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I've decided to abandon my recently purchased Boss GX100.
I have the impression that there is to much "distance" between what my fingers do, and the sound coming out.
I just doesn't feel natural to me. Is it the digital part or some kind of latency, I don't know.
Wondering if other players here have a similar experience?
So I was thinking about buying the new empress eq to shape the sound a little.
Good idea?
The only other thing (pedal) I'd like is to be able to play louder for soloing (an on and off thing).
What's possible here?
Maybe the boost function on the empress is good enough?
I'd like to hear your thoughts, also from people with good experience with sound on multi FX.
Greetings from Belgium and a happy new year for all!
Stefaan
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01-02-2023 07:06 AM
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The first pedal I bought was a Behringer Multi-FX just to see if I liked effects. It turned out I did, but I almost never use this one anymore. I have an equalizer and it can be quite useful. For adjusting volume, I find the Electro-Harmonix Signal Pad very useful. Alternatively, you can use a volume pedal but I use the Signal Pad, or two of them, if I'm playing through two amps, more often. Very often, in fact.
I tend to prefer single-purpose effects and probably wouldn't buy a multi-effect again. For on-off, you can set a volume and use the button on the Signal Pad. If it's off, it goes back to the volume you would have without the pedal. You can use it to switch off by setting the knob to 0. If I wanted this, though, I would just use a separate switch, like an AB/Y.
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I should say, I have the Signal Pad or Pads on a table in front of me. If I was playing somewhere else, I'd have to have them accessible to my hands somehow, if I want to be able to adjust the volume. It's really intended to be used as a floor pedal. You set a volume and switch between that and the volume of the system without the pedal. This wouldn't work for me. It's really intended to lower the volume, so you set the system volume fairly high. It's not a power booster. I just leave it on and use the knob to adjust the volume. My neighbours wouldn't thank me for turning it off.
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Thank you for suggesting the EHX signal pad, I'll check it out.
Stefaan
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I've used an ART FXR for many years .. rack mount 256 effects , stereo ..
While all that is fine , I found over time I just use it for the reverb.
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I currently don't have any multi FX, but when I use one it's sparingly, just for a slapback delay, compressor for a solo boost w/ sustain, and the tuner function inbetween tunes. Try turning off everything (EQ, amp models, etc) then try single FX one at a time, see if that feels better w/ your Boss unit.
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I too am very interested in that Empress EQ, I have their new compressor and it's great, also useful for boosting if needed.
I'm not too into the digital multifex thing either, and I'm not too interested in having a digital AD-DA in my main signal path. In addition, some of the newer digital effect pedals have superior analog-through characteristics. The Keely Halo for delays is one.
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I had enough credits at MF to buy a Boss MS60B pedal. I wanted it because it’s a preamp and has a stereo chorus driven by a mono input. The onboard tuner is also nice. But I checked out several of the effects and discovered that I have no use for all but a very few.
The stereo chorus works very well if you keep it subtle. For ballads, it really fills out the sound through two decent amps. Vocalists love it, and I’ve gotten many compliments from audience members about it. But with even one more effect added to the chain, it starts to sound artificial.
The other problem with it is that the unbalanced I/O and long lines connecting it to a pair of amps pick up noise (especially RFI) that’s not there with a 10’ guitar cable in and out to one amp. So I only use the stereo chorus on a few select tunes. But it’s pretty good as a clean jazz preamp with a low impact effect like compressor set for little or no action with its output high. Used like this, it’s also a mild and clean OD into a standard guitar amp that has an input stage you can overdrive - it’s even sensitive to guitar volume pot and picking force.
The red MS60 is marketed as a “bass pedal”, but it’s the same electronically as the physically identical but silver 50 that’s sold for guitars. You can update the firmware on either and get the effects from the other version. I got the bass version because the guitar pedal was backordered. It’s a solid ME pedal and great value compared to the fancier ones. But it’s hard to set and adjust on stage, so you have to set it up beforehand and use only your presets unless you can interrupt your set or show to futz around with your pedal.
