Incomingggggg!!!

Drew_TNBD · March 2015

Well... after much deliberation.... I have decided I am *NOT* going to throw my all in with the Fractal FX8. Several reasons really...

1. I don't really like how the company handles themselves.

2. The price of the unit looks like it is going to be really damn high.

3. Even though it doesn't have all of the amp gubbins, it's still massive overkill for my needs.

4. I remember what the Axe FX II was like, and I was forever tweaking and tweaking and not playing any music. Don't really see how the effects side will be any different.

So some people know that I've always been irritated by the noise-floor of digital effects in front of a high-gain amp. I've whinged about it enough! Today I did some tests, and whilst it seems obvious, it never occurred to me before. I used to have the Marshall Satriani JVM which has built in noise-gates, which were brilliant. To date, one of the quietest rigs I've ever had! So I took some inspiration from that; I used my Line 6 M9 with a noise gate at the end of my pedal chain, and I used my Kemper in the VHT Sig X's effects loop, also with a noise gate loaded as an effect. The results were really good. With low thresholds on both gates, I was getting acceptable performance in terms of noise, without cutting off the tails of my reverb and delay pedals - even on the clean channel! It wasn't ruining the dynamics of my playing, and I could still do volume swells without issue too.

So that settled it. I've got two Joyo Noise gates incoming! One for the front of my board, going at the very end of the chain. An always on pedal with a very very low threshold, just low enough to subdue the noise of the pedals. The other to go into my effects loop of my amp, again with a low threshold, just to clamp down a bit extra on the noise of the rig. This I will only have active on the rhythm and lead channels.

The Joyo's are supposed to be decent in terms of noise themselves, and they're supposed to not affect the tone all that much - unlike the Boss NS2. So I'll see how I get on.

Another thing I just bought is the Disaster Area SmartClock pedal. It was quite expensive, but with that.... I can replace my two Boss DD7's with a TC Triple Delay, and I'll have a way around the lack of global tap tempo on that pedal.

The reason I want the Triple Delay is because it has a dedicated expression pedal input, and that was my goal with the Fractal FX8, to get an expression pedal on the go for changing the feedback and mix parameters of the delays on the fly with my foot. So once the SmartClock turns up, I'll then grab the Triple Delay, and functionally I'll have everything that I wanted from the FX8, but without the price tag!

There are some parts of our new songs where I want to do 100% feedback oscillation type stuff, and I can't do that with my Boss pedals because the expression inputs are taken up with an external tap tempo switch. So if I want to experiment more, I'll need to use different pedals. I *might* even add an Alter Ego x4 as well as the Triple Delay, and chain them both so they're constantly clocked together.

£1300 versus £400... no contest really. Plus I can flog the DD7's and make some cash back, so really it's more like £280.

Anyway... blathering on... will let you know how I get on!