U2start.com | U2 & Guitar Gear: Q & A

I'm just about to get a Digitech PG-50, a guy sells it for just 30 euro and I will try it tomorrow.... but from what I've heard and seen (Youtube footage mostly) it's a great small digital effect pedal. Exactly what I need. Modest but effective

LikeASong

15 years

hmmm I tried the PG-50 yesterday and was mostly happy with what I heard, but... what do you guys think? any of you have any experience with this pedal board (or however it's called in english!)? It felt a little "too cheap" for what it is, it has over 40 presets and you can basically imitate any effect or sound you want. I assume it's very worth the money they're asking me, but I just wanted to know your opinions

MattG

15 years

Originally posted by LikeASong:hmmm I tried the PG-50 yesterday and was mostly happy with what I heard, but... what do you guys think? any of you have any experience with this pedal board (or however it's called in english!)? It felt a little "too cheap" for what it is, it has over 40 presets and you can basically imitate any effect or sound you want. I assume it's very worth the money they're asking me, but I just wanted to know your opinions

I say for that cheap, just grab it. I used a Digitech RP-250 (Very old, discontinued model of what they're making under the 250 name now) for years and years, and it really nailed a good studio sound for me to record with. Transferring to live performances, though, I've spent a lotttt of money going out and buying the individual effects that I need and setting up a chain. The tones I get with my Digitech Multi just don't sound good at all passed thru an amp loudly. I still have it set up, at the end of my chain, so that I can bypass the rest of my pedals and use some special effects for some songs, but I try not to use it as much anymore especially for simple things like distortion/overdrive, chorus, and wah. I bought pedals for that. Mainly used ones from independant shops that someone else got tired of. Great deals

So, I say go for it. You've got a long life ahead of you to stock up on individual pedals if you start taking things way more seriously.

MattG

15 years

Here's an amateur question about footswitches for you guys.

I'm building up quite a large pedal board, becoming quite clunky and full- which I like- it makes me look even more experienced since I'm using them correctly

Anyway, recently, I played a live show with my band and I was using the Digitech Bad Monkey Overdrive pedal for more than half of our set. The problem, though, was that I had to keep bending down between songs and tweaking the knobs on the stompbox to suit the next song on the setlist. This is where footswitches come in- am I right?

Here's how I understand things, in the perfect little world of Matt's head- please tell me if I'm wrong/explain this to me (This understanding is based off of a single-switch footswitch that came with my friend's amp, which allows him to save an effect from the amp into the stomp-switch and access the exact sound later, whether or not the effect knobs are in the same place)

I would buy and use a regular old board with several different stomp-switches on it, just like the ones clearly visible in front of The Edge on some of those nice overhead shots on the Chicago DVD. The pedal board would be off to the side, not necessarily in main use, bar expression pedals of course. I would build a sound, tweaking the knobs of each individual stompbox, and then save it to one of the stomp-switches (Let's call it Switch 1), where that sound would be kept. I could then go back and tweak the pedals again and save another sound to the next switch (Switch 2), while still being able to access the original sound I made for Switch 1. Basically, at the end of the day, I could turn all of the individual stompbox's settings to 12:00, and when I hit Switch 1 and Switch 2, I'll still get the sounds I built and saved beforehand.

Is this correct? Can things be done this way? Because if so...I really need to look into investing into a small board like that. My live fumblings are getting ridiculous, having to write every song's settings down and squat in between each song to tweak...

Thanks for your help!!!

thechicken

15 years

Originally posted by EyesWithPrideB3:Here's an amateur question about footswitches for you guys.

I'm building up quite a large pedal board, becoming quite clunky and full- which I like- it makes me look even more experienced since I'm using them correctly Anyway, recently, I played a live show with my band and I was using the Digitech Bad Monkey Overdrive pedal for more than half of our set. The problem, though, was that I had to keep bending down between songs and tweaking the knobs on the stompbox to suit the next song on the setlist. This is where footswitches come in- am I right?

