Live performance - have analog effects pedals had their day?

[Blaargh]

Where's the fun in multiFX?

I mean, the reliability, versatility, value for money and ease of transport are one thing, but it just sounds like a really boring way to do things. I mean, how will you ever know the joys of having to find that one duff power cable 2 minutes before soundcheck?

You just lose out on all the specific weirdness that individual pedals offer. 6 dirt pedals? Sure. Want to run a flanger into a reverse delay? Can do. Want to play a self-oscillating delay with your tippie-toes? If you want to.

As I've said in the last thread that something like this came up in, individual pedals are just a lot more interesting to me than everyone having a multiFX box. You can really get an impression of a musician by looking at their board- More so than the rest of their rig. Hunting weirdo pedals and trying to cobble together a workable board to make new sounds is much more fun than scrolling around in a menu.

If you're a session musician or a function band or what have you I can see how the practicality would be appealing, but I would definitely recommend individual pedals if you're an originals artist trying to employ effects to get new sounds.

 

[vvvmmm]

I feel such a American - I hadda look up, "function band".

 

[Al Krow]

I've never had a chance to test any of the more expensive multi effects, but for me the problem with the cheaper units like Zoom B3 have not been sound for live use. It is usability. Live I want a simple layout with every sound or effect behind a single footswitch.

I have no beef with digital sound. As a recording enthusiast/ hobbyist, I use digital effects all the time in my digital audio workstation. Most records made today are done in those no matter what music style it is. I am pretty sure many bassist dissing digital multi effects pedals, are quite happy with the sound that recording engineer made with digital vst in Pro Tools or other daw.

Still waiting for the multi that has an interface that I want, for a price I am willing to pay for it. Until that comes along I guess I keep using my mix of digital and analogue single pedals.

In terms of live usability at a relatively modest price, I think the Zoom B3n picked up where the B3 left off and took things to the next level. Couple it with the excellent (free) ToneLib software ToneLib – Second life for your Zoom pedal and you have an easy to edit and easy to use live multifx, which (for me) is almost worth the price alone as a tuner, HPF and headphone amp and that's before you delve into all the other effects available. Not in the same league as the Helix HX from comments that folk who have owned both have shared, but nor is it in the same price bracket.

 

[Al Krow]

I feel such a American - I hadda look up, "function band".

Lol! What do you guys refer to them as over the pond? I've tried to be very careful and spell 'analogue' as 'analog' in all my posts. I've already had a Canadian telling me that 'dep' = 'sub' in Canada. But we can all agree that Ibanez make some great basses, right? And that Chase Bliss pedals don't come cheap? That James Jamerson was ridiculously good (particularly for a one finger playing bassist)...and the Beatles were better songwriters than Elvis...?

 

[vvvmmm]

We call 'em, "cover bands".

And yep, Beatles afore Elvis, but I prefer Nanker-Phelge, me.

 

[Al Krow]

We call 'em, "cover bands".
And yep, Beatles afore Elvis, but I prefer Nanker-Phelge, me.

Aha - so I guess we distinguish "cover bands" over here that play smaller gigs in bars and clubs and "function bands" who also do weddings and corporate events. Both are doing covers sets (rather than original material) for sure, but function bands generally tend to be more polished in terms of quality and can charge correspondingly higher fees. No similar gradation / terminology in the US?

 

[Deleted member 165050]

Aha - so I guess we distinguish "cover bands" over here that play smaller gigs in bars and clubs and "function bands" who also do weddings and corporate events. Both are doing covers sets (rather than original material) for sure, but function bands generally tend to be more polished in terms of quality and can charge correspondingly higher fees. No similar gradation / terminology in the US?

Bar band, wedding band?

 

[vvvmmm]

+1 on what ficelles said, yeah, I guess "wedding band" may be a closer match.

I mean, once I hadda singer was a junkie (true story - goth rock) and, well, we were basically a "non-function" band ...

 

[Bassmike62]

Loved your post - particularly the last bit! If only my band life were so simple!

Thx . I've been rather lucky, it only happened a couple of times.
The worst and most hilarious one was during practice with a gigging band I played with last fall: mid-song, the guitarist stopped, took his guitar off and bent down to shuffle his pedal chain. The hilarious part was the argument that followed between him and the singer. Surreal . Next practice, we had another guitarist.

