Multi fx units vs stompboxes...FIGHT

mike_l

I prefer the flexability of single stompies. You can take your pick of which drive/flange/delay etc you want for a specific task/sound.

If you want to flip between (EG) a clean lightly chorused and delayed sound, to a heavily driven, phased sound then there is a few switcher options around, allowing this without tap-dancing on your board.

Multi's have a place, specifically if you can use them, and their presets.

vasselmeyer

The multi-fx verseus single stomps quandry is actually addressed very well by the Line 6 M13 which is a stompbox modeller. You cam set up four effects in a chain and switch any of them in or out for another two choices. Whatever is selected you can change it on the fly just like a pedal and it rememebr the settings. I've used one for the past two years and it's done OK for me.

However, the drives are hard to dial in and only a few models sound at all comparable with analogue pedals. There are decent models of the Rat, the Chandler Tube Driver and the MXR Micro Amp. The mods and verbs on it are excellent however and the flexibility of the whole unit is really well done, particularly the ability to change any pedal's parameter with one of two optional expression pedals and the capability of positioning loop anywhere in the effects chain so you an insert your own effects or us the 4CM. I've never used the midi functionality other than to back my patches up so I can't comment to that but I know that @Drew_fx finds it severely restricting.

It's a great unit but it looks as if Line 6 have decided to forget about it and there'll never be any more updates for it. I'm currently slowly building up a looper/switched-based pedal board with the drives from separate pedals and the mods from a Zoom G3. I'd be happy to use the M13 for those but it'd just take up too much floor space with another full pedalboard.

relic245

Ha, this is my eternal struggle.

Over the last few years I've had:

Several pedal boards

3 x nova systems.

hd500

G3

some digitech thing

M9

M13

M5 x 2

I've finally think I have the answer. I've just bought a Gt10 from classifieds and this time I'm keeping the pedal board intact. That way if I want max tone I take that, if I want flexibility I take the gt10. simples.

PolarityMan

Axe_meister said:

I love the g-system.
Best of both worlds. My first two banks are setup with the basic drive and clean settings. I've programmed each path with a generic fx setup, e.g simple chorus a delay and some reverb. These however are switched off so I can stomp on the button to bring them online, much like a pedal board, tweaking is fairly easy.
Then further up the banks I have song specific patches.

Its always interesting to hear how people lay things out, I find that sort of alyoung a bit tricky as it would mean doing a lot of scrolling in our songs. Therefore I basically have

bank 1: General use bank

This contains from left to right clean up to full on distortion and set the template for my other banks

1: Clean, no effects, switchable delay

2: CLean, delay and chorus, switchable to really prominent delay

3. Crunch, switchable for delay

4. Distortion, switchable with delay (non tap tempo) and EQ boost

When I create a new bank this bank is used as the template and I switch specific patches out. So almost all my banks have patch 4 set exactly the same because it is my most often used sound. A bank then typically covers a group of songs. So 

bank 2:

1. Synth noise

2. Clean with flange and delay

3. Crunch with switchable delay

4. Distortion with siwthcable delay and EQ boost

bank 3:

1. Clean with reverb (switchable dealy)

2. Clean with delay and chorus (switchable to really prominent delay)

3. Clean with "slicer" and delay

4.) Distortion with switchable delay and EQ boost

My wah is offboard so I get wah with any of those patches and this covers me for all my songs, at most I only ever need to switch one bank away and normally when I notice myself switching banks more than once or twice in a song it prompts me to create a new bank.

Drew_TNBD

vasselmeyer;160693" said:

I know that @Drew_fx finds it severely restricting.

Hmm, not restricting necessarily. But the unit is so latent, that when you hit the switch the midi only gets transmitted afterwards. So you can't be as tight in a live situation with it as you can with a regular amp footswitch - meaning switching your amp from midi is not ideal with the M13. The only other thing I'd like apart from a fix to this, is the ability to prevent a scene from sending a program change - sometimes you just want to change the FX, and not the amp channel.

It's a great unit but it looks as if Line 6 have decided to forget about it and there'll never be any more updates for it.

Certainly is looking that way, yes.

PolarityMan

Drew_fx said:

vasselmeyer;160693" said:

I know that @Drew_fx finds it severely restricting.

Hmm, not restricting necessarily. But the unit is so latent, that when you hit the switch the midi only gets transmitted afterwards. So you can't be as tight in a live situation with it as you can with a regular amp footswitch - meaning switching your amp from midi is not ideal with the M13. 

Course if your amp has switching latency anyway.....

ewal

DarnWeight said:

RE: Zoom G3

I got one of these to fill the mods/delays/verbs/fruities gap alongside individual dirts etc., and yes, it'll do this, and yes, a lot of the individual fx are rather good as standalone models....but, I've had a bit of an epiphany over the weekend.  Stacking multiple delays and verbs (paying close attention to mix and repeat levels) is yielding some really nice lush ambient tones.  I guess I've been overlooking this "modular" aspect of the G3, but I have to say, I'm pretty amazed with the sounds I'm coaxing out of it now.

