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 correctlyAnyway, 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
