Post your parallel or huge pedalboard

Subbed. Will post mine as soon as I mount my new filter.

 

I've got something to get this tread started. Not sure if this satisfies your expectations of a huge board as the footprint is surprisingly small. The switching system complicates things enough to qualify though. Took me over an hour to wire this up so it definitely felt huge while putting it togeather.



After limiting myself to the 8 channels on the OctaSwitch for many months I have spent alot of time contemplating signal order. If anyone ever asks what order to put thier effects my response would be the same.

Channel 1: Envelope Filter / Wah
Channel 2: Fuzz
Channel 3: Compression
Channel 4: Digital Pitch Shifters
Channel 5: Overdrive
Channel 6: Preamp
Channel 7: Modulation
Channel 8: Reverb / Delay

Here is an explanation of how I found this order ideal. The two biggest factors that influenced signal order was the placement of the compressor and preamp.

1. Before compression I put effects most sensitive to dynamics, pedals that require tracking. Envelope Filters are the best example of this, analog octavers would go here too.
2. Next goes fuzz for these couple of reasons: I like fuzz best after envy filters, fuzz effects introduce large amounts of compression, fuzz compression is sensitive to input dynamics so putting it after compression would reduce the extremes of the effect.
3. All important compression, the lungs of my signal chain. I use it to level out my playing to bring up softly played notes and reduce aggressively played notes. This creates less volume jumps when going into high gain settings. Reduces shrilly piercing treble so my overdrives dont go into knife-into-ear mode.
4. Digital pitchshifters have pretty good tracking so they dont necessary need the full dynamics of an uncompressed signal to work well. Putting a compressor before digital pitchshifters makes them less extreme, which greatly reduces unpleasant digital artifacts.
5. I don't like my overdrives getting too harsh so I put them after compression. I have to be careful with how much make-up gain is being used on my compressor so that that gain wont push my o.d. too hard.
6. Then comes the preamp to shape my EQ balance and final drive behavior. The heart of my signal chain.
7. Modulation (chorus,phasers) is going to introduce out-of-tune pitches to your signal, you wouldn't want to amplify these out-of-tune pitches even more, which is why modulation goes after preamps. Put 'your sound' into a modU effect and you will get 'your sound' out, only modulated. Put a modU effect into a preamp and you will get a slurry mud hole . I've seen some folks put phasers earlier in thier signal chain, not sure what effect they are trying to achieve, I never got a good sound from doing so. That being said, I do prefer putting flangers before the preamp because a bass boosted signal will get mutilated by a flanger.
8. Reverb and delay go last because they are electronic reproductions of the very common real-world sound effect, echo. And just like in real-life, echos are repeats of the final composite sound that reaches your ear. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen anyone ever put a delay anywhere other than the end of their chain.

 

I am in the process of building and getting a new bigger board ready and it will have:
MXR Noise Gate Line Driver DI for dry
Boss Ge7B
BBE Opto Stomp-always on
Boss PSM-5 Loop selector
>>>>loop send
Danelectro French Toast
EHX Q-Tron xo
Boss OC-2 Octave
Electronix Cross Drive
Boss SD1 Super OverDrive
Boss ODB3
Hjart Muller Lo|Fat
EHX BassBalls NYC
Akai UniBass
>>>>loop Return
Zoom B2.1u (for synth sounds, chorus, flange, delay & reverbs) --------& wet DI
>Zoom FS1 mute tuner bypass for B2.1u
Electronix Submarine (in case it's needed for output vol tone)
GK footswitch for MB500 boost channel

 

delay pedals get the dirty sanchez... filters "get off" easy

 

G. Bisson,

I've just been studying your board for the past ten minutes. Do you turn on/off the actual pedals with your foot, hand or a combination of each?

I also found your explanation very useful. I haven't dabbled in compression for one reason or another. Mainly, I just don't fully understand it enough to say I know what I'm talking about, and that scares me away from buying one. However, I found your post to be useful in understanding how I could utilize it, and better set up my effects overall.

 

I don't run it this way anymore, but here was my parallel board that I ran with a previous band:

The top row (after the ABY switch) went to one amp, and the bottom row went to another amp. It was a pretty beastly sound, I must say.

 

LOL @ Pickles and BRT

(and subsequently, likely my last post in this thread )

 

Buddy Up

The pedals on the top two tiers are all paired up. (Some manufacturers just seem to get some type of effects spot-on and the rest 'meh). The Maxon chorus and phaser are buddied up, ZVex fuzzes, Tech21 sansamps, and the two ElectroHarminix'x'xx.

I use the phaser more often than the chorus so I do have to step on the chorus to turn it off. Conviently, I can do this silently and then activate the programmed channel. I really like the sound of the chorus going into the phaser, creates two gently interlaced modulations. If I want to do this, I turn on both and then activate the channel.

Similar story for the fuzzes. I usually use one at a time, turning one off then the other on then activating the channel. But I can use them together. The mammoth does gated sputtery fuzz, while the mastotron does sizzly synthy fuzz which sounds really nice ontop of the chopped flat mammoth fuzz. There's a little more effort involved in this to tame the huge amount of volume increase of stacking two fuzzes. I turn back the volume and gain on the mastotron then turn on both pedals then and then activate the channel. Thats two knob turns and three footsteps maximum (usually one fuzz is already on so its more like two footsteps).

Same with the two EHX. I use the flanger alone most often, and the octave alone too. Together, I use the suboctave with the filter matrix for an 80's keyboard flashback. Tweak my mistress's knobs till she drones a synth voice then slam on the big bottom .

The preamps are a different story. I never use them both on together. Either one or the other. But they are both on the same channel, and that channel is always on. VT gives me the boom and is getting most of the play while I keep my blonde waiting for when I want some clean sustain. The switching isn't seamless; I turn off the VT and loose volume for a moment than turn on the Blonde and come back up. I would like to put the two on seperate channels so they can be switched via the programmed footswitches, but I'm limited to 8 and they are all used up. This dilemma has me gassing for a VT deluxe even more.

 

did you like the germanium od? i'm in the need for some od/fuzz, but haven't really found one that gets me going. i do like the muff w/tone wicker, maybe i'll get one of those... all the other muffs didn't sound good to me.

 

Yeah, I dug the Germ a lot. It's got a nice vintage tone, and by cranking the gain and bias and dropping the volts, you can get a nice old school fuzz tone as well. I think it is a very underrated box. My only complaint about it is the lack of a volume control separate from the gain knob. The gain knob needs to cranked up pretty high to get a lot of dirt, and then it's really freaking loud.

I put a few sound clips of it up in the wiki if you want to check it out.

 

Every board I've used for the last few years have been parallel boards.

Here is the current version:


Here is the most badasserest. (The M13 is just as bitchen capability wise, but it doesn't look as cool) You'll notice the similarity between mine and bigchief. It's because the HOG and BassMicroSynth are both freaking amazing.

 

Not nearly as large as some of the guys' boards on here, but still bigger than some.



It's a little bigger than a PT-2 (quite a bit deeper, mostly) and it has a 2U rack space under the teir with a Symetrix 501 compressor and a BBE Supa Charger mounted in it.

 

LOL

 

Here is my old one and the blurb explaining what's going on

 

if you give me a couple hours im still working on mine

 

sub'd, this is super informative as im in the beginnings of putting together a board, gonna take a while and thats fine cuz its for my personal fun since I've no use for it in my band, so far I just have a pickle pie B and BSW, which will now just be an octave since I've also got a groove regulator on the way, chorus next.

 

This is as big as it got for me, before I pared doen to my present PT-1 set up. When posting this, the pics were so small, I hope I got this right.