Recently decided to go back to a big board I just can't express what I want to in my personal playing using my small board and a load of pedals patched on before and after it.
So I can up with a plan, my MASTER PLAN of how this new board would be layed out and wired up and how it would work taking into account everything I've learnt over the years, I then decided not to tell anyone this but what's the point, you're all going to see it anyway and maybe you'll have some tips or pointers to improve it so here goes (It also helps me plan it by writing it out in as basic a terminology as possible)
Board is yet to be decided upon as I'm not sure of size needed but most likely a Pedaltrain Pro or possibly 2 EHX Pedalbags but I highly doubt this.
So the signal chain
Bass goes into
Mojo Hand Cream Pie into
Foxrox Octron 2 into
Barge VFB (Loop) Tone Factor Huckleberry (Loop) into
Boss LS2 (Here is where it gets complicated)
(Side A)Catalinbread Hyper Pak into Sinister Analog Soul Provider into Subdecay Gurgle and Moan Prototype into Subdecay Quasar into Ernie Ball Volume Pedal (Not fully decided on this) into Subdecay Echobox Prototype. End Loop
(Side B) Fender Volume/Tone pedal into Tone Factor Mobius Feedback looper
(Loop)Catalinbread V8 into Subdecay FemBot into Boss FZ-2 into Boss HM-2 (Modded) (Loop)
into a 2nd Tone Factor Mobius
(Loop) Into Dod Grunge (Modded) Aria FL-10 Flanger into Digitech PDS2000 (Loop)
Into a 2nd Ernie Ball Volume Pedal into a Guyatone SV2 into a Digitech PDS1002.
This all goes back to the LS-2 which then goes into an EHX SMM/H where this signal goes into Left input, the left output then goes into a Subdecay Prometheus (When released) into a Subdecay Echobox and back to SMM/H right input and then the right output will go to my Amp.
Now I can hear you all screaming *** that is so OTT/Excessive and just plain silly. Well let me explain the madness
Most of side A is my little pedaltrain jr and I love it the signal chain is near perfect...... for playing, I do miss the Huckleberry and the blend on it which didn't fit due to the size of the board and then I've been using the SMM/H as a looper any way and placing the pedals I've mentioned in a jerry rigged loop using the 2 inputs/outputs will allow me to process things and re-loop while also using those pedals in a normal signal chain.
Now side B is basically a noise side used to create squealing oscilation and crazy noise, if you know the pedals I've listed straight off you'll know that the PDS delays can do very short looping which is great for noise and these can be pitch shifted and moved about, now this chain is pretty much useless for playing if you are doing noise as I've found over the years I need to blend or bi amp to do this and I had great results last year on my birthday jam doing this (Some of you have heard the soundclips) but that involved bringing 3 cabs and 2 amps and I want this setup to be easily recordable and use with single amps or headphones.
So the Fender pedal which I'm not fully sold on at the moment is there as most of these pedals can be controlled with tone and volume knobs on my bass which goes out of the window once they are in a buffered loop so it's to get that control back and have it at my feet so I can control all this and play.
THIS IS THE MAIN POINT! using the 2 EB volume pedals I can control both side individually and do swells of both noise and playing and using the SV-2 I can set it to swell the occilation for processing later on. So i can play and groove away and be creating huge soundscapes with my feet.
Last night I was listening to NIN - Ghosts and thinking I could do all that on my own (Not the drums) all the ambient background noise while doing piano like chords and then stabs of mad distortion.
Now all the pedals are True Bypass except the LS-2 which will be the only buffer in the chain and all the other buffered pedals are in TB Mobius loops and then in the LS-2
This will also allow for pretty crazy blending of all the effects using the LS-2 mixed mode which makes the whole thing parrallel processed
Now I have all the pedals listed except for the 3 volume pedals (Of which I'm not sure I'll get the fender), Digitech PDS1002 (Found one to get) and the 2nd Mobius (Found one to get) so once I have everything I'll set it all up and then decide what board it will go on, I'm sure that with out the fender volume pedal it will all fit on a PT Pro.
So feel free to ask questions and post any improvements you can think of, but to answer the first question I won't be using this live my band board will stay the same and this will be used for practice, jamming and doing some soundtrack work I've got lined up with some visual artists.
Thanks for you time I know I've taken a lot of it.