MFX design rant - why can't manufacturers get the basics right for gigging?

Drew_TNBD

ICBM said:

Drew_fx said:

I think if you can make the GT-100 do everything you need, then it really isn't that big at all. Smaller than the equivalent singles board you'd need to get everything it does.

I agree, but the most important thing I need is that it must be smaller and more portable than my full-on pedalboard .

The idea of having a multi-FX for me is not to have access to everything all at once - it's to be able to pre-program snapshots of a rig with no more than about 2 or 3 effects available in any one song, but different combinations of those available during the course of a set. So actually the G3 is close to perfect... it does have some annoyances, like not being able to send an emulated signal from the XLR at the same time as a non-emulated one to the 1/4" output, and the tuner engaging the middle effect for half a second before it switches to tuner - and others - and I still don't think it sounds as good as the Boss stuff… but it will do for now.

And thus we answer the OP's question...

Bottom line is... there are many many ideas on what constitutes the perfect workflow and the perfect feature set. Something ticks all my boxes is going to be too big and unweildy most likely for ICBM, but something that ticks his boxes is going to be too limited for my needs. etc... etc... etc...

I had a G3 briefly, and it felt really cheap. It also didn't sound as good, I thought it was quite noisy actually.

Voxman

not_the_dj said:

Voxman said:

Sorry guys I thought I put this in the fx section but obviously hit the guitar section accidentally.

  Edit the first post with the cog icon and you can move it.

Cool! - Done, thanks NTDJ

Cabicular

I'm preparing my flame proof pants but the Line6 M13 is the first one I found to be giggable

Sounds great(I know a lot of people won't agree but it really does sound convincing through a decent amp)

Nameable Banks

Each bank slot has 3 pedals available all are editable through the six knobs which do exactly what they say (i.e. can be operated one handed)

2 EXP pedal slots which can be assigned however you like . I have the left one for more drive\solo volume and the right one for mod speed\depth or delay mix

Total flexibility on how you set up up (i.e. 4 delay pedals in a row? no problem)

Easy to use. Easy to read tuner (although a little sluggish)

Cheap and easy to replace

I have 3

hugbot

M13 checks most of these boxes. Except the tuned which I never vibed with.

Cabicular

ICBM

Drew_fx said:

I had a G3 briefly, and it felt really cheap. It also didn't sound as good, I thought it was quite noisy actually.

It's quite well-made really, but I think I know what you mean. I agree about the noise, but it's actually much quieter than my analogue board! Which matters when going direct, sound engineers don't like very noisy line sources. A noisy analogue board into a fairly noisy valve amp is much less of a problem for some reason.

My irritations are more to do with some of the functionality than the quality - some of which just don't seem to have been thought out well for a gigging musician (like the blast of Big Muff or whatever before the tuner turns on) - although I completely agree we have very different goals. If I wanted a unit to replace my analogue board in a full set-up, I suspect they would be much more similar.

joeyowen

I can't really link up your complaints when I google MFX units... there design seems to be fine to me

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=MFX+units&es_sm=122&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=8gNZVKf1OtT77AbquYCwBg&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAg&biw=1680&bih=925

Bidley

Drew_fx said:

Bottom line is... there are many many ideas on what constitutes the perfect workflow and the perfect feature set. Something ticks all my boxes is going to be too big and unweildy most likely for ICBM, but something that ticks his boxes is going to be too limited for my needs. etc... etc... etc...

I was going to post something similar. You can't please everyone, but it looks like the MFX manufacturers are trying to, so you get a mish-mash of features. If there was a box that did everything everyone wanted, it would be the size of a stage, have about 100 footswitches and a 19" monitor on it :P

monquixote

Bidley said:

Drew_fx said:

Bottom line is... there are many many ideas on what constitutes the perfect workflow and the perfect feature set. Something ticks all my boxes is going to be too big and unweildy most likely for ICBM, but something that ticks his boxes is going to be too limited for my needs. etc... etc... etc...

I was going to post something similar. You can't please everyone, but it looks like the MFX manufacturers are trying to, so you get a mish-mash of features. If there was a box that did everything everyone wanted, it would be the size of a stage, have about 100 footswitches and a 19" monitor on it :P

I don't agree with that. 

I think it's clear that for quite a few people a G3 that did proper patch switching or MIDI would be a solution. 

I think it's more that there is more money to be made from bedroom guitarists than there is from gigging guitarists.

Drew_TNBD

It's also planned obsolescence. They keep us coming back for more and do it on purpose.

steamabacus

monquixote said:

I think it's more that there is more money to be made from bedroom guitarists than there is from gigging guitarists.

I think this is the crux of it. Being of a certain age, when I started out gear was made either for gigging musicians (and quite expensive) or for kids/beginners who aspired to be gigging musicians (and wasn't all that cheap but was pretty crap).

These days,I reckon playing the guitar is more of a 'leisure activity' for the majority of customers. There's probably a hundred times the amount of gear being sold and probably a hundredth of the amount of live gigs being played.

There's loads of really good, cheap guitars, amps, fx these days but how much of it ever gets 'out of the bedroom'?

Bidley

monquixote said:

I think it's clear that for quite a few people a G3 that did proper patch switching or MIDI would be a solution.

I think it's that the G3 was marketed more toward the multi-stompbox thing that the Line 6 M-series was doing, not a proper full-blown all-singing all-dancing unit like a GT-100 type thing. The amp sims are more of an afterthought or bonus, really.