I'm interested in playing about with this aspect of my G3, also combining it with an expression or volume pedal. Any examples of delay and verbs stacks that have worked for you?

DarnWeight

ewal said:

DarnWeight said:

RE: Zoom G3

I got one of these to fill the mods/delays/verbs/fruities gap alongside individual dirts etc., and yes, it'll do this, and yes, a lot of the individual fx are rather good as standalone models....but, I've had a bit of an epiphany over the weekend.  Stacking multiple delays and verbs (paying close attention to mix and repeat levels) is yielding some really nice lush ambient tones.  I guess I've been overlooking this "modular" aspect of the G3, but I have to say, I'm pretty amazed with the sounds I'm coaxing out of it now.

I'm interested in playing about with this aspect of my G3, also combining it with an expression or volume pedal. Any examples of delay and verbs stacks that have worked for you?

I'll check properly later on, but I pretty much followed the basic recipe I got from this guy who posts on youtube...he's got one series of vids called "Ambient Guitar Tips".  General gist was keep the delays darker and shorter to start with, getting longer and a little brighter further through the chain...keep the mix low and the repeats/feedback jacked up high...whack a reverb towards the end, maybe.  I think I used Analog Delay > Tape Echo > HD Reverb, and that sounded pretty good.  Adding an octave up Pitch Shift very low in the mix between the two delays sounded nice too...gave it a bit of a shimmer-style flavour without getting too "chirpy".

ewal

Interesting - I'll have another look through Andy Othling's vids later on. The Analog Delay, Tape Echo and HD Reverb effects are the ones that I've mostly been playing about with, so I think we're thinking along similar lines. Using Pitch Shift for Shimmer effect is something I'd tried after watching another guy on YouTube, although I wasn't overly convinced by the result.

The G3 is good, but I'm not sure if it's good enough to stop me from hankering after a dedicated delay and/or reverb pedal or two:) I also miss having some self-oscillation potential on my board, which is a bit stupid really because it's not exactly something anyone uses on a regular basis.

ICBM

ewal said:

The G3 is good, but I'm not sure if it's good enough to stop me from hankering after a dedicated delay and/or reverb pedal or two:) I also miss having some self-oscillation potential on my board, which is a bit stupid really because it's not exactly something anyone uses on a regular basis.

I did . There was a song we played in my old band which had a self-oscillation solo played on my Boss DM-2. I would start off by hitting a D note, rolling the guitar off and actually playing sort-of notes on the repeat rate knob by knowing how far to turn it... most entertaining!

Haven't been that band for nearly seven years now though .

DarnWeight

ewal said:

Interesting - I'll have another look through Andy Othling's vids later on. The Analog Delay, Tape Echo and HD Reverb effects are the ones that I've mostly been playing about with, so I think we're thinking along similar lines. Using Pitch Shift for Shimmer effect is something I'd tried after watching another guy on YouTube, although I wasn't overly convinced by the result.

The G3 is good, but I'm not sure if it's good enough to stop me from hankering after a dedicated delay and/or reverb pedal or two:) I also miss having some self-oscillation potential on my board, which is a bit stupid really because it's not exactly something anyone uses on a regular basis.

Yeah, think he was using the Pitch Delay, which sounds a bit "meh" to me (plus you can't use tap tempo with it).  I used Pitch Shift with the mix set really low (like in the 5-10 range), and then it seems to sit behind what you're playing quite nicely.  A Mod Delay works nicely too, with the Mod Rate set in the 10-20 range, and fairly low in the mix (25-35 range).

Totally with you on having another dedicated delay/verb option...I've just bought a Catalinbread Echorec from another forum member (it's sat at the post office depot at the moment), so I'll most likely be using the G3 to supplement/complement that, depending on how I get on with it.

Clarky

mike_l said:

I prefer the flexability of single stompies. You can take your pick of which drive/flange/delay etc you want for a specific task/sound.

If you want to flip between (EG) a clean lightly chorused and delayed sound, to a heavily driven, phased sound then there is a few switcher options around, allowing this without tap-dancing on your board.

Multi's have a place, specifically if you can use them, and their presets.

ya see…… I don't understand this…

cos the better multi-fx units allow you to do both..

as in, call up presets, and have the ability to switch individual fx on / off within the preset

so you get the best of both..

for example:

in the Axe I have one particular preset I use for a Civilians song called Soldier for your Blues

scene 5 of this preset is a clean tone with a long reverb and a phaser which I use for the middle-8

however, at the intro of the song I play some clean Floyd-ish licks so I want the clean tone with the long reverb and no phaser..

so… before the song, I call up the preset on scene 5, hit an IA switch that mutes the phaser and play the intro

I work through the rest of the song in scene 3 [the clean funk tone]..

then when I get to the mid-8 I hit scene 5.. which calls up the clean tone with a long reverb and a phaser..

job done.. all nice and one touch..