 

[FerK]

A nice distortion fuzz or overdrive, then a nice fuzz coupled with a wah, octave down, and anything else you want to throw in. Or you could just find me a good review on youtube. Convince me. So far I'm unconvinced, and I tried.

[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]s a bunch of different combinations of Amp, preamp and cab sims, with different combinations of effects.

You just lose out on all the specific weirdness that individual pedals offer. 6 dirt pedals? Sure. Want to run a flanger into a reverse delay? Can do. Want to play a self-oscillating delay with your tippie-toes? If you want to.

You can with the Helix. It looks like this:

It has (in this order) a Klon® Centaur, an OCD, a Chandler Tube Driver, a DOD® OD-250, a MAXON® SD9 Sonic Distortion, and a Paul Cochrane Timmy® Overdrive, after which I split the signal, the A going into a A/DA Flanger going into an original Line 6 Reverse Delay, and the B chain going into a self-oscillating delay set to 90ms and 93% feedback. It sounds just shy of horrible:

[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]

 

[WardEarth]

[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]s a bunch of different combinations of Amp, preamp and cab sims, with different combinations of effects.



You can with the Helix. It looks like this:

View attachment 3054551

It has (in this order) a Klon® Centaur, an OCD, a Chandler Tube Driver, a DOD® OD-250, a MAXON® SD9 Sonic Distortion, and a Paul Cochrane Timmy® Overdrive, after which I split the signal, the A going into a A/DA Flanger going into an original Line 6 Reverse Delay, and the B chain going into a self-oscillating delay set to 90ms and 93% feedback. It sounds just shy of horrible:

[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]

Wow really nice job FerK! Cool riff and clean playing! I especially liked #6 and #11. I'm convinced. What bass were you playing?
Ok now that I look at their website there is a bit of info there. Which unit did you go with? I'm wondering if the smaller unit + the expression pedal would be all someone would really need.

 

[Al Krow]

If we're aiming to be a high end wedding band then we can't afford to be leaving our audience on the dance floor 'hanging' 30 seconds to a minute between every song. It's really this point alone that has got me rethinking the subject - which is driven by live work flow and ties into programme-ability and presets.

The difference between the superb song flow / lack of 'dead air time' when our dep guitarist came in recently and had every song set up sequentially (on his full fat Helix) so that he could scroll through the set list with a patch per song vs our long standing guitarist faffing about adjusting his analog pedal board between songs was a complete revelation. I noticed big time at the gig. The rest of the band noticed pretty quickly when they looked back at the footage. We're just gonna need to take a leaf out of @Bassmike62's song book tell our long standing guitarist that messing about with pedals is something he can do in his own time and not in the band's time during a wedding set!

I totally accept song flow is less of an issue when we play bars or for original bands where the crowd are there for the 'music' and not for the 'party'.

I also totally get that digital pedals aren't 'up there' with the best of every analog pedal (they're getting closer, for sure). If that makes a difference to us as bass players that's good reason enough to stick to analog even if 99% of the audience won't care in the slightest about the nuances of bass tone between an analog and digital effect. But NOT if it's going to kill the party vibe in a wedding / function / party band setting. Time and place; tools for the job.

Btw - our story to rival @Bassmike62's is when the guitarist broke a string immediately before the encore...just great. He now has to take a spare guitar to every gig!

 

[vvvmmm]

There is an alternative - re-tune and play with 5; Richard Thompson plays with 5 on his ACL DVD. But I do always carry at least one spare axe, even when playing bass. And I usually have an extra amp head (guitar or bass: Music Man HD130) in the trunk, altho' that doesn't help if a speaker fries ...

 

[FerK]

Wow really nice job FerK! Cool riff and clean playing! I especially liked #6 and #11. I'm convinced. What bass were you playing?
Ok now that I look at their website there is a bit of info there. Which unit did you go with? I'm wondering if the smaller unit + the expression pedal would be all someone would really need.

The bass I used is a Dingwall NG2 with the 2 pick-ups in parallel (not as hot as series, although a bit brighter). EQ is rather flat, with a bit extra mids. The Helix is actually the Helix LT, which is considerably lower priced than the regular model; the biggest difference between the 2 is that the LT doesn't have the small screens underneath each controller (which helps you a bit remember what effect or snapshot is assigned to each button), and a lot less in/outs. For what I play I don't really need all the extra connections, and the full sized, color screen gives me all the info I need for my customized presets. I don't miss the little screens one bit. Mine obviously has the built-in expression pedal, that more often than not I use as a volume pedal.

