Author Topic: Effects . . .yet again! (Read 599 times)

jalevinemd · « **Reply #15 on:** October 13, 2005, 07:57:00 AM »

God there'd better be more to it than that! I'm sure if I had the technical know how, I could get everything just right...but I don't and can't. I have 9 pedals on my board. I don't have a band that plays one style of music. I just jam with a couple of guys and we're doing a bit of everything. So I want to have almost any effect I'll ever need. I have quite a bit of noise, so much that even at the low volumes at which I play, I need an MXR noise gate to control it. This monster sucks as much tone as it does my patience. Pete will wire it so that every pedal in the chain will sound as if it's the only one the guitar is going through. He'll design separate inputs to account for the varying outputs of active/passive electronics. The board I want, Pete said, is very straightforward, so I'm hoping we're quite a distance from $10,000. At this point, though, playing is often too frustrating to enjoy entirely. In that respect it's worth it. If we cross the bridge into five figures, maybe I'll rethink things...we haven't discussed price yet.

tom_z · « **Reply #16 on:** October 13, 2005, 08:58:51 AM »

Jonathan - until your Cornish board arrives you might try a multi-effects pedal. I feel a bit silly suggesting this as I'm sure you have considered this possibility.

A good friend of mine, who plays out 5 days a week, uses a Boss multi-effect board. It sounds fantastic with his Fender Twin, and he has lots of versitility in terms of combining effects and saving them as patches. I believe his unit stores up to 30 presets for the different types of music he plays. Also he can shove it into a pocket in his gig bag. I've never noticed any more than the usual noise one would get with a Strat or Tele and the effects sound very good.

There is quite a variety of this kind of board out there for a modest price. Might be worth a try for grins.

Tom

jalevinemd · « **Reply #17 on:** October 13, 2005, 10:19:45 AM »

Tom,

I tried the POD XT. Found it a little tedious to work with unless I used the presets. Things with manuals more than 100 pages require more patience than I have. Plus, some effects just sounded very sterile and processed. Now I use it with headphones to play at work for a few moments here and there or very very late at night. I've spoken to people who swear by the Boss, Digitech and POD multi effects boards. I may give the new POD XT Live a try, if for no other reason than it will be a bit less cumbersome to drag around than my pedalboard. In the hands of someone like myself, the Cornish board is clearly more of a luxury than anything else. But then...so are my Alembics!

kmh364 · « **Reply #18 on:** October 14, 2005, 05:16:55 AM »

Sorry, duplicate post.

(Message edited by kmh364 on October 14, 2005)

kmh364 · « **Reply #19 on:** October 14, 2005, 05:28:31 AM »

Jonathan,

Yup, we're back to the ShopSmith analogy again: anything designed to do multiple tasks doesn't do any one of them particularly well.

While I'm not usually a fan of digital, digital multi effectors have been around for a long time. Like my old Yamaha, most of 'em have some decent effects, but not all of the effects are decent or useful. They all usually add a bunch of noise as well. Despite the Yamaha being digital, it has an awesome distortion, but you can't combine it with anything other than what the factory programmed, and it does add a bunch of noise (plus some digital artifacts as well). I won't even talk about the hassles of real-time effects program switching, either with MIDI or a sequential footswitch. Analogue multi-effects are usually just pedals put in a common case and suffer from tone suck-out and noisiness...and you can't necessarily change their order in the chain. Modeling effectors which are all the rage today are just newfangled digital processors with fancy algorithmns that try to approximate the real deal. Some, like the Vox, have a tube or two in the circuit to try and HiFi' out the sound, but you still have those craptastic digital approximations mucking about with the sound. You know, like equal or splenda trying to approximate sugar, LOL! Close (?), but no cigar, LOL!

I've found that the only way to truly approximate a Marshal stack, for example, is to play thru a Marshall stack. Just as good as usually isn't.

Pete tries to take the best-sounding effects (usually analogue) and make them as noise-free and least harmful to tone as possible. A noble fight...it works for Gilmour and Co...hopefully, it'll work for you as well without breaking the bank.

Good Luck in your quest for the Holy Grail of Tone, I'm envious and, for now, will have to live vicariously thru your efforts. For now, I'll jut have to live with a simple guitar thru a hi-quality cable into a tube amp(s) until I can get my hands on something that sounds good without all the minuses associated with guitar effects.

Cheers,

Kevin

ed_r · « **Reply #20 on:** October 23, 2005, 10:00:21 AM »

The only thing I know about uising effects- guitar or bass or whatever- is that I don't have any idea how to get a good tone from any of them. I have NO taste when it domes to tha tsorta thing, so I'm a bit more of a stickler on the guitar and pickups than the next guy.
If a song needs an effect, I let someone else figure out what , where, when, how, and if I can wangle it, let them do the switching too, because I never did learn to tap-dance, much less tap-dance onto specific switches at specific times. I just don't have the mental capacity.
Gotta keep it simple or my head explodes. That's nasty and a real bitch to clean up, not to mention PAINFUL, so I avoid it whenever possible.

rogertvr · « **Reply #21 on:** October 23, 2005, 11:17:12 AM »

I assume that you don't own any Taurus pedals then Ed? ;-)

ed_r · « **Reply #22 on:** October 23, 2005, 01:56:13 PM »

Well, no, Roger, no Taurus pedals here. I drive a Toyota.

kmh364 · « **Reply #23 on:** October 24, 2005, 05:52:06 AM »

I'm with Ed and Jon:

I have no patience for tweeking, nor am I particularly good at it. When I was young(er), dumb(er) and full of it (LOL!), I used to love to play with knobs. As I've gotten older and lazier, and my patience has waned, I want everything to be plug 'n play. If you need to spend hours twisting knobs and dials, then to me it just isn't worth it.

I know, I know: Bass-wise, I bought an Alembic with EMW electronics and an Eden head! They are both blatant violations against my strict policy of KISS! While they do make a great combo, and sound great, the relative complexity of either makes repeatability of sound very difficult.

Simple isn't the most versatile, but it is much less aggravation in the long run...the less knobs the better!

I'd love to have Gilmour's sound (not to mention his talent, bank account, life, etc. LOL!), but he has the patience of a Saint, an army of techs, and truckloads of money to help him get his sound. Not bloody likely for me in my lifetime.

Cheers,

Kevin

jacko · « **Reply #24 on:** October 25, 2005, 04:26:48 AM »

'but he has the patience of a Saint'

Roger Waters might argue with you on that point LOL ;-)

Graeme

kmh364 · « **Reply #25 on:** October 25, 2005, 06:02:16 AM »

I didn't say he had patience for ole' Rog, just for his sound, LOL! Actually, he probably doesn't have patience for that either...but he can afford to pay others to exhaust their patience in persuit of his sonic whims.

Obviously, David and the other blokes have enough dosh to never have to worry about touring again. Oh yeah, and Rog and Dave probably decided that even if they'd like to add a little more Sterling to the pile, it's not worth dealing with one another's nonsense again, LOL! Pity for us: I'd love to see them for one big 'farewell' blow-out before one or more of 'em goes to the great gig in the sky. I'm probably not alone on that one.

Come on chaps...Ginger, Eric and Jack sucked it up after 37yrs, how's about you guys burying the hatchet (not in each other's back, mind you, LOL!) and give the fans a treat?