Preset overload

["Michael P. Hughes, PhD" <M.Hughes@surrey.ac.uk>]

D_:
> The reissue of the Looper's Delight Subscriber's CD #1 is now available
> directly from Help Wanted Productions via Mail order.

Could someone put this on the WWWPage?

Tim:
> I agree with Travis Hartnett.  Get agreat effects rig and then turn off 
>all
> the settings if you want to but I disagree with the idea that you have 
>more
> possibility with less tools.

This little dilemma has had me pondering for years, sending me into a trap 
from
which I am only just emerging now.  I love playing through a great amp, 
with
nothing more than the onboard reverb and a delay pedal, maybe a volume 
pedal
too.  A single channel amp like the Boogie Subway can do it all; from jazzy
clean to raucous, infinitely-sustaining rock purely by adjusting one's 
picking
style.  Or taking another axample, like keyboard instruments; the piano is
probably the most versatile instrument ever (bugger to carry though).  
It'll do
jazz, it'll do blues, rock, classical, and I personally think it's got THE
funkiest bass sound ever.  Nowadays, it's one of 256 presets on your Yamaha
WD-YTRVFFD113 Groove-o-rama.  I'm sure that piano on the Yam sounds as 
good as a
Steinway, but because the user has so much choice, they're far less likely 
to
spend the requisite amount of time getting "inside" the sound.  Great 
sounds are
the easy way out, instead of technique and musical depth.

Back to my dilemma.  Of course, I love playing around with FX and I love 
all the
great records with lost of effects on them.  But I've been terrified of 
getting
a big FX unit because the notion of having 100 sounds available on-tab 
scares
me, it really does.  Which should I choose?  Will I know how to get the 
best out
of it?  Will I even remember where they all are?  This has stopped me 
ploughing
any of my meagre resources into either device (amp or processor) until I
resolved which route to take.  This has taken years.  I've finally gotten 
out of
this by a little research, and a little pact with myself.  The Boss GT-5 
multiFX
has goodness-knows how many available memory slots, but the footswitches
organise it into 5 banks of 5 presets, and you have to manually push a 
button to
switch between different groups of these 25 presets.  So what I'm going to 
do is
make a pact with myself to restrict my programming to ONLY the first 25 
slots.
A bank of clean, a bank of distorted, a bank of other instruments (bass,
hammond-ish), a bank of wierd etc.  That way I can get inside all the 
voices,
and avoid just using FX just for special effects - which is dangerous, 
because
once one has been used it loses its effect (no pun intended) for the rest 
of the
gig.

I'm leaving the option of adding a Boogie Subway into the rig at a later 
date -
the preamp will go into the FX loop of the Boss.  So ironically, this lush,
controllable tone _will_ just end up as one more voice in a bank of 
hundreds....

> Besides, no man is an island, is she?

Paul Simon was!

Mike

PS I nearly replied to the comments about the US, Europe and WWII, but held
back - there is off message, and there is RIGHT off message, and this is 
really
NOT the forum for this kind of discussion.