Re: tour vs Home and Cool USB foot controller

["William Walker" <billwalker@baymoon.com>]

  My tour rig to Europe ( and parden my redundancy if I have blabbed about this previously) was a  custom Tele thineline guitar (very light weight), A Chinese made Gretsch lap steel with a TV jones Supertron Pickup , a boogie formula preamp, a TC electronics G-sharp (for verbs and delays) , a Looperlative, a Gordius LG, a Keeley compressor, two expression pedals, a volume pedal, a Digitech Fs3x to control the G sharp. And  a  dual footswitch for channel switching on the Boogie. The rig performed great, but I got a hefty upcharge for over weight on the one interconnect flight I took between Zurich and Istanbul. 20 extra pounds = 90 euro, ouch.  I took this rig because I knew I was going to be recording and wanted the best direct sound I could get.  I will know next time to either carry my rack stuff on the plane instead of packing it in my suitcase,  Or , I may  end up taking some kind of all- in -one modeling amp to lighten my load. I’m still resisting this idea because I still haven’t found a modeler that doesn’t end up sounding harsh and digital to my ears. Also one short coming I have found with most modeling amp/effects  is that the reverbs usually suck and don’t have much flexibility.

 But, I’m open to suggestions. Anyone tried the Digitech GSP1101, Boss GT-pro, the latest line 6 rack job, or even the latest vox Tonelab LE. Are they getting better at sounding and feeling better or am I barking up the wrong tree? Stanitarium, I already know what you are gonna say J

 At home I will augment this gear with the following stomp boxes. A radial big shot, Duncan twin tube classic (it is), Dunlop 95Q wah, Keeley loop selector, Duncan shape shifter tremolo, Ernie  ball volume pedal, Line 6  DL-4, fulltone choraflange, and TC nova verb , and the following instruments. 2 custom strats, an Asher lap steel, Martin OM-18V, Martin 5-15 terz guitar, Pena flamenco, Renaissance RS-6, Weissenborn style 1, custom soprano strat.  My nephews 75 Gibson Les Paul  deluxe ( a chiropractor’s wet dream )., and  the following  amps : BF Princeton reverb, Vox AC10 twin, late 70’s vibrolux reverb. I have two pedatrainl pro pedal boards,  one for my stomp boxes and one for my loop rig, I rarely take both boards to a gig

Rarely used:  Roland Gr30, and Electrix Repeater.

  As for USB/Midi foot  controllers  that can work for lap tops,  the Gordius Little Giant is the Big Giant. It is more flexible than anything else I’ve seen on the market., and built better as well. I’m really happy with the feel and response of the switches, and the Expression pedal response is much smoother and more responsive than the FCB1010 ever was for me, (all three of them).  I like that the two additional switch jacks allow me to have 12 presets without switching banks, and that I can use readily available light weight expression pedals like the Roland EV-5  for its two cc ports. I have yet to enter the world of lap top looping but the Gordius has such deep midi implementation that I don’t think there is anything it can’t do as far as controlling modeling amps, loopers or soft synths for that matter.

Bill