend knob so that the compression doesn't dominate my signal and then turn up the volume. When I am using it for cleans through my amp, the volume may need to come down depending on the guitar and other settings.

The situation is reversed plugging into an interface. We no longer want to hit it as hard as possible, but instead want to make sure we preserve enough headroom to prevent clipping. The SP Compressor shines again here. In this situation, I find it useful to use it with blend knob set relatively high and then setting the volume to adjust for how hard I need to hit the interface. Sometimes more headroom is needed even when input gain is all the way down on an interface. In these instances, I think using a compressor, like this, is better than just turning the guitar's volume down because the tone coming off the pickups doesn't change and it keeps the quieter playing from getting too soft.

That also clearly demonstrates that having a pedal simulated in your DAW after your the interface is a different thing than having the real pedal before the interface. And they don't replace each other, just as it's valid to put compression in different places on a physical pedalboard depending on what you are trying to accomplish.

The compact form factor and internal 9-volt battery make this relatively convenient to bring on the road when traveling with your guitar/interface setup. I am glad I had this pedal with me when I stayed at my parents' house for Thanksgiving.

SP Compressor on Amazon (link earns commissions)

2. Digitech Drop

Out of everything on my board, this probably brings the most raw utility. Whether you are practicing, writing, or recording, the ability to change tunings quickly and seamlessly through a pedal makes your entire creative range more immediately accessible. This pedal lets you digitally drop your guitar's pitch by a number of semitones (aka half steps) that you select. This also opens up many possibilities logistically for playing gigs if you like using multiple tunings.

A single stomp puts me in E-flat standard, which is great because I'm a big fan of playing songs on Metallica's Load album. But that's not a place you want to stay forever. The Digitech Drop helps reduce friction in so many ways like this. And there are songs and riff's I've learned that I never would have touched if I had to physically retune my guitar.

Some DAW plugins, like the Neural DSP products, have functionality like this built-in. But what about when you are practicing/recording on your tube amp or playing a gig? A physical pedal covers your bases in a more modular way.

Boss also offers a newer competitor, the XS-1, that you should also look into if you are trying to fill this type of slot on your board. I have not played it, but supposedly they were attempting to offer better tracking and lower latency. From video comparisons, it seems like these two pedals color your tone differently, so it's worth listening to them both online first before buying one.

Digitech Drop on Amazon (link earns comission)

3. Boss EQ-200 10 band graphical EQ

"I can't imagine spending $250 on an eq pedal! Pick up something cheap/used/Chinese" say the EQ-200 haters.

And they aren't wrong that it's a lot of money. But there is a lot of value, and it only increases if you have a pedalboard that you use with both your amp and your interface.

I tried to run a dirt cheap Joyo 6 band EQ for a while, but 2 factors pushed me into upgrading into the EQ-200:

1. Noise issues

2. The need to remember useful past EQ settings and be able to recreate them by hand when I want to use them

The second one above shouldn't be treated as trivial. Many of the loudest proponents of buying EQ pedals talk about how "there's so many different uses" for such pedals. They aren't wrong, but it potentially explodes the amount of information a player needs to keep in their head. At some point, practicing changing your EQ settings can actually eat up a lot of your practice time if you aren't careful. And the problem is worse if you are using the EQ in both amp-based and interface-based signal chains because there are more variables and configurations.

Purchasing a costly pedal like this can feel like a luxury, but the memory feature really makes it a cheap way of buying time, attention, and sanity. I don't have to think about all 10 of those bands constantly as I play since I'm usually just switching between presets I already dialed in. My programming brain loves this pedal on so many levels. It makes my tone more repeatable and keeps me from having to reinvent the wheel without a safety net. Like C++ used to have a Standard Template Library, the EQ-200 gives me a Standard Tone Library that I can carry across different recording and performing situations. Neat!

I use my EQ-200 in my amp's FX loop. This lets me change my amp's voicing dramatically and find tones that aren't accessible through my Marshall's built-in 3 band EQ. When I record directly from my amp's FX loop using my interface, I have all the same EQ presets available to me, and I can tweak them without permanently losing information/state. I haven't been running the EQ at all before the front of amp/interface (which the EQ-200 would enable by having multiple eq channels that you can use separately in your signal chain ) to modify to signal off directly off the pickups yet, but doing so would again get into territory where I would need the ability to store EQ settings to make it beneficial instead of excessively cognitively burdensome.

One complaint I have about this pedal is that I am very much not a fan of Boss' firmware update support practices (one of the topics that inspired my first posting here and indeed this whole site itself). However, unlike the Katana or the PX-1 Plugout, connectivity with various devices is not an inherent selling point of the EQ-200. Hopefully I can get away without ever having to update this, but it is a tension point for me in what is otherwise a super pedal.

Boss EQ-200 on Amazon (link earns commission)

Wrapping up

A tuner and a noise gate at the start of your signal chain also helps in both contexts, but those pedals are less fun to write about. And it reinforces my main point: pedals are about practice/writing/performing workflow as much as raw tone magic. I think the specific pedals I have discussed here have utility that may generalize well to others (or else why write this post?), but the broader takeaway is to focus on physical processes when you practice and perform and what kind of control surface you need over your signal/tone. What control do you need? What control don't you need? When do things start to become physically or cognitively cumbersome? DAWs and interfaces may have changed some of the answers, but not the fundamental questions.

The interface I use is the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 (link earns commission).

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