Pedal switcher for the ambient bassist

[Pacodelivery]

Hey all,

Ran into a kind of specific issue and was wondering if anyone had any guidance for me or experience to bring to bear.

I currently run a pretty big board and do a lot of atypical sounds for a bassists, usually pads pitched up or with a lot of bass cut into delays and stuff like that. I have some more typical bass pedals in my main chain, and then a long chain inside the loop of a Boss ls2 with a bunch of ambient pedals.

We recently started to touring with a sound guy and he asked if it was possible to send the pad type effects to a different DI line from my more typical bass sounds. That seemed easy at first, I figured I'd just set the ls2 to use it as an a/b pedal, and make "a" be all my more typical bass sounds and go directly to my broughton messenger and "b" to all the ambient pedals and then to a separate DI.

The problem is, even without an input signal from my bass, having like six or seven pedals on is gonna cause noise, and that solution would mean that whatever pedals were engaged would be sending noise to the board all the time through that DI, even when I'm just playing my dry bass on the other line.

One solution would be to put a noise gate on the ambient chain, either with a pedal or at the soundboard. The issue there is that the noise gate would really need to be AFTER all the pedals and noise gates really ruin how reverbs and delays trail off naturally.

What I need, I think, is a pedal that is a loop switcher like the ls2, but that routes the loop to a separate output when engaged and otherwise mutes that second output.

Does such a thing exist? Or is there some trick to do this with an ls2 to do this that I'm not seeing? Or, maybe something with midi? I'm sure I could get one of those huge boss or decible eleven switchers and get that to work but I'm pretty resistant to getting a bigger board right now and it would seem silly to have a huge pedal like that for just that one purpose.

Has anyone here run multiple lines to the soundboard for similar reasons and if so how did you manage it?

Thanks for reading all this and appreciate any guidance. Here's my board for context:

Chain is :

Boss tu3 > Southampton Inctineo > 3leaf octabvre > diamond comp > Cog 66 > Subdecay quasar > Moog chorus > Ernie Ball vp > Mojohand 443 > Boss ls2 > broughton messenger

and then in the loop of the ls2

EHX pitchfork > Boss eq200 > Eventide h9 > Empress Echosystem (with the mooer octave in its effects loop) > TC hof > Empress tremolo

 

[cheapbasslovin]

Could you have everything paralleled out to your chains, and then just have a kill switch at the end that turns things on and off? I think that works for what you're doing.

 

[Pacodelivery]

Could you have everything paralleled out to your chains, and then just have a kill switch at the end that turns things on and off? I think that works for what you're doing.

I've considered this! Wouldn't you need some sort of two channel killswitch tho? The trick is, I can't have my dry signal still going when I'm doing ambient stuff, so like whatever pedal would have to switch between killing the signal for the dry and the ambient chains. Does that exist? I can't rly afford to have to hit more than one pedal to make this happen, pretty often I'm hitting my ls2 on the last beat of the measure before the chorus and then coming in with a dry bass sound while singing harmonies on the 1 of the next measure.

 

[cheapbasslovin]

I've considered this! Wouldn't you need some sort of two channel killswitch tho? The trick is, I can't have my dry signal still going when I'm doing ambient stuff, so like whatever pedal would have to switch between killing the signal for the dry and the ambient chains. Does that exist? I can't rly afford to have to hit more than one pedal to make this happen, pretty often I'm hitting my ls2 on the last beat of the measure before the chorus and then coming in with a dry bass sound while singing harmonies on the 1 of the next measure.

Could you just use a passive ab that mutes the unused outputs? That should make the end of line quiet enough and let trails go, I'd think.

Edit: this is a flawed plan if you also need a stage amp, but you could tap the two signals for di and then use the ls2 to mix them back before your amp.

 

[Pacodelivery]

I'm not entirely following that train of thinking ... the basic passive a/b switch I know just routes the signal to one of the two outputs. The problem with that is that all of my ambient pedals would still be downstream of the switch and sending noise into that DI. So like, if "a" is my dry bass and "b" is the ambient pedals, when I have the switch on "a" all the pedals on the "b" side would still be on and making noise all of that would be going to the board via the DI. Am I missing something?

 

[cheapbasslovin]

I'm not entirely following that train of thinking ... the basic passive a/b switch I know just routes the signal to one of the two outputs. The problem with that is that all of my ambient pedals would still be downstream of the switch and sending noise into that DI. So like, if "a" is my dry bass and "b" is the ambient pedals, when I have the switch on "a" all the pedals on the "b" side would still be on and making noise all of that would be going to the board via the DI. Am I missing something?

My experience says that if you mute the input you won't get noise on the output, unless the part I'm not understanding is you want to mute reverb trails and the like.

Edit: if you ground the input, you don't get noise on the output. Not just mute. A passive unit would ground the input of the noise chain

 

[Pacodelivery]

My experience says that if you mute the input you won't get noise on the output, unless the part I'm not understanding is you want to mute reverb trails and the like.

