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TC Electronics G Sharp, and LESSISMORE



  For the last few years I’ve been pairing back my effects usage while my Looping has continued to become more complex. With my move to the Looperlative and its 8 track and bounce capability, I’ve found less and less need for complex effects  processing, and I’m sure it’s also a matter of my tastes changing as well. I used to be a chronic chorus and modulation abuser. At one time I even had a dedicated intelligent pitch shifter, the Digiitech IPS33B. These days my tastes run to clean guitar, a couple of flavors of overdrive, sparing use of compression, tap tempo delay (preferably of the ducking variety), and good reverb. Recently I dedicated my trusty TC model 1 to my acoustic guitar rig, and went looking for a worthy replacement for my electric rig. After reading a couple of reviews, I bought the entry level TC G-Sharp, a strait forward 24 bit dual engine DSP (god I sound like a car salesman). The G-sharp sounds fantastic, has great headroom and transparency, and has front panel knobs for on the fly tweaking.  It does an excellent  job of 2290 style dynamic (ducking) delay, but its tape simulation and lo-fi delay are just as convincing. The reverbs are also wonderful sounding, even concert hall verbs never get artificial sounding, and there is a color knob that lets you darken the reverb’s tone.  My only complaint is that you can’t increase feedback to the point on oscillation like you can on delays like the line 6 DL-4, but since I rarely do that, it’s a minor complaint. Also, you have a choice of either delay or modulation effects (excellent BTW),  not both simultaneously, as they share the same engine, and there isn’t a modulation delay algorithm, but I really don’t miss that.. Otherwise, this is an astonishingly good sounding effects unit, it doesn’t have many bells and whistles , but its tweak-able like a floor effect, and what it does, it does very well.

 I also bought a G Switch to control the G-sharp. This was a major disappointment for me as I’m used to tapping tempo with a non latching momentary style switch. The G-Switch claims to have momentary switches, hell it even says so right on the box,” Triple Momentary Switch Elements”, but the switches obviously have a very loud clicking latch type feel and sound, rendering tap tempo clumsy, with the added insult of sounding like a hoard hostile locusts cueing up for a swarm. I don’t know what they were thinking, I thought it was a mistake actually, I e-mailed the nice folks at TC, and after getting a, ” well,  it works with my TC Helicon” response,         I took the guys advice and tried another manufacturers triple footswitch pedal. Luckily my Digitech footswitch works fine with the G-Sharp, and is half the size and weight of the TC G- switch. Now I’m stuck with this clunky, noisy, bulky behemoth of a footswitch.  If this sounds appealing to anyone out there,  I’ll let it go cheap J

So I have paired my looping rig down too a Keeley compressor, a mesa formula preamp, the G-sharp, and the Looperlative, with a midi controller, and two pedals to channel switch the boogie and control the G-Sharp. At Y2K7 I essentially used this rig, but I also dragged my big stomp box pedal board, that I use on conventional gigs, along. I realized at the end of my set I had barely touched any of my stomp boxes, and I had a bit of a revelation that, Ah this has happened before... wasting energy setting up a mountain of gear only to not use half of it.  The other revelation that is somewhat obvious is that in pairing back the gear I end up playing more music and spending less time tweaking and thinking about sound design.  

Bill