The Ultimate Question About Effects

[caeman]

They have earned it. Most of them have years on this forum and thousands upon thousands of posts in answering questions like yours. Hard-won and expensive experience in many cases. And rarely will two of them exactly agree on anything.

The Korg Pandora Mini is absolutely adorable. It looks like the perfect travel practice tool. It will fit into your guitar case or coat pocket, runs on batteries, gobs of functions to fiddle with. And the price is highly affordable.

The Vox Stomplab IIB looks to be more usable with the food treadle, leading to possible less leaning down to change settings.

Given the price of all three, you guy buy them all from Guitar Center, try them in parallel, and return the losers.

 

[cheapbasslovin]

FWIW none of those give you control over effect arrangements, which from your OP seemed like it was a big deal.

 

[Bakkster_Man]

Just to put in my $0.02, I've always felt this subject has three components: price, tone, and versitility. It really depends what your cost constraints are and whether you value tone or versitility more.

In general, I prefer individual pedals currently, because I value tone over versitility. Most notably, I prefer to have one sound that works for most of what I do and change it infrequently. A multieffects box makes it easy to change settings for the same effect quickly, and since I wouldn't often use that feature a digital multieffect wouldn't do much more for me than my current setup of individual pedals.

If I had the free cash, though, I could get that versitility either through a high end digital multi (or something like the Vintage Revolution PedalPro which is a digitally controlled analog signal path) or just double up on pedals I want two settings for.

In general, though, the biggest thing to me is whether you know the sound you want yet. IMO digital multis are good by casting a wide net of sounds, making them far more efficient for tone seeking than continually replacing pedals seeking a tone with standalones that don't quite work out. If you know what tone you want already, and know the pedals that can achieve it, buy them. No sense risking your sound trying to replicate three individual pedals with a digital multi or vice vers a if the current solution works.

 

[DeltaPhoenix]

I see TB is still the same

 

[metaball]

i reccommend starting out with a multi til you get an idea for what fx you want more of & what you don't use ever. pedals is such a bottomless pit i think it's a good idea to get your bearing before running out & buying a bunch of em. also it get's you up & running til you can pick up the ones that really get the sound you want.

 

[odineye]

cool. I'd like to see a pic of that. I think it would be cool since the GT-10b can also be a midi controller, but just seemed like it'd be a large rig

Just posted a pic in the PYPB thread. The MIDI capability is exactly why I came across the GT-10b in the first place. I was looking into foot switches to control my rack unit, came across the Boss and saw it as a double bonus. I mean... Who couldn't use more effects, right? But yes, it is a bit big. I just slapped together a home made board that's 38" x 20" to hold it all, with a little room for that next piece that I don't yet know I love and can never do without...

 

[famousbirds]

Well, you seem like an unpleasant person, but FWIW:

The "SYNTH" effect on the Pandora is incredible. One of the most delightfully adjustable, accurate, touch-sensitive synth+filter effects for bass I've ever used. Not the approach you laid out (stacking a bunch of effects), but an effective choice for certain types of keyboard-y synth sounds on bass.

 

[Thaos627]

the order of the pedals is important but i need more effects than 3, the zoom b3 looks great & i will definitely get a future model.

sorry for seeming crabby but im in multiple bands requiring multiple sounds & they keep asking more of me. 1 bands singer just left so now im singing, writing songs, playing bass & keyboards.

also due to expenses my budget dropped to $100 including shipping. which is why im only looking at cheap stuff now.

after some research i found that korg owns vox & the vox stomplab is basically a more usable korg pandora which is a desktop multi. i would get it with the pedal since it makes it easier it select stuff but i doubt i would use it for effects.

it seems ill never be able to avoid using multis & pedals so what order would you put them in?

 

[Dugachug]

the digitech bp90 is 100 bucks one of my buddies has the guitar version and you could get almost any effect and it made the crappy $80 combo amp sound epic. It even has an expression pedal for wah/volume/whammy. Digitech BP90