Other pedal-related posts you might like:<\/h2>\n
Pedaltrain Mini \u2013 downsizing my rig<\/a><\/p>\n
I was reading a quote from the marketing guru Seth Godin a while back and he was talking about either making products that people love and if you can\u2019t do that make products that become less annoying. Example; people love their iPhones and to an extent forgive the foibles. I don\u2019t love my old Nokia, but would have been happy if it just worked well but it had a few navigational glitches that are just irritating to the point of wanting to change it. Old cars are the same. If you love your \u2018classic\u2019 then its little break downs aren\u2019t annoying, they\u2019re just part of its character, and if you give it a name things gets worse. Little Mabel is now free to throw all manner of automotive tantrums which somehow become part of her charm.<\/p>\n
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Bringing it back to topic, a similar situation exists for us guitarists and our pedals. We have a few treasured pedals that we love but the same can\u2019t be said about our pedal boards. You know the scenario. You buy a board and then spend ages assembling all your pedals in just the right order and something doesn\u2019t quite fit together. Maybe the board is just an inch too short or you can\u2019t quite get the connectors to fit. Then one unit won\u2019t stick with velcro and another needs an odd 26.5 volt power supply. It\u2019s like a giant puzzle that takes hours to figure out. Once it\u2019s all done you sit back, relax and remember you\u2019ve forgotten to include the tuner. And the lid won\u2019t close. So then you buy a bigger board. All your 37 pedals fit on but you pick it up and slip a disk. I had one student that actually used a metal door for his board. Then he needed a bigger car to carry it around\u2026<\/p>\n
So in the real world, especially playing at church when there\u2019s not a huge amount of time to set up, I just want a solution that works, quickly and easily without being annoying. I want quality sounds on a simple, lightweight board that can incorporate a few of my favourite pedals that all fits together and runs off one standard 9v power supply. Not too much too ask is it?<\/p>\n
In terms of what I use, I\u2019ve actually gone back to a crossover of traditional single effect stomp boxes for overdrives and distortions and multi effects for modulations and delays by using a Line 6 M9. It\u2019s a cut down version of their M13 multi effects unit that contains all of Line 6\u2019s modelling pedal effects. So you get over 100 drives, modulations such as tremolo, chorus etc, filters like wahwah, delays and reverbs. All in one easy to use unit with tap tempo and a good tuner. You can only access three effects at any one time but crucially it\u2019s only about the size of their ubiquitous green DL4. And because of its size, it\u2019s ideal to pair up with some of your favourite stomp boxes for your own familiar tones plus the flexibility to dial up weird and wonderful effects if you need them without having to carry around yet more hardware. To be honest this has been the idea of multi effects for years but this is the first time I\u2019ve seen it executed in such a portable, easy and familiar format with such high quality digital recreations of all the classic stompboxes.<\/p>\n
Any effect can be saved into one of 24 \u2018scenes\u2019. Each scene allows you to \u2018place\u2019 6 effects on your board and access 3 at one time. So you could have your worship band scene, your originals band scene, your weird and spacey ministry time scene or if you are really picky, a scene per song.<\/p>\n
But for me what makes it really accessible, (and I had to do a bit of digging to find this out) is it accepts 9volt AC or DC. Most other similar units don\u2019t do this and although it needs a fair bit of juice this means you can run it together with standard pedals from one plug. I bought a 3000MA stompbox8 from effectspowersupplies.com (kinda like a large OneSpot) which doesn\u2019t take up yet more real estate on your board like say a large Pedalpower unit does.<\/p>\n
So for me it\u2019s brilliant. I put just a couple of my favourite overdrives in front of it and use the M9 for mostly my modulations and delays and stick it all together on a Pedaltrain mini board. If the occasional song in church genuinely warrants and octave fuzz, I can find one quickly without having to take along a clunky unit and its weird 15volt supply. I think this is the first multi effects unit I don\u2019t find annoying, and in time as our relationship grows, I may even learn to love.<\/p>\n
There’s loads on getting to grips with guitar pedals on both the Intermediate Electric Guitar course<\/a>\u00a0and the original Intermediate Guitar DVDs<\/a>\u00a0(now at sale price). You can access our courses on DVD, as a permanent download or alternatively via our online streaming subscription site<\/a> (watch both in a single month and it will cost you just $30!)<\/p>\n Pedaltrain Mini \u2013 downsizing my rig<\/a><\/p>\nOther pedal-related posts you might like:<\/h2>\n
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