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Joined:
January 2005
Posts: 32
Location: Birmingham, Al | Hi,
I would like to explore different sounds. My current setup is a Legend LX through a fender acoustasonic jr. without dsp. Any suggestions for a bang-for-the-buck pedal?
Thanks,
Brent |
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Joined:
April 2004
Posts: 13303
Location: Latitude 39.56819, Longitude -105.080066 | Depends on what you are looking for.
My favorite pedal before I bought a rackmounted version was the BBE Stinger (no longer made).
Absolutely makes your guitar sing with an unbelievable fullness and clarity!
I have a list with a lot of pedals for sale if you would like me to email it to you. |
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Joined:
July 2004
Posts: 474
Location: Anchorage, Alaska | The only pedal I have is a GAS pedal. Oh sorry, I don't think that is what you were looking for... |
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Joined:
December 2004
Posts: 4394
Location: East Tennessee | Alaskan Fly Guy,
I have Gas Attacks, the offer to restring your U681T still stands. :D |
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Joined:
May 2003
Posts: 4389
Location: Capital District, NY, USA Minor Outlying Islands | Mmmh ... I'd look for a cheap multi effects pedal to get some ideas, before I invested in a series of stand alone pedals. Zoom makes the 505 and you can find them on ebay pretty cheap. If you want ideas as to what some pros use, do a search here on Matt Smith or Kaki King's setups. Good luck. |
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Joined:
December 2001
Posts: 10582
Location: NJ | i have probably owned nearly every pedal known to man. what are you looking for> |
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Joined:
January 2002
Posts: 14127
Location: 6 String Ranch | The Boss RC-20XL is interesting. A loop pedal, you can play with yourself for hours, or till the batteries run out! |
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Joined:
March 2002
Posts: 14842
Location: NJ | . . or 'til your wife catches you . . . |
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Joined:
November 2003
Posts: 11039
Location: Earth·SolarSystem·LocalInterstellarCloud·Local Bub | Originally posted by cliff:
. . or 'til your wife catches you . . . ...and says, "Put That back in MY drawer!!" |
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Joined:
December 2001
Posts: 7222
Location: The Great Pacific Northwest | First a little background I started way back with an amp. I wanted more distortion and added a booster. In later years I collected all sorts of stomps for this and that, and eventually replaced with rack units. I tried several, but ended up back with two amps, and a Rockman for stage. Then I built a floor unit for all my favorite effects. Several years later, I went with Rockman rack units, which are single units for each effect, but they are half-rack size. Now I'm back to just using an amp mostly.
- If you need to learn what the different effects are, or if you are experimenting and need to find "the effect" to use on a tune, then get a nice multi-effect that's easy to switch between effects. Behringer makes a V-Something... and POD is a little higher end, I hear the Zoom is good but haven't tried it. The key is being able to just press "delay" and have a delay, or press "distortion" and have a distortion. Many multi-effect pedals or rack units are NOT this straight forward. You have to program them to make anything useful out of the effects.
- Once you find the effect you want, and you think you are going to use a lot, start looking for a stomp for that effect.
- Unless you are playing covers and trying to mimic the rigs of an endless array of guitarists, I find the multi-effects units useless, unless you go really high-end. |
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Joined:
February 2004
Posts: 2487
| This member opens up a good question and some good answers already.
I guess After I started playing again I found that my old foot pedals were still somewhat available but were considered dinosaurs by most of the sales guy's. So figuring these new units were just the thing.... I took the plunge and bought a little Zoom pedal for my Acoustics and went for the Boss GT-6B for the Bass.
Well this may not be an answer but let me tell ya, I find The Zoom pedal is real nice but I rarely set the parameters far enough out to really stretch what this little unit is capable of. This, like most multi effects units, is nice when I am working out a set of music through the acoustic and I have the need for a different sound for each song. The patching abilities are the only reason I use this thing. I set it up so the patches go from a-z and 1,2,3 I simply write the patch number next to the song on the list.
It took me a while to figure out how to use it by the way. And I am always worried the batteries will crap out and I will loose memory?
My Bass is a different story, kinda, That Boss unit has some real good sounds. I personally like the Compression in this unit better than my old foot box and it is superior to most of my foot pedals but man This thing is difficult for me to use.
