My Guitar Pedals-which ones are keepers and which ones should I ditch?

What sound are you looking for? Just looking at it ditch the BOSS OD, they're usually horrible, and the behringer maybe, for a clip on, and downsize the holy grail, if you can, then put your son of hyde on your board.

Listen, you should decide what you want to keep or ditch with your ears. Okay? Don't be a cork sniffer. If that brand new Boss OD3 gets you YOUR sound then keep it. If its lacking and you find yourself twiddlin' the knobs every song? sell her and branch out

look at a guy like the edge who ahs all this fancy shit in an elaborate rack setup with all the midi preset switching... but still uses a plain old sd1, od2 and ts9, no mods.... works for him, why mess with success?

I would say that with a vox night train you might want to use less gain out front and let the amp do more of the heavy lifting in that regard. Particularly the power amp. Play louder.... your amp will help you get the crunch you desire even if its just on the edge of breakup before you engage a drive pedal....for marshalliness I would ditch the fulldrive which is a modded TS9, for something in the bluesbreaker/KOT camp or maybe a jfet/mosfet type thing like the box of rock.... also, sd1 type pedals will have more of a brit rock edge than ts9 type due to a different mid-emphasis and clipping arrangement (otherwise the boss sd1 and Ibanez ts9 are basicall the same pedal). If you like having the TS9 type thing but want more top end cut, consider the cheap and awesome MXR custom badass OD. Wnt more dynamics and adjustable top end crispiness? get a used EHX soul food. cheap stuff to try.

I thought the soul food had a ton of dirt... maybe all your guitars are low output? Even my low output 59 tele copy could get a reputable rhythm crunch from the soul food if I turned the gain up good and set my ac30 up with a clean tone on the edge of distortion... maybe you are a rabid gainiac like most of the young bucks on this site. Less is more, homey, less is more. You want a muscley sound then you don't need gobs of distortion unless you plan to do megadeath covers. Even on leads, less is often more. Its about having a guitar that sustains well already and then getting enough compression going for it to sing, but no more distortion than absolutely needed to get the attack and decay response you're seeking. Keep in mind that you will typically sound way more distorted to the audience than you do to yourself. You are very close to your amp. Plus, if you wind up miced thru the PA then the whole signal chain to get to those PA speaker is adding distortion, makng your sound even crunchier. This is doubly true in the studio as you have both the recording chain and the mix/mastering processing adding bits of harmonic and phase distortion as well as compression (even if none was used in tracking and mixdown it will be used across the mix during the mastering process to optimize the dynamic and bandwidth usage) raising the level of your distorted overtones in relation to the fundamental.

in amps more expensive (in modern stuff) is usually better and the fancier amp is often the keeper, but in pedals? got me???

I have ditched tons of fancy boutiques just like I have ditched tons of mass produced boss, mxr, Ibanez and dod stuff... I recently traded off all my ODs and the one I miss most is the mxr badass modified OD... I bought it 2nd hand in a store for $40, no joke. But it reminds me of my MIJ sd1 with more bass and less self-noise so I all the sudden miss that and kinda miss owning a TS9 too LOL

I don't miss the box of rock, bb pre, fulldrive, distortron, bsiab2, carl martin stuff... they have their good points, but the fancy stuff is very amp dependent and just doesn't seem to play right with an ac30. While it hangs together across the fretboard better than the primitive boss and Ibanez stuff (there are some Pete Thorn videos where he discusses this phenomenon, the upper frets become fuzzy on the wund strings particularly, a reason I eschewed OD and distortion for eyars and just had a dedicated Marshall plexi for heavy drive)and is low noise, there's modern versions of old classics for cheap from mxr/way huge, maxon & dod/digitech and even cheapo brands like mooer.... and the classic designs with minimal mods really sit in a band mix. Boutique crap seems to sound better playing in your bedroom usually. I mostly let my amps do the overdriving so I have trouble keeping hundreds in pedals around. I always sell my dirtboxes. When I liquidated my massive vintage and boutique fuzzbox collection I must have turned $2k in profit over the course of that 2 years of selling stuff off... that's net profit less my original investment in all those fuzzes.

EDIT:

a lot of people really like the boss OD3. Maybe its a keeper and you just need to dicker with it and with your amplifier to get them working together. I only have experience with Boss's OD1 and OD2. I would love to own an OD1 with the quad opamp, but I am too cheap to buy one. Maybe I'll build one. I don't care for the OD2 so much, but other people make it sound okay.

your one thing to worry about with boss, mxr, dod and Ibanez classics is the accumulation of sketchy buffers and the drag on the signal of non-buffered, non-mechanical bypass too... the main thing boutique offers apart from great, low-noise component selection is higher quality buffers in buffer designs like the classic Klon or true mechanical bypass with silent switching like the soft touch lovepedal and fulltone effects.... even with a great hifi buffer you can abely hear working you probably do not want more than 2 in your chain if that.... 1 near the beginning of your chain and one all the way at the end probably in a delay or reverb if you are into that, so the trails will decay after you disengage the effect and also to restore your top end that all that pedalboard cabling will eat (unless degradation is your sound, like Nels Cline)....