Every time I try a ME device, I end up selling it, starting with the original Zoom 9002 in about 1990. For those who don’t know it, this was the granddaddy of them all. You threaded it onto your strap or your belt, so adjusting on the fly was very difficult. But it revolutionized the world of rockers and found use in a lot of commercial music.
The MS60 pedal is a keeper, but not for its ME ability (which I will not use).
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I have used the Boss ME50, ME70 and now ME80.
Mostly, I use it as a tuner, volume pedal and reverb device. But, I do have several sounds programmed in that I like -- and those sounds use the harmonist, preamp models, EQ and overdrive.
But, the reason I'm posting is about the stereo chorus 2. The ME50 had it and then Boss dropped it. The ME70 and ME80 don't have it.
As I recall, the ME50 generated a wet signal for one amp and a dry for the other. The chorus effect took place in the room, not in the electronics.
So, I'd position myself between the two amps and think it sounded great.
What I found out later is that it actually made the guitar sound out of tune - badly - in parts of the room. Chorus involves a comb filter, or something, and, apparently, the frequency deviation can be reinforced here and there. I apologize for that feeble attempt to describe the physics.
I've never heard Boss's explanation for dropping the effect, but this might be why.
I'm wondering if the stereo chorus on the MS60 works differently to avoid that problem?
One other point. The manual for the ME80 says that Chorus and Rotary are stereo effects, but I can't hear itLast edited by rpjazzguitar; 01-02-2023 at 05:56 PM.
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The further one gets away from a good guitar plugged into a quality amp, the less interested I become in hearing it. A little reverb (which replicates a natural occurrence) and a little overdrive if you must, which is also a natural phenomena but at a lower volume, is really all I care to hear. Imho the cleaner the sound, the more true this is. I've never really understood guitarists fascinating with making their guitars not sound like a guitar. Pianist's, saxophone, violin, woodwinds and drummers all play instruments that sound like their instrument, but guitarists use devices that make a pick grating along a wound strings to sound like a jet plane, out of phase, detuned chorus, wha, compression, tremolo and on and on. I find for myself that as soon as I can identify an "effect" I lose interest, or perhaps enthusiasm in what said guitar is "saying".
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Well, you're certainly entitled to your point of view. I play the trumpet and I have a bunch of mutes that I stick into it to make different sounds. There are also different kinds of keyboard instruments, acoustic and electronic, which you can use to make different sounds. Church and theater organs have pipes numbering into the thousands just to get different kinds of sounds. I love all the different sounds you can make with all kinds of instruments. That's a big part of why I became interested in arranging.
After many years of not having an electric guitar, I bought one, maybe a year ago or so. It's a very inexpensive solid-body, but I'm very happy with it. One of the reasons I bought it was because I thought I might want to experiment with effects. An idea I had was to get effects that performed the typical functions associated with synthesizers: filters, ring modulators, envelope generators, delays, etc. In the meantime I've done this. I'm not entirely sure what to do with them, though. Still working on this.
I recently bought an electric, hollow-body twelve-string. With the solid-body, what you get is basically a signal. It's more complex than what you would get from an oscillator or a couple of oscillators, and doesn't have the sterile sound of a synthesizer, but otherwise it's a pretty neutral sound. The twelve-string, on the other hand, has a sound of its own and I don't feel that it benefits from being manipulated electronically. I might well feel the same way about an archtop.
I do have a couple of pedals that make playing the guitar like playing a different instrument with different characteristics. One is the Electro Harmonix Ravish sitar emulator. Another is the Electro Harmonix C9 organ simulator. They don't make playing the guitar like playing a sitar or an electric organ, that's not what I mean. I mean they have a totally different sound than a guitar and the things that sound good with them are different from the things that normally sound good on the guitar. It's very interesting and gives one a different perspective. One has to play in a different way. They also sound great.
Another very nice pedal that I always have plugged in is the sustain pedal from EHX. It's like the sustain pedal on the piano, just not shaped like one. A simple idea but I don't know of any other manufacturer that sells one.
It may not be your cup of tea, but there can be a musical purpose to using effects.
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Hello folks. I am curious about gitarklas' original comment about feeling as though there was too much space between when he played the note and when the sound came out the amp. This sounds like latency, as was said.