Here's how I understand things, in the perfect little world of Matt's head- please tell me if I'm wrong/explain this to me (This understanding is based off of a single-switch footswitch that came with my friend's amp, which allows him to save an effect from the amp into the stomp-switch and access the exact sound later, whether or not the effect knobs are in the same place)

I would buy and use a regular old board with several different stomp-switches on it, just like the ones clearly visible in front of The Edge on some of those nice overhead shots on the Chicago DVD. The pedal board would be off to the side, not necessarily in main use, bar expression pedals of course. I would build a sound, tweaking the knobs of each individual stompbox, and then save it to one of the stomp-switches (Let's call it Switch 1), where that sound would be kept. I could then go back and tweak the pedals again and save another sound to the next switch (Switch 2), while still being able to access the original sound I made for Switch 1. Basically, at the end of the day, I could turn all of the individual stompbox's settings to 12:00, and when I hit Switch 1 and Switch 2, I'll still get the sounds I built and saved beforehand.

Is this correct? Can things be done this way? Because if so...I really need to look into investing into a small board like that. My live fumblings are getting ridiculous, having to write every song's settings down and squat in between each song to tweak...

Thanks for your help!!!

As I understand it, you can't do it. You would need 3 or 4 of the same pedal to do that. What the pedal board does it simply turning on and off a lot of pedals at once, so you won't have to be dancing all over the place when you are changing sounds. I mean, song X starts with overdrive and compressor, and later on it changes to chorus and delay. So you will save song X there:
Preset 1: overdrive and compressor
Preset 2: chorus and delay
So when the board is set to song X, you can jump from preset 1 to 2 and it will turn off the overdrive and the compressor and turn on the chorus and delay only with a "step on", opposed to the four you would need without the board.
The sound will still go through the pedals, so it is basically just a on/off thing.
(MIDI pedalboards are a little different, but they need MIDI effects rack or pedals, and your regular pedal does not speak MIDI.)

RattleandHum1988

15 years

Originally posted by EyesWithPrideB3:Here's an amateur question about footswitches for you guys.

I'm building up quite a large pedal board, becoming quite clunky and full- which I like- it makes me look even more experienced since I'm using them correctly Anyway, recently, I played a live show with my band and I was using the Digitech Bad Monkey Overdrive pedal for more than half of our set. The problem, though, was that I had to keep bending down between songs and tweaking the knobs on the stompbox to suit the next song on the setlist. This is where footswitches come in- am I right?

Here's how I understand things, in the perfect little world of Matt's head- please tell me if I'm wrong/explain this to me (This understanding is based off of a single-switch footswitch that came with my friend's amp, which allows him to save an effect from the amp into the stomp-switch and access the exact sound later, whether or not the effect knobs are in the same place)

I would buy and use a regular old board with several different stomp-switches on it, just like the ones clearly visible in front of The Edge on some of those nice overhead shots on the Chicago DVD. The pedal board would be off to the side, not necessarily in main use, bar expression pedals of course. I would build a sound, tweaking the knobs of each individual stompbox, and then save it to one of the stomp-switches (Let's call it Switch 1), where that sound would be kept. I could then go back and tweak the pedals again and save another sound to the next switch (Switch 2), while still being able to access the original sound I made for Switch 1. Basically, at the end of the day, I could turn all of the individual stompbox's settings to 12:00, and when I hit Switch 1 and Switch 2, I'll still get the sounds I built and saved beforehand.

Is this correct? Can things be done this way? Because if so...I really need to look into investing into a small board like that. My live fumblings are getting ridiculous, having to write every song's settings down and squat in between each song to tweak...

Thanks for your help!!!

Yeah you can't do that, stompboxes keep their settings unless you physically change them. The only effects processors that can do what you wnat are ones that can be controlled by MIDI, like the PodXT, AxeFX, M13, or pretty much any rack effect processor, Korg A3 etc.

Essentially this is exactly why I backed out of a pedalboard and went with the M13, especially for a band atmosphere where you need to switch settings ont he fly, like you said. Most people that use pedalboards have what you call "loops" which are basically presets. Essentially what "thechicken" described right before me.

People that use pedalboards most often have ONE clean sound, ONE boosted clean sound, ONE overdrive sound, ONE distortion sound, etc. Kind of like, clean tone, rhythm tone, and lead/solo tone. Then they have like Fuzz tone and so on, which is completely reasonable, you really only need things like that anyway, unless you're someone like Edge who has a totally different effect on every song.

Essentially, you can go the expensive pedal board route, you get to know the pedals so you can get whatever tone you want out of them, you'll get a BETTER tone, they just LOOK a lot more professional and cooler, and more often than not you'll be able to swap out the effects you want and don't want.