I will say one thing for certain, consider getting the same tuner brand and type as your bandmates for extreme consistency between all the stringed isntruments. If everyone else has snark tuners get one of those. If they all have Boss pedals get a TU2 or TU3. In my best band we always did this. Originally with TU2 pedals, then Korg rack tuners when 2 of us ahd racks, then back to the TU2s when the rhythm guy came in and finally we all got true bypass pitchblacks at the end. I swear by my TC polytune because its pretty damn accurate and the poly mode makes it fast to find the offending string between songs and not waste any stage time tuning. I also own a snark. My best friend wears by his snark so I use my snark when we are working on tunes. When I sue the polytune out tuning is not as consistent. Its by tiny degrees but as you go out of tune bit by bit the differences in how you tune and how each different tuner reads that grow cumulatively. Get it?

Box of rock and distortron are more of a jtm45 sound than superlead. Less crunch and bite, more growl. While the bor circuit is bassy as pedals go, setting the tone control to get a crispier top tends to neuter the bass so that if you have a nice, round clean then your od sounds ridiculously thin when seitching midsong unless you use lots of gain and have tons of level jump from clean to dirty. For more of a tweed and early marshall growl the bor works well. The distortron is the same basic circuit w/o the clean boost and with variable input caps that shape the low end. I prefer the distortron actually but its not great thru a vox. Better with a marshall and then why bother? It definitely lacks the huge wallop of odd order harmonics you get from superleads. Have you looked at the bogner blue pedal. I was impressed when i tried it. It also worked equally well with voxes, marshalls, fenders and gies well beyond vintage superlead distortion levels if you want. Reminds me of a perfected carl martin 3 switch plexitone. Way more amplike for sure but with all the crunch and definition.

If you find the fulldrive to be dark then you will also find the zvex drives to be dark.

EDIT: I'm thinkin', and in classic, cheap od/distortion you may enjoy something basic like the dod od250 or ibanez sonic distortion sd9. They are bright and crispy. They take flack from fender anp guys as they do not sound good thru the midscooped blackface preamp. But into a british amp with plenty of gain stages? Great 70s crunch. Depending on how you set your nighttrain's tonestack for cleans/rhythm the basic diode to ground distortion may do it for you. This type of thing is the basis of the ds1, rat, klon and even the ocd though those guys are really refined to fulfill specific tonal roles. The more primitive designs give a wallop of raw crunch that can be really fantastic. There is a reason they have huge followings. Look at the ross distortion. Just a variation of the od250 and mxr distortion+, but its a good flavor tohave and ross has long been out of business so original examples command big bucks because, well, they sound good thru marshalls, laneys, voxes etc...

I did not care for the fulldrive2 mosfet I owned, but the fulldrive3 seems cool, capable of TS9 and SD1 tone with a nice Jfet stage thrown in for good measure to push your OD into distortion turf or to boost your amp. Wow. Why would you need another dirtbox. Maybe you need to use the 'wide assymetrical' clipping mode and leave the tone control wide open? I have not tried one so I can't speak to it, but I find the flatter, brighter SD1 tone schools a TS9 thru a vox. The TS9 is a fender amp thing, really. When I played old blackface amps and strats all the time I swore by my ts9. Now being more of a Gibson and Vox player I prefer the SD1 and similar pedals. Its nice you have a pedal that does both since you have a straight tele and a fat strat with a hot dimarzio. What model dimarzio do you have? I just unloaded some early super distortions, not my thing, but neat pickup for seriously hard rocking....

I haven't had any bad experience with Boss, they just don't have much character,

I used to look for 'character' drives in pedals. The zvex was my last flirtation with this. I realized that I love the character of all my guitars as well as the character of my amps and speakers and just want to add dirt and maybe compression without deafening people. Or myself. Lately my solution is to just play my ac4 turned way up for drive, but since I traded off my drive pedals I've been missing that mxr custom badass od (what a weak name, were they trying to be ironic?). It had a special lead sound it could do with my HC30 ef86 channel.... I thought I wouldn't care but I do.

The 1980 in your name, is it the year you were born?

The fuzz factory is good, but a bit of a one trick pony, I built a diy version. Jim was born in 1980, so he's a bit excited.

1980 represent! I feel like every pedal degrades my tone in ways overloading an amplifier does not, but once in a while the effect I am using will give me more enjoyment that annoyance (until I get bored with the gimmick). That's not just drives. I mean everything. Even getting high end stuff I find that everything I put between the guitar and amp or preamp and power amp screws over the feel if not the tone of my rig. My last 10 years of playing have really been about figuring out ways to have the sound and feel I want and also get effects when needed. For my own part I would just eschew all effects except boost maybe, but in other people's bands playing anything but blues and jazz you need to muster some textures other than badass amp tone.