Has anyone experienced the phenomenon that he is referring to with their effect unit. I can say I have noticed this much with the few multi-effects units I have played. That GT-100 is over $500.00 on Amazon. I would hate to excessive latency after paying that kind of money.
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My FX consists of a Boss GT-1000Core and the RC-500 looper. Between the two, I am covered for whatever. These two pieces each have the same cabinet but in different colors. They sit side by side and take up very little room, especially for their combined capabilities.
I also have the original Empress Para-EQ that I can use for my acoustic guitars. I like the layout of it better than the pictures I have seen of the new one. It seems Empress is trying to pack it into a smaller and/or different form factor.
All that said, I really don't care to plug in at all. I have always preferred quieter music, and much prefer a pure acoustic sound over anything plugged in. That probably seems weird these days when everything is supposed to be amplified and loud. That is just not me. I have these effects for when the situation comes up to play out where people expect it amplified and loud.
Tony
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I have tons of effects but I never play loud. If I did, my neighbours would object, but I wouldn't play really loud, anyway. There's no inevitable connection between effects and volume. I use effects to make different kinds of sounds and to experiment.
Originally Posted by tbeltrans
The instrument I play the most is still the one I've had the longest, my classical guitar. That's the meat and potatoes. Effects with an electric guitar are the gravy. I love gravy, but I don't ever eat a whole dish of it by itself.
This is a jazz site, and, in my opinion, jazz doesn't generally require effects. The substance is in the music. If you add effects, then you've got too much complexity. Generally speaking, if you want to add something, like weird sounds, you've got to take something away somewhere else, otherwise the music gets overloaded and isn't enjoyable to listen to. Just my opinion.
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Yes, of course. There are some effects, like filters and overdrive, that are not subject to latency. On the other hand, there are other effects that must recognize the signal and then perform some operation on it, like a chorus unit. Any effect that does this is subject to latency. You can measure it and compare the latency with units of different manufacturers, but whether it's excessive or not is subjective. I'm pretty tolerant of latency. I have a couple of pedals where it's noticeable, but it doesn't bother me. There's always a cost involved; if I want that sound, I have to accept what it takes to create it. Originally Posted by AlsoRan
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Except that most analog pedals don't digitize the signal, and pass through the united straight sound with no conversion or latency. They do this with varying degrees of quality, some pedals allow the main signal to be almost completely uncolored. That's one of the criteria I use in choosing a pedal. Chorus units involve a small bit of delay so latency isn't an issue if the whole signal isn't converted. So yes, there is some cost involved in using these gizmos, the trick is to minimize them. Originally Posted by Laurence Finston
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I just checked my copy of Guitar Gadgets, by Craig Anderton. It's very up-to-date, it contains a floppy vinyl record at the front the size of a 45 but intended to be played at 33 1/3 rpm. It's from 1983 and it covers digital pedals but they were only just getting started at that time. I must have bought it around 1987.
He classifies chorus units among the "Time Shifting Effects" and discusses them in the section "Solid-State Delay Lines". So, I believe that there must be some latency. However, I read this book a long time ago and this chapter is fairly involved and I didn't find a concise explanation of what I wanted to know quickly. I'll probably read the whole book again in the fullness of time.
I have another EHX pedal, namely the "Intelligent Harmony Machine" which is a pitch shifter which will give you diatonic harmonies. For example, in C maj., if you play a C, it will add an E (the maj. 3rd) but if you play a D, it will add an F (the min. 3rd). You can set it for different intervals and even multiple intervals (chords). This will obviously have some cost in latency and I can't imagine that it would be an analog circuit. I've tried it out, but that's not the way harmony works, so it really requires a different kind of music, which I haven't come up with yet.
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What I meant was, this isn't the way voice leading works. Originally Posted by Laurence Finston
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There are no rules… if it sounds good it is good.
The question is how to know if it sounds good… that is subjective but it is also always contextual.
I have heard great uses of grainy 12bit time based processing. I have heard horrible uses of high end gear.