OR

You can do what I did and go with a decent multi-fx system instead. No need to buy a board, tons of pedals, tons of quality cables (which you'll need) and a power solution, and a "loop" solution (although you don't NEED to go down that route), a buffer solution (kickstarts your signal so it doesn't get lost in all of your pedals and cables, yes this does happen). All of these reasons are what turned me away, especially since I'm not playing at a professional level. If I played in a band that made lots of money and so on, hell yeah I'd go back to pedals, they sound way better (at least to my ears), but beacuse I'm on a budget and just playing in a band that's trying to get somewhere, a multi-fx is where I went. I sold all of my pedals, my board, and bought an M13, and I haven't been happier.

I hope I didn't put you down at all, (although I'm sure I might've

) but I'm just trying to inform you of things you'll have to start thinking about if you go down the pedalboard route. It's totally damn cool if you do it, I have buddies that have pedalboards and their tone is great, and even I get jealous that I don't use one, but in the end it comes down to how much money you're willing to spend, and "is it worth it" kind of thing.

If you read all of that, kudos, I'd understand if you totally disregarded my opinion (i've done that ot people in the past, hence my 1800$ Vox AC30

) I hope you make the decision that'll make you happiest.

Alex

MattG

15 years

Wow, thanks a lot for your help- I'm glad I didn't just go on thinking this instead of actually being set straight. The whole thing that got me thinking that way was when my friend saved his amp setting to the footswitch (that came with the amp) and could tweak the effect afterwards and still go back to the same sound with that click of the footswitch. I guess it's a much easier task with a preset effect in an amp, though.

Well, I guess it makes more sense to just sort of establish what my guitar will sound like in my band as opposed to constantly trying to change the sound. Having a model like The Edge is inconvenient in this sense, since I've been "trained" to tweak every individual song to my exact liking...only difference was, with the Digitech, I could then save it. With these pedals, it would make more sense to just leave them someplace generic, and build off of simple presets on the Digitech.

For example, I have a generally clean tone running through a mock of a hot-rod amp, with the gain barely up, but a fair amount of reverb- something I built for the live intro of City of Blinding Lights, which I liked even though I'm pretty sure Edge uses zero gain. Anyway, I've been leaving that on as my "clean" channel, and that way, when I click on the Bad Monkey or my distortion box, I get a huge punch without having major level changes. And yes, I've run into signal loss problems- but I've found different ways to chain the pedals together and the right cables to buy that keep me loud and strong for the most part. The biggest bitch is the 9v batteries- not necessarily buying them, because I can usually get them for free through a friend- but the damn maintenance of changing them.

Buying the pedals used from turnaround shops keeps it cheap- I usually never pay more than 30 or 40 bucks for pedals that can cost $100 retail (Got the more expensive model of the VOX wah for like 40 bucks, it retails at 90). It's more fun and cool looking for me to be able to tweak the sounds on the pedals to be very precise and sound much cooler, while still being able to build off of the Digitech. Think I'll stick that route for now. It gives me foundation of sounds that I can preset while still being able to utilize my other pedals. For example, I can only use one "effect" at a time on the Digitech, even when I build a sound. I can set delay, amp type, volume, gain, etc...but when it comes to the cool stuff, like envelope filters, flange, chorus, etc...I can only select one of those to be turned on. So keeping an envelope filter- a more expensive pedal to buy- on the Digitech while I stomp my Small Clone chorus pedal (a fantastic buy), is somewhat cost effective

The only downside is that right now, my band is in a stage where we're playing sets 100% full of covers, since we're really only playing small parties (our first HUGE show is Tuesday- playing a local festival for a few hundred people). It's super cool to build sounds that sound exactly like the studio recordings of other guitarists, and they give such an authentic vibe. There also isn't a terrible amount of harm though, in establishing a sound, and playing a cover the way YOUR guitar sound comes across, giving it your own original feel.

Long story short, the pedal board looks cool, usually doesn't take a chunk out of my wallet, and makes me feel a little bit more like The Edge with the way I constantly move things around to get that perfect feel. The tweaking during a live show is something I can minimize with some general settings, and the toying around keeps guitar playing fun and interesting for me instead of just building a preset and saying goodnight.

Anyway, thanks so much for clearing things up for me. Appreciate it quite a bit!

-Matt

LikeASong

15 years

Here's my transcription of North Star. All chords are right, but you'll find it a little insipid - The Edge does some licks here and there that add colour to the song.
By the way, the E chord in the chorus should be played in the 4th fret, not open. Sounds much better and fits with the "ascending" melody.

Enjoy