I am not a huge U2 fan, but the guy who carries this off really well live is the Edge. His rig is outta control though. My toddler really like U2 and we were watching their recent HBO special together last week. I was knocked out by how well he replicates the classic 80s sounds live as well as how good the additions to his rig sound. His non-effects parts that are just clean or distorted rhythm playing sounded fabulous with varying degrees of vintage amp OD, basic pedal drive and a little ambience from reverb or a simple ducking delay if ou strained to hear it. not the kidna thing you expect from Mr Effects himself, but it made me appreciate how well you can incorporate things if you have time, know-how, patience and money. He managed to have some subtle enhancements going on just about every tone without sacrificing the distinct timbre and dynamics of each guitar and amp combination. And it all sat in the mix damned well. Short of that sort fo ingenuity I feel like I could just give up again and stick with my tried and true formula of guitar-> tuner-> maybe a boost-> Vox amp...

I went through the 'amps and effects are cooler than guitars' phase, but I have learned so much about those things and learned what I like in amps so well that its no longer exciting to me unless I am thinking of branching out from my very vintage rock aesthetic. I also don't get a lot of song from new pedals and amps, but every time I get a new guitar, especially something old and/or odd? I start writing again.... there are songs and/or cool new licks locked in every used instrument just waiting for the right set of hands to free them.... this is not true of amps, even something old and amazing like my '62 ac30B. YMMV

I didn't get a chance to read everything so I might end up editing this reaponse later. If I missed anything, please do not hesitate to correct me, I take them well.

OK, so it looks like you're in a similar situation as myself so here's what I have to say on the matter. LESS IS MORE in terms of distortions and such. A Vox as well as perhaps one or two drives should get you there. Having an overdrive and a second dual drive is a bit too much, though, because when it comes to church music, you'll usually end up using a straight (possibly gainy) boost and an overdrive that can push. A stand-alone boost and compression can boost your clean boost to a light drive, and a harder overdrive to even a distortion (the Marshall compressor does this well). I say no to fuzz factory, church music never has any fuzz, and Zvex goes batshit insane wih their pedals which, in your case, isn't good. I hear Box of Rock is very good though.

In terms of modulations, keep it moderate. One pedal for a chorus, one for a tremolo, maybe even a phaser. The Boss phaser sounds less EVH and more... Well, just different, but you still get good sounds.

Delays and reverbs. If I were you, I'd get a Boss RV-3. There will be a lot of tweaking, but it's capable of general reverbs as well as delay-reverb combos that sound very spacey. In honesty, you don't need much if you want a small rig. I have a Pedaltrain 1, though, so I can put on a lot more, really I just like my reverbs and delays.

However, Jim's right. Use your ear, mate. And don't focus so much on trying to sound the greatest because that's not the whole point. You are there to praise God and help the congregation do the same.

Anyways, now I have to read more from this tiny phone. Again, please correct!

Edit: Is your tuner at the end? You using it as a mute? If not, you should put it at the front on bypass (if it does that).

All well said Narcy, but God hates bad tone.... on the up side I have heard God prefers EL84 tubes to all other power tubes, that's why they die so young. So our friend, the OP, is already on The Almighty's good side by playing a 15 watt vox amplifier at church. God also is unimpressed with the Fuzz Factory because its a glorified fuzzface desgned to act like a broken vintage effect and He thinks its overrated. I believe God might be ready to hear some fuzzy leads with character in His bands though. I have heard such things in gspel bands and it was awesome. But those guys have the balls to rpaise God with envelope fitlers, wah wah, flangers... you name it (I briefly filled in as FOH for a HUGE Philadelphia gospel congregation after the congregation member who had previously done the job moved... those guys put on a great show, played wonderfully and the congregation just dove into it with tons of enthusiasm, "you got to PRAIIIISE Him! PRAISE HIM BROTHERS AND SISTERS!" These ladies would have like, SEIZURES while playing tambourine, it was great... made every other church band sound lame and the arrangements were so funky, it was like neo gospel).

just do like a dynamic digital delay set maybe to a dotted eighth note and a tape slapback and you have more ambience then you really need going dry to either/or to both at once. You'll find yourself mostly just putting the tape slap on sandwiched between a little fulltone dirt and your amp's natural breakup. It'll be organic and great for rhythms as well as tasteful licks filling in gaps in the music and transitions (I think, I imagine the music you're playing is arranged a lot like adult contemporary and some country stuff with a little coldplay ad mid-80s U2 thrown in, but with Jesus lyrics instead of stuff about lost love or baring your "sugar shaker" at the "honkey tonk" on Friday... but I could be off base. I haven't been in a church apart from funerals for a decade)...