“I learned the hard way many years ago that daisy chains arenotreliable!” Serena Cherry shares her pedalboard secrets and admits she’d feel naked without “big, cavernous reverb”

Serena Cherry.

“My pedalboard is very simple now – compared to how it used to be. Its purpose is to create a foolproof atmosphere within my live guitar leads with minimal complications so that things that can go wrong won’t. I used to use a Boss Space Echo [RE-202], a Boss Loop Station [RC-5] and a Boss Digital Delay [DD-7], along with a Boss Digital Reverb [RV-5] and a Boss Reverb [RV-6]. The RV-5 was for modulated reverb; the RV-6 was for shimmer.

“But now I’ve cut my ’board way back to just three pedals, all by Boss: a Chromatic Tuner TU-3, a Reverb and a Digital Delay. These pedals create a glassy reverb tone to drench my guitar leads. I use the Modulate setting on my RV-5, with Level, Tone and Time all set to two-thirds. This creates a cool, atmospheric wash on my trem-picked leads.