Pedal switcher for the ambient bassist

[Pacodelivery]

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:

View attachment 4493174

Yeah I was wondering if a custom route like that is what I'll end up doing. That's a neat pedal he made you! I emailed sfx already, interested to hear what they have to say.

 

[Pacodelivery]

The Boss ES8. Life saver. And yet another reason to post a pic of my rig so... why not.
View attachment 4493218

And what a rig you have! I reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaly don't want to get a bigger board right now, and I'm very happy with how I handle switching otherwise, so investing in a huge pedal like that is prolly not gonna work for me, but I know they do fantastic things.

 

[cheapbasslovin]

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.

Well that's not great .

I'm sure Saturnworks could build the same thing, I was just looking for a thing that was pre-designed, since you might wrap the tour by the time someone special builds a thing for you in todays buying climate.

 

[sunbeast]

I think this Empress unit should be configurable to do it: https://empresseffects.com/products/buffer-stereo

Check mode 1 in the descriptions of each mode

 

[Pacodelivery]

Lol yes well I know I'm doing a lot of thinking but no I don't believe I am overthinking this. Getting these pad sounds to the board properly is a huge part of my value in this act, and figuring out this logistics is a pretty important part of that.

You're right tho about the true bypass switches, its why after a lot of trail and error (and switch pedals from Nose and One Control and a few others) I settled on the boss one because of the quiet buffered bypass.

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]

I appreciate all your help! We actually just played what'll prolly be our last show of the year, our singer's on radio tour by himself for a good chunk of the winter and then it looks like we'll be picking things back up in earnest in April so I got a little time to get this figured out.

Well that's not great .

I'm sure Saturnworks could build the same thing, I was just looking for a thing that was pre-designed, since you might wrap the tour by the time someone special builds a thing for you in todays buying climate.

 

[Pacodelivery]

holy CRAP does that pedal do a lot of things, I feel like it sort of has to have a way of making this work given how complicated it is. I dig empress stuff, too, and their customer support is top notch. Unfortunately it's discontinued and out of stock pretty much everywhere I looked!

I think this Empress unit should be configurable to do it: https://empresseffects.com/products/buffer-stereo

Check mode 1 in the descriptions of each mode

 

[sunbeast]

holy CRAP does that pedal do a lot of things, I feel like it sort of has to have a way of making this work given how complicated it is. I dig empress stuff, too, and their customer support is top notch. Unfortunately it's discontinued and out of stock pretty much everywhere I looked!

Ah dang I didn't realize it was discontinued- I was eyeing one awhile back for stereo loops

 

[McTred]

Might look at saturnworks. They probably either have what you need or would make it for you.

Edited to say whoopsie someone already said that. But... I was excited to chime in because I'm looking at similar kinds of things.

Good luck!

 

[callofcthulhu]

So assuming you do want both signals to be able to play at the same time, and just want to be able to control the noise floor of the "ambient chain":

ISP Technologies Decimator II G String Noise Suppressor Pedal

What you want to do is put your "normal bass" signal into the "guitar in" jack, and take "guitar out" to your "normal bass" DI.

Then feed the end of your "ambient bass" chain into the "dec in" jack, and take the "dec out" to your "ambient bass" DI.

This will mute your ambient chain while you're not playing the bass.

Alternatively, you could raise the threshold all the way and only turn the pedal OFF when you want the FX to be heard.

 

[CryingBass]

Moog Maybe? Ymmv

 

[Real Soon]

Might be tough to score a VFE Klein Bottle, but they're total wizards at routing other pedals. From what I'm reading and understanding (let's not put too much confidence in the latter), it'd be a cinch to use its main output to go to the Broughton, then use one or more of the other channels to handle groups of pedals, and have the last of those go on to a DI instead of coming back to the main output.

That said, the Boss ES-5 and ES-8 are really the most capable audio routing systems you can fit on a board; I like the Klein Bottle for its hands-on approach vs programming ahead of time, since I set up feedback loops that I manipulate in realtime... but one could do something similar with programmed expression control on a Boss.

 

[Jeff Hughes]

Doesn't the sound tech have a gate at the mixer end?

 

[micguy]

You don't need an a/b switcher, you need a splitter - could be a simple y wired box that takes the output of a pedal early in your chain, and sends it simultaneously to both "clean" and "effected" signal chains. having 2 chains won't really change the amount of noise in your system - the clean chain will likely be less noisy than your current rig, and the effected chain will be about the same. So, if you don't need a noise gate now, you won't need one when you do a split signal chain. And yes, a decent sound board will have a decent gate - probably better than a pedal based one.

 

[Spectrum]

I will second the nominations for Saturnworks here. I have two of their pedals, they do good work and are worth a look for custom solutions.

 

[el murdoque]

All you'd need would be a simple pedal, with inputs A & B and outputs A & B, plus two foot switches.
One will select either A or B, the other will activate both. It is a bit exotic on the one hand, but a super simple affair on the other. Anyone with basic skills in pedal building should be able to make something like that.

 

[themickster]

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:
View attachment 4493061

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

The sound man knows what he's talking about. Ask him what to do.

 

[Jeremy Darrow]

I agree that you should work on this with your engineer. Also, I don't think it's too much to ask that person to unmute/mute your ambient out at the right times.

 

[Dirk Diggler]

Simply you need a mixer.

 

[chiphaleonbass]

Could you not route all of your ambient sounds out to a volume pedal before the DI, and thus engage the ambient sounds to FOH via volume pedal and not have to worry about switching the B signal off and on as much as just turning it up? This would also ensure no noise would be sent to FOH; a signal splitter overall should get you close, I suppose the only issue with a volume pedal would be stereo ambient signal