If we're aiming to be a high end wedding band then we can't afford to be leaving your audience on the dance floor 'hanging' 30 seconds to a minute between every song. It's really this point alone that has got me rethinking the subject - which is driven by live work flow and ties into programme-ability and presets.

[...]

I also totally get that digital pedals aren't 'up there' with the best of every analog pedal (they're getting closer, for sure). If that makes a difference to us as bass players that's good reason enough to stick to analog even if 99% of the audience won't care in the slightest about the nuances of bass tone between an analog and digital effect.

The beauty of the Helix interface is two-fold:

1. There's no gap switching between presets (maybe hundredths of a second, noticeable if you were switching between presets in the middle of a song, but a non-issue between songs). For in-the-middle-of-the-song you have snapshots, which are the exact same chain of effects and sims, but with different "knob" settings (e.g. a Comp-EQ-Fuzz-Chorus would be the full chain, but for the intro you use no fuzz and lots of chorus, and for the verse the chorus goes off, and the fuzz kicks in full throttle, and then for the refrain you have a bit of both). Presets switch within a song instantaneously, with no perceivable gap.
2. I wouldn't even call it programming. The interface takes about 15min. to learn. The HX Edit free software allows you to do it all in your PC/Mac even easier than in the device, if that's even possible.

Regarding your second comment, Al, I don't know if they aren't "up there". I have compared, side-by-side, my Helix against the B3K sim, the Ibanez TubeScreamer sim, the EHX Big MuffPi sim (I know, not a TOP effect pedal), and an MRX M101 Phase 90. I couldn't tell the difference in ANY shape or form. Other people couldn't tell tube amps vs the Helix simulations. You can find PLENTY vids of that in YouTube.

I'm not an endorser of the device, but I like it. It's easy to use, has insanely granular settings that you can easily learn to set in the device or in your computer, and it's SO much more comfortable than my much heavier pedalboards. With a built-in tuner. And an expression pedal. BTW, I got ALL the money I paid for it back by selling my older pedals.

 

[-Asdfgh-]

Aha - so I guess we distinguish "cover bands" over here that play smaller gigs in bars and clubs and "function bands" who also do weddings and corporate events. Both are doing covers sets (rather than original material) for sure, but function bands generally tend to be more polished in terms of quality and can charge correspondingly higher fees. No similar gradation / terminology in the US?

F(x)

If we're aiming to be a high end wedding band then we can't afford to be leaving our audience on the dance floor 'hanging' 30 seconds to a minute between every song. It's really this point alone that has got me rethinking the subject - which is driven by live work flow and ties into programme-ability and presets.

The difference between the superb song flow / lack of 'dead air time' when our dep guitarist came in recently and had every song set up sequentially (on his full fat Helix) so that he could scroll through the set list with a patch per song vs our long standing guitarist faffing about adjusting his analog pedal board between songs was a complete revelation. I noticed big time at the gig. The rest of the band noticed pretty quickly when they looked back at the footage. We're just gonna need to take a leaf out of @Bassmike62's song book tell our long standing guitarist that messing about with pedals is something he can do in his own time and not in the band's time during a wedding set!

I totally accept song flow is less of an issue when we play bars or for original bands where the crowd are there for the 'music' and not for the 'party'.

I also totally get that digital pedals aren't 'up there' with the best of every analog pedal (they're getting closer, for sure). If that makes a difference to us as bass players that's good reason enough to stick to analog even if 99% of the audience won't care in the slightest about the nuances of bass tone between an analog and digital effect. But NOT if it's going to kill the party vibe in a wedding / function / party band setting. Time and place; tools for the job.

Btw - our story to rival @Bassmike62's is when the guitarist broke a string immediately before the encore...just great. He now has to take a spare guitar to every gig!

The algorithms for most effects (delay, chorus, etc) are not that complex, so modelling something generic should be pretty much perfect on a multi. Modelling non-linear idiosyncrasies of a particular pedal, detailed reverbs, or overdrives is more complex.

 

[WardEarth]

I like the color schemes they have going on those NG2's, sexy. Especially the swirly stuff and the orange.