I find I set up my old pedals to find the sounds I am used to using then I try and go through each of the effects on the boss and match what I did on my old pedal units. I know this is a long message but I think my point is this; You really need to know what exactly you need effects for? The sounds I am using on my Bass are very similiar for a bunch of songs and with the few changes I really need I could still just my seperate foot pedals and be quite happy. I really do not the patching capacity of this Boss unit. I think I bought a great unit that is way more than I need. If your playing your acoustic for the most part and your just looking for some Chorus and rev etc. A good Acoustic Amp will set you up just fine. If you want to kick in a little extra Chorus or Delay then just get yourself a few pedals and you'll be just fine. If you really need completely different sounding affects on a bunch of different songs and it will be to hard to remember the effects you need and time consuming to reset or switch your foot pedals then a little effects unit like the Zoom that has memory presets is all you need. I don't even set mine on the floor I have it moounted on a short stand so I can have it close when sitting on a stool or standing behind a mic rarely have I ever needed to use it during a song for the parts I am playing. So I don't need my feet to switch it anyway. Almost everyone makes effects that sound fairly good. I mean how hard is it ..This technology has been around for a long time with very little change. And some of these newer units have so much "Shit" built into them it can take you months to get used to using them.
Electric Guitar players and of course lead guitarists may want to experiment with these monster units? For the rest of us I just do not see the need.
Our guitarist can play some of Joe Satrioni's stuff and all he uses is one of the new Fender Twin digital Amps and he tweeks the chorus and rev and lets his fingers fly. Sounds like he has a computer behind him but it's just the amp and finger speed that does it.
Randy |
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Joined:
May 2003
Posts: 4389
Location: Capital District, NY, USA Minor Outlying Islands | The zoom unit has to be programmed by the user. Still not bad if you're looking for ideas though. |
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Joined:
January 2005
Posts: 32
Location: Birmingham, Al | Thanks, for all the great ideas. I guess that I would like a boosted signal...just a hotter feed. The LR Baggs Para DI may do this, but it would be nice to have multi-effects to play with. I play mostly finger-style blues, so this may sound strange. It just seems that the OP Pro sounds better turned all the way up, so I thought that making the signal hotter would give me a better sound for harder edged stuff.
Thanks,
Brent |
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Joined:
November 2002
Posts: 1300
Location: Madison, Wisconsin | I just bought a few of the Para DI's and they are great. We use them with our high school band in church. Not the best guitars/pickups and the Baggs units really fix things up nicely. Easy to use and set up. If you watch fleabay, you can pick them up for under $100 used if your patient. |
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Joined:
March 2002
Posts: 14842
Location: NJ | I use an A.R.T. (Applied Research Technologies) "Acoustic" multi-effects pedal.
S'gotta BUNCH of different "preset" effects tailored for acoustic guitars. I mainly use it as a DI and add just a touch of detuned chorus to my live sound. It also has an adjustable "boost" footswitch that I use for fingerpicking or for the occasional "money shot" chord at the end of a song. The only problem is that they don't make 'em anymore, so the only way to procure one would be a "vintage" gear purveyor or FleaBay . . . |
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Joined:
April 2004
Posts: 13303
Location: Latitude 39.56819, Longitude -105.080066 | The best pedals are always the ones that are hard to find. Thank goodness I got my original Digitech Whammy as a new purchase. Could never afford what they sell for on ebay. |
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Joined:
April 2002
Posts: 202
Location: Orlando, Florida | Hey Long_Time_Picker...
I have a great suggestion, IMO. The DigiTech RP80, which is a multi-effects pedal is absolutely terrific! I have so much fun with this one, and the effects are fully adjustable, with many sonic possibilities. It really seems to fuel creativity, and the effects can be adjusted to sound really good. It features amp modeling, a drum machine, a chromatic tuner, and an expression pedal, which can be used for multiple applications, such as volume control, wah-wah, etc. It has 40 factory preset modeling/effects and allows another 40 user presets. It comes with a power supply or operates on 6 AA batteries. It costs about $80.00 new, and to me, it's worth it. Joe |
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Joined:
February 2005
Posts: 11840
Location: closely held secret | I was also going to suggest a digi. I've had several, and while the presets usually run to metal tastes, once you turn the gain down they are fun to play with. Best of all they're fairly low priced (at least at the rp80 end) and run up to the GeNetX, which are basically digital recording workstations.
RP80 would be a good starter pedal. |
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electronic pedals...any pedalphiles out there?