What effects will I need?

[Trevo]

Alright, so I did a quick search and didn't find much so I thought I'd make a thread.

At the moment, I have a Boss ODB-3, but I started writing a lot of solo music lately. The music I'm going for requires a few effects, because it's ambient based.

So I was thinking of what you guys think I should do for effects. I have a few ideas:

1. Sell the ODB-3, buy either a Boss Me-20B or 50B?

2. Keep the ODB-3 and buy other effects.

I also play in a band, but I don't use much effects. The only effects I would need for that would be Overdrive, Chorus, and Volume.

So, basically my questions are, should I go for option 1 or 2? What is the difference between the Me-20B and the Me-50B? And if I go for single pedals, which ones will I need?

Thanks in advance!

[Swift713]

First, go to a guitar shop and try out every pedal you can to see what sounds you like.
Second, spend some quality time reading on the Effects forum. You will learn a lot. Check out the sound sample thread s well as sound clips at MF etc.
There are no simple pat answers. Everyone has their own taste in effects, especially with overdrives and filters. There are so many kinds of effects it will make your head spin. A multi effect is more cost effective but less flexible than individual pedals.
Have fun.

[bongomania]

Yeah, +1, and I have two pieces of advice:

One, spend some time reading through several pages of this forum. If that doesn't spark some ideas in you, I don't know what will. Ideally you will come out of that with a better understanding of what's available, popular, exciting, or reviled here; and you will have some more particular questions for us to answer once you're loaded up with all that input.

Two, search on "ambient". I absolutely guarantee there are some threads that will come up which will help you.

[markjazzbassist]

if you buy all the effects and try them then you'll know what you want and can narrow the search/thin the herd.

sounds outrageous, but half this forum runs on that method.

[Swimming Bird]

+1 to research.

That said, with effects you should be pretty open-minded: there are a lot of companies that make much better effects than Boss. Of course, you usually get what you pay for and Boss's sound good and are built like tanks.

I haven't tried the ME-20b, but if you're gonna go multi, I'd say look at the GT-6b. There's a lot more there and it's the closest multi-effects unit I've seen to being able to what I want in terms of ambient sounds (ie stacking delays and modulations in different orders).

Also, definitely look into an ebow, some delay and maybe a loop station. Those are the sort of standard ambient devices and I highly recommend them all.

[Amenra]

Don't go for the ME-20B. That is, if you want to have multiple, selfmade effects at your direct disposal. The ME-20B has a small to huge problem in memory mode. Switching pedals results in a short silence which gets on my nerves. You can however always play in automatic mode but then you'll have to write down all your settings or if you're a genious, memorize them.

Therefor my advice to you is: make a choice between buying seperate pedals (which looks cooler, but may be more expensive and it will probably (no experience here) take longer to get the sound you want) or buy a decent multi-effects pedalboard like the GT6-b or maybe the Line 6 pod xt (the large pedal, not sure bout the name).

my 2 cents

[omar_basspr]

Originally Posted by markjazzbassist

if you buy all the effects and try them then you'll know what you want and can narrow the search/thin the herd.

sounds outrageous, but half this forum runs on that method.

so true!

[Trevo]

Well, I think just to let everyone know, the effect I would like to use are: delay, octaver, od/distortion, volume, some types of synth, and a lot of reverb.