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