Ok I see where the confusion is. Sometimes you're right, but in noisier venues (like for instance places with bad power) having all of my ambient pedals on will cause some noise *regardless* of whether the input is muted or not. For instance a typical pad sound for me might be the pitchfork set to +1 octave 60/40 favoring dry, the eq 200 scooping out all the bass and boosting mids and treble, a reverb patch on the H9, dual serial delays on the echosystem (with the first one in series being pitched up an octave), more reverb from the tc hof, and tremolo from the empress trem. Those are all nice pedals with low noise floors but even in the best of circumstances it's a lot to expect that you could have six pedals all on at once and there not be any noise, at least in my experience!

 

[stigbeve]

Would something from Radial Engineering do the job?


Radial Engineering

 

[cheapbasslovin]

If I read their copy right this might be the thing.

Clean/Dirty Effect Switcher™ (STEREO)

 

[Pacodelivery]

Would something from Radial Engineering do the job?


Radial Engineering

I was thinking the same thing! I looked through their stuff and I didn't find anything that worked, they have a lot of pedals with multiple inputs but none I could find that worked for this situation

 

[Pacodelivery]

If I read their copy right this might be the thing.

Clean/Dirty Effect Switcher™ (STEREO)

At first it looked to me like this would work, but from how I'm reading it this pedal still routes everything to one pair of stereo outputs and what I need is two separate outputs. Or am I reading it wrong? It's a little confusing

 

[cheapbasslovin]

At first it looked to me like this would work, but from how I'm reading it this pedal still routes everything to one pair of stereo outputs and what I need is two separate outputs. Or am I reading it wrong? It's a little confusing

I think you're right, but I also think if you route your noise through the left only and the bass through the right only it will still accomplish your end goal.

 

[Pacodelivery]

But then, wouldn't it all get sent to the same output? The goal I'm aiming for is two separate DI lines.

I think you're right, but I also think if you route your noise through the left only and the bass through the right only it will still accomplish your end goal.

 

[cheapbasslovin]

But then, wouldn't it all get sent to the same output? The goal I'm aiming for is two separate DI lines.

The outputs are discrete left and right channel, so if loop1 only has stuff on the right and loop2 only has stuff on the left, they shouldn't ever be active at the same time. I'd email loopmaster to be sure, but that's how I'd expect it to work.

 

[Pacodelivery]

Huh see I read that differently. The page says you can use stereo pedals in the loop of this pedal (which is why there's four jacks labeled "receive") , but the only way that would make any sense to me is if the two outputs were just in stereo not separate lines.

The outputs are discrete left and right channel, so if loop1 only has stuff on the right and loop2 only has stuff on the left, they shouldn't ever be active at the same time. I'd email loopmaster to be sure, but that's how I'd expect it to work.

 

[cheapbasslovin]

I think it would go like this:

Mono input > mono send 1> ambiance > left return 1> left output (right return 1 and right output are connected when this loop engaged, but right return one is empty so no sound from the right channel)

Mono input> mono send 2> bass funkin' > right return 2> right output (left return 2 and left output are connected when this loop is engaged, but left return 2 is empty so no sound from the left channel)

You might need to insert some shorted plugs into left return 2 and right return 1 to make the noise completely go away when those loops are selected, but I think that's how the thing works.

Again, I'd verify with loopmaster, but if this isn't it I'm out of good ideas.

 

[RudyTardy]

I would hit up Bryan at Saturnworks to make you something custom. I had one made that has a tuner send w.mute, one loop for my pedals that can be bypassed, and another loop for my Noble DI that is always active, then a send to my amp from the other side. It also has an order switch for the FX/Noble loops, so that I can have a clean di + wet amp, or both wet DI and amp. Works great! Top right corner of this board:

 

[drumvsbass]

The Boss ES8. Life saver. And yet another reason to post a pic of my rig so... why not.

 

[thetragichero]

i would think that anything that sends one or both signals to ground when not in use would make much more unpleasant noise when switching on and off than any bypass noise the pedals would make on their own (ever plug a true bypass pedal straight into a pa and clicked it on and off? NOT a good way to make friends)
could you be overthinking this?

 

[Pacodelivery]

Interesting, yes I'll reach out. I'm a little hesitant about working with him, I ordered a pedal from him a few years ago and he just never shipped it to me.

I think it would go like this:

Mono input > mono send 1> ambiance > left return 1> left output (right return 1 and right output are connected when this loop engaged, but right return one is empty so no sound from the right channel)

Mono input> mono send 2> bass funkin' > right return 2> right output (left return 2 and left output are connected when this loop is engaged, but left return 2 is empty so no sound from the left channel)

You might need to insert some shorted plugs into left return 2 and right return 1 to make the noise completely go away when those loops are selected, but I think that's how the thing works.

Again, I'd verify with loopmaster, but if this isn't it I'm out of good ideas.