Dragons! Wizards! Pedals? Whereas a 20-sided cube is usually reserved for fantastical roleplaying adventures, YouTuber Pedal Playhouse, AKA Joan Braga, has injected some D&D magic into pedalboard curation.

Braga’s model new YouTube sequence, Pedal Quest, sees her and two friends, Science of Loud’s Colin Scott and 60 Cycle Hum’s Ryan Burke, embarking on a Dungeons & Dragons-inspired journey. The mission is to create the ‘excellent’ collaborative pedalboard, and the foundations are easy: with every roll of your D20, you have to add a pedal to the board.

The D20 quantity displays a sure class, with Braga splitting pedals into Distortion, Fuzz & Overdrive, Modulation Results, and left-field ‘Wild Magic’ pedal classes… with one such possibility being the Miku Stomp by Korg.

After all, it wouldn’t be Dungeons & Dragons and not using a few penalties and acts of trickery. For instance, should you roll a one, and also you’re doomed so as to add the notorious Boss Metallic Zone MT-2 to your board. There may be additionally a Deception spherical, which permits an opportunity for members of the social gathering to swap out any pedals they’re sad with, or simply modify the final circuit set-up.

Loads of pedals are within the combine, too. Braga’s choice spans from Mad Professor, to Common Audio, to MXR, and extra.

Whereas it’s a enjoyable solution to combine up your pedal constructing course of, it additionally appears like an effective way to only have fun together with your buddies. It’s good to push your self at times – even when it means attempting to miraculously make a ridiculous set-up work. “So we’ve received two reverbs, a delay, and a fuzz now… we’re carried out!!!” Burke jokes halfway by means of the video.

On the finish, each member of the social gathering performs with the pedalboard setup. That’s when the creativity actually comes into play, as Braga and the group attempt to conjure up what sort of D&D character the guitar tone would possibly signify. Maybe it’s a fried, chaotic evil burst of distortion since you rolled a one and have to make use of a Metallic Zone. Or perhaps it’s an otherworldly, god-like tone drowning in tremolo and reverb?

Regardless, Pedal Playhouse has cooked up a enjoyable new strategy to pedalboard constructing. It’s precisely what we’d anticipate from Braga, with the YouTuber emphasising the significance of ‘play’ wherever attainable. “[In my videos], we’re taking a look at a pedal, however actually it’s approaching issues with the curiosity of a kid once more,” she advised us again in 2022.

“The concept, regardless of no matter else is occurring on this planet, there’s this factor with a way of surprise and whimsy, and that something is feasible,” she smiled.

Take a look at the Pedal Playhouse YouTube channel.