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Thanks for sharing your ongoing process
Bill. You sound happy with your streamlined rig, and I’m sure that your
lower back will be a lot happier too J > 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. The things I loved most about your Y2K7 set had nothing to
do with sound design my man. AARRGGH! Why do you people have to bring this stuff up while
I’m trying to get my head around new gear and pedalboard controller
moves?! Cruel, cruel loopers! J Yours, ~Greg From: William Walker
[mailto: 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 |