{"id":4948,"date":"2011-06-07T15:19:57","date_gmt":"2011-06-07T15:19:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.musicademy.com\/?p=4948"},"modified":"2019-07-31T15:39:34","modified_gmt":"2019-07-31T15:39:34","slug":"gear-confessional-my-pedal-rig-for-those-who-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.musicademy.com\/blog\/gear-confessional-my-pedal-rig-for-those-who-care\/","title":{"rendered":"Gear Confessional – my pedal rig (for those who care!)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve started to downsize my rig lately. Partly because a) I can\u2019t be bothered with multiple trips to the car, b) lots of amp and pedal companies are starting to cotton on to the convenience factor of smaller more portable gear, c) I sometimes take my rig on my motorbike (seriously!) and d. I think a lot of worship musicians need to seriously consider smaller, more convenient rigs, particularly with the stage volume restrictions of and tight set up, tear down routines of many local churches.<\/p>\n

For the last few years I\u2019ve advocated guitarists buying a few good single effect pedals and avoiding the \u2018all you can eat\u2019 multi effects units mainly because the quality of the individual effects wasn\u2019t that good and the simplicity of changing a parameter quickly, on the fly wasn\u2019t that easy or intuitive.<\/p>\n

But in the last year or so the pendulum has swung back the other way with a few companies now producing multi effects units with very high quality sounds and operation based on how single effects pedals are used and tweaked.<\/p>\n

Line 6 first came out with the M13 which hosted all the digitally modelled sounds from their popular pedal ranges in a Bob Bradshaw style board. Thing is, even though it was great it was still a little bit large especially when most guitar players want to combine with it their favourite overdrive boxes, and these days pedal board real estate space counts for everything.<\/p>\n

So the geek in me got a little bit overexcited when they launched the M9 which basically has the very same effects as the M13 but in a much smaller package. It\u2019s about the size of their famous green DL4 delay pedal, but still has every effect Line 6 model on it! So that includes all of their delay models, all of the modulations, plus the filters (wah wah etc), reverbs, distortions, a decent tuner and even a looper too. It doesn\u2019t do POD style amp simulations but that\u2019s not the point of it. It\u2019s more for the player who wants access to a variety of effects to integrate into their existing board with existing pedals for a flexible, lightweight and compact setup. Perfect for me \u2013 so I got one!<\/p>\n

\"Line-6-M9\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The M9 has six effect selector buttons (+ a tap tempo) with 3 effects usable at any one time. If that doesn\u2019t sound like much, I like to use a variety of effects, especially textural sounds for worship and I find I\u2019ve got plenty of scope especially if all my drives come from my existing analogue stomp boxes. You also get 24 \u2018scenes\u2019 allowing you to set up virtual pedal boards for different types of bands (worship band, function band, originals band etc) or if you prefer, specific effects for 24 different songs.<\/p>\n

There is some talk on the web about the overdrives not being \u2018quite\u2019 as good as the modulations and delays. Yes the delays and mods are excellent, but I have compared the overdrives back-to-back with a few choice pedals and I\u2019ll be honest, I would choose my units over the digitally modelled one in a blind test. But in the real world, with a decent amp, good guitar but coupled to a bad church PA with a sound tech who probably wont EQ you right anyway, they really are fine on their own.<\/p>\n

So for me the M9 plus a couple of stompers on a mini board is enough for most settings but for things like function bands I\u2019ll just take the M9 out on its own and be really happy.<\/p>\n

What I\u2019ve found really helpful though is the way Line 6 have built the power supply. They are one of the only companies I know that have some pedals (e.g. this one and the big 4 button DL4, MM4 etc) that can run on AC or DC 9 volt standard negative tip power. The M9 is pretty power hungry, but if you can find a man enough power supply it means in theory you can run a few pedals and the M9 off one plug. As standard you get their own AC power adapter, i.e. the same one that comes with the ubiquitous POD but I find this bulky and heavy. A Pedal Power Unit could probably run it but I\u2019ve found a solution in the Stompbox 8 from effectpedalsupplies.com. This (slightly larger) OneSpot alike unit has a 3000ma rating, comes with 8 daisy chain plugs, auto switching between 110 \u2013 240 volts and even three different worldwide plug adapters, all for \u00a330. Bargain! So now I\u2019ve got a small, lightweight effects rig that covers a multitude of applications. If you haven\u2019t fallen asleep yet, I\u2019ll explain some more thoughts about my rig in further posts!<\/p>\n

\"stompbox-8\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Just as a caveat – Line 6 don\u2019t tell you about the DC\/AC power option choice anywhere on their marketing material. I.e. they only recommend you use the supplied supply! This is something I discovered talking to a few people, and doing a bit of research. So please be sure of what you are doing before you plug in a different power supply to your pedal. If it goes bang, you have been warned!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve started to downsize my rig lately. Partly because a) I can\u2019t be bothered with multiple trips to the car, b) lots of amp and pedal companies are starting to cotton on to the convenience factor of smaller more portable gear, c) I sometimes take my rig on my motorbike (seriously!) and d. I think […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":540,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nGear Confessional - my pedal rig (for those who care!)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"If you are wanting to downsize the number of pedals you use, try the Line 6 M13 and the Stompbox 7. 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