I love scenes in the Axe… they are mega..

mike_l

@Clarky ; I understand where you're coming from, what I was trying to say (ok badly) is with stompies you can use an MXR phaser*, a Boss Flanger* and a EHX Chorus*.

A Switcher does help with going from one sound to another wothout tap dancing, effectively giving a "multi-F/X" with individual flavours for the specific sounds.

* for example

Clarky

ahh gotchya..

let's say you specifically wanted an MXR and the multi-fx didn't have anything like…

there's nothing stopping you from popping it in the FX loop

something the Axe does quite well is the FX side of things..

it has configs you can call up that sound like specific stomps

and of course you can goof with these to make your own custom versions based on that specific model

so you can make individual fx sound like a lot of specific stomps.. and make your own

Flanging_Fred

I'm mostly a pedal person but I do have to mention my old Yamaha DG stomp. Positively Jurassic by modern standards but in many ways that's why I like it. It can be set to manual mode so one switch = reverb, 1 for delay & 1 for modulation + tap tempo.

There's really limited options for each section but they sound decent to me. The Leslie especially is worth the money alone, with independant controls for the rotors.

Solidly built, defeatable amp & speaker sims has real knobs & is cheap s/h!

frankus

By multi-fx I guess we mean processor based ... I've got an ME-50 (which I've gutted after it broke and stuffed with veroboard, resistors,capacitors,diodes,transistors and chips...

My issues with processor based pedals are:

Latency - the more effects the more time is spent processing the sound - fine if you've got delay but not otherwise - a good musician may cope with that but I play for enjoyment and I like response times of pedals. Let's be clear I'm not saying I play fast I just like immediacy.

Diversity - I love all the different shapes and sizes ... the folklore - can you imagine someone getting outed for reusing someone elses patch for their clean boost pedal? Do you know what my posh board really needs? A dash of yellow

Serendipity - one day you put the jacks in a wah pedal the wrong way around and get a police siren... or push one drive pedal into another and find an odd interaction... or find most of the characteristics of the Zendrive disapear when there's a squishy compressor in front of it... I love discovering those things.

Sacrifice and Limitation - I love my new Tortuga Martini chorus and I love my Fulltone CF-1 ... they take up a lot of board space - Good! That is how much I love them. Do I have my phaser before the drives or after the drives? I could have some sort of A/B or I could suck it up and get on with it... in front of the drives

Obsessive Compulsion - cable management, I loves it.

I've a Linn III and apart from the beat synched effects most of the times I'm trying to recreate sounds off the posh board

Where multi-fx win out is with gigging musicians - the amount of times Guthrie's pedalboard (or sometimes just pedals) have been nicked... at least with software he can simply reload it, whereas his go to auto-wah was discontinued and one of his favourite chorus pedals the H2O.

Then there's the variety of effects that can be carried in a tiny space..

But mostly multi-fx suck ass

mike_l

Clarky said:

ahh gotchya..

let's say you specifically wanted an MXR and the multi-fx didn't have anything like…

there's nothing stopping you from popping it in the FX loop

 

I should say, I've not tried anything like an AxeFX, I have tried a Zoom G3 and Line6 M5. Although the F/X patches sounded good (I'm not debating that) the models of the Phase 90* didn't sound quite right. There was something, and I can't put my finger on it, that wasn't quite right.

*as an example, and compared to both a script and block logo P90, with the same settings.

ICBM

frankus said:

... I've got an ME-50 (which I've gutted after it broke ...)

That's interesting. I've come across three dead ones of these so far, and yours makes four. OK, it's not a *huge* number, but I think it's four times the number of dead ones of any other Boss multi-FX model I've seen... and they're not that old.

That would begin to make me think there's a quality issue with them. What was the symptom - lights on and no sound? All the ones I've seen have been.

John_P

Flanging_Fred said:

I'm mostly a pedal person but I do have to mention my old Yamaha DG stomp. Positively Jurassic by modern standards but in many ways that's why I like it. It can be set to manual mode so one switch = reverb, 1 for delay & 1 for modulation + tap tempo.

There's really limited options for each section but they sound decent to me. The Leslie especially is worth the money alone, with independant controls for the rotors.

Solidly built, defeatable amp & speaker sims has real knobs & is cheap s/h!

+1   I use mine on my rehearsal/back up board - although I usually use mine in patch mode. Sounds fanastic - it has the quick tweaking with a knob for every parameter but I can save a bank of patches matched to whatever amp I want to use... great little box