I recently witnessed a serious monster local jazz guitarist, in a big band situation, turn on his digital delay, and his tone went from full stage presence to a tiny buzzy bug flying around in the air. That buzzing sound would of cut through in a rock pop situation. Not good with a big band.
I have also heard some really bad timbre stuff from a top notch guitarist at Monterey Jazz Festival.
I will never play as well the local guy, but I hope he puts effort into learning some basic engineering.
The engineering thing becomes really important when anyone tries something a bit different, in the jazz context. Less sonic areas to hide in jazz, and way more assumptions about what tone is right, then rock/pop.
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if you're not afraid of tweaking, don't give up on "multi effects" until you try a helix. The helix stomp is very cheap used and sounds amazing. No perceptible delay
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L, chorus was one of the first (if not the first) commercial scale effects pedals made after fuzz. The Boss CS-1 I think, and the size of a loaf of bread. Originally Posted by Laurence Finston
Anything with a dry through signal that is joined by an effected signal (analogue delay, chorus, flange, phase) using Doppler or comb filtering would be real time zero- latency. It’s only those effects that are 100% ‘wet’ that become subject to latency.
It’s the digital pedals that give option of ‘analogue’ effects that confuse. They digitise the full signal and later split the signal for processing further still. Multi effects units that let you pick an analogue delay are really giving you a digital emulation if a true bucket brigade analogue circuit. (Sorry if this is getting too deep)
The mA consumption of your pedal is usually a giveaway. Anything >70mA is headed to digital domain.
for what it’s worth, from what I have read -anything delayed by 35ms or more is becoming audibly detectable and I don’t know the number but believe the individuals touch sensitivity can feel a delay much shorter ~5ms? For this reason the argument of tubes vs digital will live on until tubes run out.
cheers
Mkl
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Not at all. Thank you very much for your explanations. I didn't understand every word, but I'm determined to learn about how electricity works, and especially audio. Originally Posted by EastwoodMike
I like the idea of tubes but I'm a little afraid of them, at least with respect to amps. I have heard that the voltages involved can easily be lethal. When you start working on something, you always make mistakes and I'd rather do this with lower voltages. I once accidentally grabbed onto the metal prongs of the plug of a lamp while it was still partially plugged in. I'll never forget the feeling of the electricity coursing through my body. With AC, of course, you can get away from it. With DC, I would have been dead.
This was in the US and the prongs were bare metal. I'm not sure this would even be possible with the plugs in Europe, but I'm not going to test this.
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I have quite a few EHX pedals because I think they are very imaginative with what they do. They have a "9" series which uses synthesis to simulate the sounds of electronic organs and keyboards. My favorites are the C9 organ simulator and the Mellotron simulator. They all sound really good. The latency is noticeable, but not enough to bother me. There's no free lunch, not in programming and not with electronic devices.
I also have a pitch shifting pedal. You can kind of simulate the sound of a pedal-steel with it. The difference is that you also hear the unshifted sound from the strings. It shouldn't be coming through the amp. I assume it isn't, but haven't tested it. Nor have I tried playing with headphones, which would block that somewhat. For a recording, it shouldn't matter. It bothers me a little bit, but it's a compromise.
I can understand being a purist but instruments are just tools. Maybe I can make some interesting music with these devices that I couldn't make with just the "pure" guitar sound. The jury is still out on that question.
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No one is truly a purist.
Sometimes what has been done is a way for people to find the path for their own voice.
Sometimes there is strong emotional attachment to a certain time and place.
Sometimes there are external expectations that allow for a musician to make money.
Sometimes engineering a sound to fit in a mix becomes constrictive.
Timbre/tone color is one of the four elements of music and people have been utilizing since the beginning.
It is all about your path, and how much or how you want to make money.
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How many times I have been asked to sound like x… what happens:
Hopefully I have a idea of who is x is, if not I ask for another example
I then look down at my pedal board, and either quickly reprogram a patch, or realize I do not have the right effect…
I then substitute the closest possible type of effect…
Then the person tells me … “that is great”…
and I think to myself, “they know nothing about guitar”…
there has been only a couple of times when someone has said… no you need flanger not a chorus set really slow… they know, … I get to say (and hope), “next time I will make sure I have my flanger”…
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