I think by adding "proper" patch switching (by which I assume you mean switching patches at the flick of one footswitch - you can switch patches with the G3) you're adding more footswitches and therefore to the overall size, as well as getting away from the point of the unit. I assume midi would add to the build cost too.

That said, a big unit like the G3 with more bells and whistles would indeed fill a gap for a fair few guitarists. I don't buy the idea that one doesn't exist purely because all multi-fx manufacturers/researchers/designers/whatever are incompetent though.

Voxman

The bigger G3 is the G5 and surely if the G3 is aimed at home players then the G5 should be for gigging players...yet patch/stomp mode switching is pants.

Fuzzdog

monquixote said:

I think it's clear that for quite a few people a G3 that did proper patch switching or MIDI would be a solution. 

The G3 does actually respond to patch changes over MIDI just fine if you have a USB MIDI host controller to do the translating - I have a little Kenton one that I used to use when I first bought a G3 and my rig was a bit more MIDI based, lets you switch to any patch with a single poke of a footswitch (admittedly an external one!) while keeping the G3 in manual mode.  Picked up the Kenton box for £40 second hand, which was well worth it to me for the functionality it added.

A bonus was that the Kenton also supplied up to about 500ma from the USB port, so the G3 ended up being powered by that.

dindude

For me it's got to be knobs. Yet I can't stand knobs not reflect true settings, so until someone can embrace the rotary encoder, I'm out.

http://i1137.photobucket.com/albums/n505/dindude/e23d92c6a9e510b14f6545a42070c543_zps4d253705.jpg

P.s. There are a thousand other reasons why MFX are shit too, but this one will do for now.

monquixote

Fuzzdog said:

monquixote said:

I think it's clear that for quite a few people a G3 that did proper patch switching or MIDI would be a solution. 

The G3 does actually respond to patch changes over MIDI just fine if you have a USB MIDI host controller to do the translating - I have a little Kenton one that I used to use when I first bought a G3 and my rig was a bit more MIDI based, lets you switch to any patch with a single poke of a footswitch (admittedly an external one!) while keeping the G3 in manual mode.  Picked up the Kenton box for £40 second hand, which was well worth it to me for the functionality it added.

A bonus was that the Kenton also supplied up to about 500ma from the USB port, so the G3 ended up being powered by that.

That's what's doubly frustrating that they could have had a MIDI in, in place of the XLR output which is handy, but not essential. 

monquixote

Bidley said:

monquixote said:

I think it's clear that for quite a few people a G3 that did proper patch switching or MIDI would be a solution. 

I think by adding "proper" patch switching (by which I assume you mean switching patches at the flick of one footswitch - you can switch patches with the G3) you're adding more footswitches and therefore to the overall size, as well as getting away from the point of the unit. I assume midi would add to the build cost too.

That's the dumb thing, they just need a mode where button 1 switches to patch one etc. They could do it with a firmware update. Hardware changes at all. 

Also with MIDI it's already implemented it just doesn't have a bloody socket on it!

ICBM

monquixote said:

That's what's doubly frustrating that they could have had a MIDI in, in place of the XLR output which is handy, but not essential. 

What I like about the XLR is that it can be set to DI the clean guitar sound, while you use FX and amp simulator on the 1/4" output - even though that's probably into another DI box, but it could be a real amp… I like that DI/amp blend.

I know I do have a slightly unusual set of requirements though.

What I don't like about it is that it can't be set to an emulated output while the 1/4" is set to un-emulated, so you can't use it to split an electric-type sound into an amp and the PA at the same time.

I have no interest in MIDI or in patch changing on the fly.

So really, Drew is right that we all have such different needs that it's very hard for any manufacturer to get it really right - although offering global options on some sort of menu would go a long way.

monquixote

The lack of MIDI is understandable and I can see the XLR being equally useful for some people.

It's plain daft on the G5 though where there is plenty of room. 

Voxman

Asteamabacus said:

monquixote said:

I think it's more that there is more money to be made from bedroom guitarists than there is from gigging guitarists.

I think this is the crux of it. Being of a certain age, when I started out gear was made either for gigging musicians (and quite expensive) or for kids/beginners who aspired to be gigging musicians (and wasn't all that cheap but was pretty crap).

These days,I reckon playing the guitar is more of a 'leisure activity' for the majority of customers. There's probably a hundred times the amount of gear being sold and probably a hundredth of the amount of live gigs being played.

There's loads of really good, cheap guitars, amps, fx these days but how much of it ever gets 'out of the bedroom'?

  Interesting observation - and your thoughts do seem to be borne out by manufacturer's approach prompting my OP.  We seem to have gone from the sublime to the ridiculous in that (just as you pointed out) when I first started playing the choice of gear for beginners/home players was small, with most gear being specifically designed for gigging players.  Nowadays, a lot of gear seems to be aimed at the bedroom player with lots of flashing lights, bells & whistles that don't fit gigging players.  Don't get me wrong, when I first started I'd have killed for the choice and low cost of amps, guitars and FX and particularly the high quality of even todays lower-end guitars that tower above what was available then.  

But conversely today we now live in a disposable, silicon chip era where a lot of gear is made to budget quality, mass produced, with a short shelf life built in, because something newer and more spangly is always round the corner.  Its the price we pay for 'progress' I suppose.  Yet ironically the old stuff made to high quality, robustly made and arguably (by todays standards) over-engineered, is what we crave for today, eg an original TS808 tubescreamer or Roland CE1 chorus. Yet with all our advances manufacturers still struggle to capture the essence of these old units. Ah well.