My Top 10 Favorite Guitar Pedals

After using hundreds of pedals here on the channel over the last 9 years, I am coming clean on what my 10 ten favorite guitar pedals are!

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Bill's Top 10 Favorite pedals (Sweetwater Affiliate links, see disclaimers below):

Chords of Orion - Ambient guitar is life
Bill Vencil - Guitars

Sweetwater Affiliate Disclosure:

[johnpowell]

I must add. My mother is 92 years old. Shes battling Lymphoma and dementia. I quit my job to take care of her because I will NOT put her in a nursing home. Playing my guitar using your ambient guidance is the only respite I have. Thanks bill! You saved me

[samseitz]

Congratulations on 9 years Bill!! Been a long time fan. I would love to see a video on your guitar collection or guitars that hold a special place in your heart.

[erictait]

You are the Bob Ross of pedal demos man 😆 super chill dude. Keep doing what you do

[nicknickson]

Happy 9 years! You really helped me relax and play guitar as a form of therapy instead of always grinding and working with it. It's important to practice new things, but it's also extremely important to zone out and create a sonic space for your mind to wander.

[MorleyProducts]

Congratulations on 9 years Bill! Great to see your Little Alligator has thrived for 20+ years. We do plan to reissue it someday... Maybe for the channels 10th anniversary??? 😁

[Dungeon_of_Regret]

My other fav is deco. Genius pedal. So useful for so many different settings. If I show up to a jam with 1 pedal, that’s the one.

[sandyturner]

I seem to like a lot of EHX pedals. I also love Strymon. I have a Volante, and a DECO. I also love the TC stuff. They are priced to enable you to get into many different things. I still have the first Flashback I ever bought. I also just got the new TC Stereo Chorus +..it sounds great. Now I have a couple of Beetronics pedals, because I love Fuzz, and because they sound great, and they are a quality company. Congrats on your many years of YouTubing!

[K-ORA]

You're the reason I bought the Immerse lol. Use it on almost every track of mine! Thanks again 🤘

[oldtimer]

Strymon, without a doubt . Compadre, Riverside, Dig, Cloudburst, Flint . I'm saving for a Zelzah . I use expression pedals for changing peramiters . I also just added my first wah. A Dunlop 535Q, which I can't stop using .
Love your videos. Very informative. Thank you .

[sunlinkable]

My top 1 is a pedal I discovered here - the EQD Avalanche Run, thank you again for your amazing demo! Perfect for ambient looping...
2nd: Walrus Audio Juliana - love the stereo effect and the vintage-warm vibes it creates.
3rd: Dr Scientist Dusk - makes anything sound like an old synth with LPF.

And another one that is very very special: the Soma Cosmos - perfect meditative tool...

[JimmyRunningDog]

I have the Timeline, Big Sky and Mobius. I'd say Bill is the main reason I bought the "Stryfecta". The Big Sky is simply astounding, and I was never into reverb before hearing that pedal.
But my favorite pedal for awhile now is my ISP Theta Preamp, not ambient, but a very good sounding distortion / preamp.

Thanks for doing this research of your videos for us Bill. That was a huge job!

[joesikorski]

Congrats On 9 excellent years, Bill!!

[dan-]

It's great that you are so open about not buying that strymon pedal but rather receiving it from them. Honesty is a great quality!

[StephaneBergeronPixelyzed]

Congrats on 9 years! :)

My longest standing pedal brand is probably Ernie Ball because I'm on my third volume pedal from them in decades of playing (I'm in my late 50s). Early in my musical journey (80s) Boss was of course my go to and that went through the 90s. But by then I'd moved to rack units as many others did back then. My main one was a 1989 Korg A3 that did my compression, delays and reverbs.

