Pedalboard advice please

NelsonP

Am thinking about building a small pedal board to run alongside an atomic amplifire, the idea being that I enhance the built in effects with some external pedals.

Am thinking pedaltrain nano+ with:

Before input:
EHX pitchfork
EP booster
EHX Soul Food or OCD

In loop (before cab block)
TC Hall of fame 2
Boss RC3 looper

Powered by a truetone 1 spot with daisy chain.

I'm also thinking I may add a patch bay (4 gang?) to make setup easy.

Any advice on my choices?

Winny_Pooh

Get a better overdrive?

revsorg

I'm interested to know where your signal goes after it leaves all the pedals?

NelsonP

Guitar>pitchfork>ep booster>soul food>amplifire input>amplifire send>tc hof2>boss rc3>amplifire return.

Amplifire effects loop in position 5, i.e. after internal amplifire fx.

Probably.

revsorg

...and then where does your signal go when it leaves the Amplifire?  I'm just trying to understand the whole picture - are you plugging headphones into the Amplifire, are you gigging with a FRFR setup?  Running it into a guitar amp or two?

NelsonP

Amplifire output to either headphones or an FRFR, or straight into the PA.

Nearly always mono. Unless I particularly want to piss off my mates who I jam with.

Headphones used only when i have to.

NelsonP

Quick bump for any kind folks out there who can offer some free advice (keep it clean ;-))

Fuengi

Digitech Obscura over a HoF for me any day. 

Alnico

Fuengi said:

Digitech Obscura over a HoF for me any day. 

The Obscura and the Polara Reverb together are really good.

If you can find one, a Keeley ME-8 Multi Echo is one of the most amazing compact delay/reverb pedals I've ever had. I bought mine new a couple of years ago for £199 and sold it for around £120 I think ...
If you find one used and can stretch to it I highly recommend it. There are 5 different delay types with some extra features like the Obscura has but the thing that makes this special is the Abbey Chamber Reverb. It's the Phil Spektor sound with distortion applied to the reverb to simulate a crowded room. It's amazing, just amazing.
There are 3 reverbs in total giving the pedal * different effects. It's really simple to control and really quick to get the sound I wanted from it each time.

Hands down, for a compact board this is *the* space saving, really good quality, swiss army knife for delay and reverb.

It's a *little* more expensive used than a HoF is brand new, I'll give you that but that little bit extra spend buys you so much more bang for buck.

If I hadn't just got a Helix FX this would be on my "Get that one again" list without a doubt.

TheMarlin

EHX Ocean 11 over the HOF 2. 
MXR M300 reverb is the bees knees. 

vasselmeyer

You could think about a Line 6 M5 or a Zoom Multistomp for reverb. They verbs are pretty good and you can get a load of other effects in the same box; one at a time with the Line 6 and up to six at a time with the Zoom.

Maybe it's just me, but I can't really hear the "quality" of a reverb between something built-in or multipurpose versus a dedicated unit. Perhaps it's because I predominantly play live and when you're kicking out those kind of decibels, it's hard to hear anything other then whether reverb is on or off.

NelsonP

The Amplifire actually has some pretty decent reverbs in it. But they only cover the basics - plate, room, spring, cavern.
The attraction of the HOF2 is therefore the toneprint and MASH capabilities which gives a lot more flexibility.

Amplifire also has a pitch block so for now the pitchfork is on hold. The tracking on the Amplifire pitch block is OK, rather than brilliant, especially on chords, but there are lots of options with dry mix and 2 pitch voices that are adjustable +/- 2 octaves and for mix. Does anyone know how good the tracking on the pitchfork is? It would need to be noticeably better for the pitchfork to earn its place on the board.

I'm going to take a proper look at a Zoom multistomp, but in general I think I need external pedals that do one thing very well, rather than many things pretty well (the Amplifire internal effects already play that role).

I'm now struggling to get my head around the signal path. I want to be able to put the drives / boosts before the amp and the reverb and looper at the end of the chain. Amplifire has one loop, but you can alter the position of it in the signal chain.

I think this means putting the drives and boosts before the input and the reverb and looper between the amp and cab block (there is no option to add them after the cab block and I don't think they would handle the line level outputs from the Amplifire well).