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Robert Comeaux is the Associate Pastor of Worship & Music at First Baptist Church New Orleans I really did it out of necessity. First, I wanted a sound that I wasn’t getting out of the players I had. My guitarists were mostly acoustic players, and the electric players that I could find in New Orleans mostly played jazz and blues-infused music and not the rock style that we hear in modern worship music.
Second, we needed to drive songs more than we could with the instruments we had. The bass and drums, of course, can do that, but there’s just nothing like adding the right distortion or drive with electric guitar to push a song to the next level. The only way I found I could get what I wanted was to do it myself.
Third, I wanted to expand my skills as a musician. It wasn’t until I started building my first pedal board that I found out what this would do for my ear. I realized that playing with tones and playing styles opens up new tonal expressions that I had never realized. I tell people it’s like when the Impressionist painters got the new oil-based paints of the late 19th century. It opened up worlds of new expression. Diving into guitar pedals does the same thing.A side benefit of playing electric guitar is that I learned the instrument better so I could better communicate to my electric guitarists what I’m looking for. Today I have two electric guitarists who rotate each week and mostly play leads. One of them has been with me all along and I’ve learned that he can do pretty much anything I want him to do. I just had to learn how to tell him what I was looking for. Saying “make it sound like this recording” just doesn’t cut it. He now tells me that I hear things in the music that he doesn’t hear and it’s simply that I now know how to explain what I’m looking for.RP: Let’s start with your rig. How did you develop your current setup? - Robert Comeaux
I started by asking players who I knew could play and had rigs that I admired. Basically, [you], Robert Payne became my rig guru as I developed my first board. I didn’t have the money to build a full board at first, so I literally started with a pedaltrain mini, a Fuel Tank
Jr., a tuner, and a Timmy overdrive. The Timmy was a recommendation by Rob that has turned out to still be one of my favorite pedals. At first it was what I used for driving tone at a higher gain, but now it fits awesome as a low gain drive pedal – sometimes I even use it like a boost.I pretty much just called Rob when I got more money and wanted to add to my board. I added an MXR carbon copy analog delay and then an Analogman minichorus.The biggest decision I’ve had to make so far was what digital delay to go with. The Boss DD7 was on my list, but I got some Christmas money, so I went big and got the Eventide Time Factor. That pedal has been an amazing addition to my rig. It has 100 presets that can be manipulated through a program on your computer and then dumped to the pedal. I’ve started naming my presets for specific songs and then loading them in order for my worship sets on Sundays. It makes it really easy to step through the set without a lot of pedal tapping.At this point, I’ve learned enough about what I want that I am finding pedals on my own specific to the sounds I want. I bought a Line6 distortion modeler along the way because someone was selling it dirt cheap, but I didn’t like the digital sound of it (my sound techreally didn’t like the digital modeler). I did like that it gave me four options for distortion and boost during a set. So I did some research and got a Germanium Big Muff, which gives me a real crunchy overdrive that I like as well as an overdrive that I use as a boost. Along with my Timmy I’ve got three out of those four presets. I also added a Boss NS-2 Noise Suppressor.
The Ernie Ball VP Jr. Volume Pedal was another good choice. It was recommended by Eventide for the TimeFactor, but I use it as a volume pedal rather than an expression pedal for now. That makes it so I don’t have to dial in all of my pedals to the exact volume I need for a set. At first that was a real challenge.About a year into the process I bought a Bugera V22 tube amp. It warms up the sound and doesn’t require a lot of volume to get good tube tone, which is important for my stage setup. After I got rid of my Line6 DM4 I got an extension for my amp control pedal and ran it to the front of the stage. That’s when I discovered the difference of overdrive on an amp versus overdrive and distortion pedals. It adds a great fourth option for overdrive/distortion tone.Around the time that I got the Eventide TimeFactor I outgrew my Pedaltrain Mini. I bought the Pedaltrain 2 and added a Ciosk power supply that could power all of my pedals including the TimeFactor. At that time I also powered the Line6 DM4.Since this was a long reply, let me close it out with a few key suggestions:1. Find someone who knows more than you and ask lots of questions.2. Read blogs and watch demos online. I have several guitar blogs in my regular news feeds in Pulse, a great news app. I just read what other people are doing with their guitar rigs and learn from them.3. Listen to the music you like and pick apart the guitar parts to figure out what sound you want. Pick your pedals to give you what you’re looking for. Don’t just buy stuff that someone told you sounds cool. It may sound cool, but not for the music you’re playing.4. Take your time and have fun with it. You don’t have to start by breaking the bank.RP: That great man, lets get specific. You run a live amp on Sundays, specifically, how do you setup your amp in relation to the rest of the stage?Great question that I know a lot of church musicians deal with. We have our drums on a 36″ platform. My amp fits perfectly under that platform and I put a couple of acoustic pads on either side of the speaker output. We mic it with a Sennheiser 421 dynamic mic. It’s a 22 watt Bugera V22 amp and ut turn it up to about 40% and get a nice tone out of it. I run my pedal board all in series with one output to the amp – no effects loops. Although I’m sure that would be preferable, I go for simplicity. My bass player’s amp and the lead electric player’s amp are both next to them on stage so we are alright with some stage volume from amps. We have also removed the drum shield so our drummer is out in the open. It has been working well like this for about three months.RP: That’s a great way to control sound. As far as your pedal board goes, how did you arrive at a suitable layout for you to control pedals and lead worship at the same time?I have stayed with a medium-sized board, for one. I’ve also arranged my pedals in a way that I don’t have to fish all over the pedalboard during a song. Distortion, overdrive, and boost are across the top and to the right. My chorus is the most out-of-the-way since I don’t use it as much. I put my volume pedal in the middle, which is different than just about any setup I’ve seen. This allows me to get to other pedals easily. I often ride the volume pedal during a song to lead builds and falls in dynamic for the rest of the band. In addition to playing harder or softer, I find that the volume pedal gives me more control and makes my sound guy a much happier person.Another thing I do is to try to set just a couple of overall sounds for any given song. I try not to have too many changes that break my connection with the congregation.I sat in on a guitar session a few weeks ago with Lincoln Brewster, who is perhaps the best out there leading worship with an electric guitar. The thing I learned most is to set just a few tones on your board and let your hands make most of the changes on your guitar. He changed pickups, his tone knob, and volume way more than pedal changes. I’m learning in that direction these days, and I’ve got a long way to go.Read More: Skills of a Worship Leader
Worship Leader: Moving from Acoustic to Electric Guitar
Thanks Robert for taking time out of your busy schedule to talk to me, lets jump right in.
RP: A few years ago you made the jump from leading worship with an acoustic guitar to an electric guitar, how did you arrive at that decision?
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