For the last 8-10 years, it's been an evolution including changing my amps (I now play a Revv Dynamis 7-40 which is their least metal amp and the clean channel is an awesome pedal platform. Before that was an '89 red knobs Twin that died on me in 2020 and was replaced temporarily by a Katana head then the Dynamis. My dirt comes from either that amp's red channel or a JHS Angry Charlie or a couple models in the Line 6 HX Effects I'm now using which replaced a Boss MS-3 I'd played for a few years (so multi effects are still a thing for me ;)

Other than that, Wampler would probably be the most represented pedal company on my board with two pedals, the Tumnus Deluxe (modified Klone) and the Ego Compressor which, like you, I really love. Other than that, a Polytune Mini and a Boss SY-1 (we play neo-prog including some Marillion where I needed somethjing to emulate a Roland GR-300 guitar synth and the SY-1 does so brilliantly for my needs.

[KirkJanowiakAngelwood]

Long-time viewer; infrequent commenter; CoO fanboy! Thanks for 9 years (and going…), Bill. Your vid’s always make my day. “We’ve” all been through a lot this past decade and your continued good humor, gentle spirit, and positive encouragement has been a blessing to us all. I’m a Morley fan, myself. My #1 pedal is my big ol’ Morely Volume-Pan pedal. You know, one of the old chrome units the size of a pickup truck? It sits in the middle of any & every setup I have used since 1978–on stage or in studio. LOVE the ultra-smooth feel and built-like-a-tank durability. I use it after initial tone shaping and before modulation effects; so Compression->Boost->OD/Dist ->Amp/Emulator->Morley Volume->To modulations, delays, loopers, mixers, etc.->Overall Volume pedal (35-year old Boss FV200). So, 3 volumes: pre-distortion swells via guitar vol (nice clean to distortion swells!); post distortion via Morely for grand swells into the delays and reverbs; post delay/reverb swells and overall volume via the Boss FV at the end. Thanks again!

[agerven]

Oh my, was it 9 years already?
Time flies by, heads lose hair, difficult times, wonderful times, all bound together with a love for ambient music, pedals, and recordings. You took us all along on that path with you!
Congratulations and thank you! Namasté, dear Bill!
After the number 1 pedal reveal i was tempted to question: "What about the big sky? Did you forget all about that, or just take it for granted?" Fortunately, you answered that question near the end of the video.
And since you asked about our favorite pedal brands:
1. Like you i'm a Strymon adept. i just love the way Strymon enhances the original signal, with very realistic digital simulations.
2. I love electro harmonics, for still being there after all these years; providing cool loopers, delays, and awesome reverberations; for offering something weird and unexpected in every pedal; for the MEL-9.
3. TC-electronics has always had my interest in providing great, and affordable functionality in every pedal; for their loopers and delays; for the mash footswitch/effect pedal concept; for their user tone concept.

[davidleinweber]

I always think EHX have some of the best sounding pedals, but their footprint and the huge clunky power supplies always make them less desirable for playing out, though I think some of the newer “nano” type versions of some of their classic pedals address this issue some. Pedals like the Holy Stain are really distinct and sound amazing. I also like the Keeley Dark Side for a beautiful fuzz/delay classic rock sound. Boss is almost always a great overall choice and I usually use my very handy Boss BCB-60 pedalboard which demonstrates not only the rock solid musicality of Boss but also their excellent build, footprint and user-friendly interface. Just set everything at 12 O-Clock, lol. Can’t go wrong

[kevins]

Great, interesting video! Loved hearing about the backgrounds and your preferences. We all have a reason why we like one thing over another, etc, but it's interesting to hear others' perspectives on that.
Lately - and I say lately because tastes/needs change - I tend to use TC Electronic for delays and modulations and Keeley/Wampler for comps and drives. I must say though, that Compadre looks intriguing! I might have to give that a whirl because I use a Keeley comp followed by a Vertex boost and that unit might do the trick nicely!

[philf]

Great method for evaluating the top 10! They sure help you make unique music, thanks Bill!!

[geoffreymerrifield]

Bill thanks for beinga class act. You play great, teach valuable things in awesome, practicle ways, and have a wondersful humble spirit. You are a Blessings Brother.