Quite simply really, since my forages into the digital realm, I
miss buying pedals !
I still look at the £FX every day, and miss the process of buying and selling those alluring little boxes. The excitement, the waiting for the post, the trying and even the flipping...
On top of it all, I miss the
simplicity of it all. The digital realm, as good as it is, is really starting to piss me off a wee bit. The learning curve is so steep, and I'm spending more time delving into that rabbit hole.
The two bits of 'digital' I own are superb; Kemper and the Helix HX. The HX is literally faultless.
The Kemper can produce
any amp sound you want
IF you land the right profiles. My realisation is that I own two brilliant amps - Carr Rambler and Redplate CDS2; why would I want to model them ???????
And sound wise, with the band, I can JUST use the Redplate with its own boost/mids/drive footswitch.
I dunno, maybe it's just because Im 51 tomorrow !!
I just miss buying pedals, and the simplicity of it all
Comments
The effects were decent, but didn't blow my mind. I quite liked the drives.
I am trying to stop myself buying a HX effects because in all honestly, I love the simplicity of a physical pedal. I just react better to tweaking a physical pedal.
Digital is both a blessing and a curse. My experience is more in picture than sound but I'm sure the process is the same. When I started editing film, it was done on a flat-bed Steenbeck machine where you would physically cut the film and stick the edits together with tape. It was a long, slow process that forced you to think very carefully about what the finished product should be. A simple dissolve would be drawn on the film with chinagraph pencil and then sent to a lab where the process would be put into effect. Each dissolve cost money which forced you to think "is it necessary, is it merited".
When digital came along it was fantastic, suddenly you weren't tied to a single narrative and before long you had multiple versions, each with its own possibilities. Nowadays editors will routinely drop a dissolve on a cut to make it work. It doesn't cost anything, there's immediate gratification. All that choice, and dithering, and constantly tweaking to see if it couldn't be that little bit better.
I miss film editing, it forced you to have imagination. And the end result of all this progress? Endless film and tv that looks the same. Any visual invention or new plugin 'look' is immediately jumped on and replicated ad nauseam.
Digital is a blessing, it's opened doors to industries for lots of people who were hitherto excluded as access to the kit was prohibitively expensive and dissemination of the resulting work has never been easier, but the instant gratification it offers has left us in a sea of images and sounds that resolve into a babble.
Not to mention the endless packaging up, taking to the post office, trading emails, checking paypal etc, etc.
and you still get the excitement of a FW update with new virtual toys.
I also look at my board and there are things my Helix cant do. Decent fuzz sound? Nothing on the helix. Dawner Prince Boonar? Nothing on the helix. Eventide H9... not even close. But I am on the whole, not impressed with the effects on the helix.
Then there are the pedals on the helix that have multiple pages of parameters. Sometimes there is a fair amount of scrolling, adjusting, button assign, move in the chain etc.
I do look forward to updates though and I love how easy it makes recording but I think I will always lean towards amp and pedals, and I say that as a lazy sod. It just works better for me.
I also still love my pedals and amps. I have 5 pedals hooked up to helix.
But I think it's just so easy to get caught always searching for something... Pedals seem to lend themselves to this, which ruins the simplicty.
Helix is complex, yet simple if you want
A pedal board is simple yet complex if you want
Endlessly being on a sound merry go round, fun, yes. simple, not so sure. I think it's a different thing.
Are you a gigging pro? On tour, or in a function band? Playing 4 gigs a week to feed your kids?
If so, digital is your man. You get everything you need in a portable package; you can tweak inbetween gigs based on your experience, but you're so busy practicing for that next gig that you never get swallowed by the rabbit hole that is layers and layers of settings menus. You need a unit that works, that is portable and sounds good. Digital.
Are you a 'passion' musician? Do you only gig once a week? Do you love fiddling at home with gear as much as you do playing?
Then you need the old skool! A nice amp, some pedals, a nice guitar. You can fiddle to your hearts content. You can decide how big or small you want your setup. You can buy and sell your gear based on your changing situation. You can dip your toe into digital if you want; or not. Why simplify things when part of the fun is building and tearing down?
Of course, I am massively generalising here; and we are all different. A session musician or studio engineer would be a mix of these two things, for example. Plus you'll get gigging musicians who will gig with a Princeton and a Telecaster, cased in a Mono bag with a Mono tick containing a Pedaltrain Mini sized board with just the essentials; similarly there are folk on here who are perfectly content with digital units and love the simplicity (relatively speaking) it affords them.
We're essentially audiophiles, gear snobs (in the nicest possible way) and I don't think digital is good enough (yet) to live up to the standard that solid state amps and circuits can provide.
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I think for me it's how you respond to digital.
I've found the opposite - I've gone from buying a ton of pedals regularly to actually not missing it at all - I have a bunch of sounds worked out and now I literally plug and play, I spend much longer playing than ever before and more guitar buying than pedals/amps.
It's also much more manageable volume wise.
Once in a while, I feel like a change so spend an hour or so programming a new to me amp, and that scratches that itch (for free!)
Two big steps for me were going FRFR and Fractal, both just fit and respond how I expect/like them to.
I think it's horses for courses too, if I was gigging regularly, playing a single style of music - then maybe I'd go amp and a couple of pedals - but I like a variety of sounds, and honestly the thought of plugging in a lot of pedals again fills me with dread!
I much prefer pedals, but that's because my pedals mostly make weird noises
My problem has been spending too much time buying and not enough time experimenting. I'd still like to buy more but spare money right now is needed to entertain my daughter either by taking her out or buying Lego Legends Of Chima stuff, which is her latest craze.
Because of this I've been able to start exploring a bit more just what some of the more neglected pedals can do - I found some great sounds in my Liqua-Flange the other day and there are some (like the Arpanoid) where I've only found one or two sounds so far, but I know there must be lots more.
I'm sure it would be fun to mess around with something like a Helix, but I doubt I'd spend as much time tinkering as I do with separate pedals.