Pros/cons of multi-fx pedals vs. Separate pedals

chrisj1602

I think going forward I am going to use both. I love my HX Stomp but miss some of the pedals I sold to buy it. The Stomp is perfect for home and recording and can certainly be used live but I like having pedals when playing live so I can make quick adjustments.

Majorscale

Having been around this loop at least four times, it’s real pedals for me. The pros (sound, feel, usability, “swap-ability”) outweigh the cons (cabling, tap dancing for complex tones, expense).

Voxman

ICBM said:

Beaten to the ME-50 .

It really is a great halfway house - most of the standard effects you’re likely to want, all controlled with knobs not push-button editing, and you can configure it as individual pedals or programmed patches. It does have some limitations, but for a typical second hand price of around £100 it’s unbeatable in my opinion.

Most remarkably of all, some of the digital drive settings are genuinely as good as their analogue equivalents - that’s not an exaggeration, and I am very fussy.

I prefer it to the more up-to-date ME-70, although that does have the advantage of amp modelling which the 50 doesn’t - although it does have a very basic speaker-emulated output which would get you by if your amp went down.

After many years with an analogue pedalboard I am now a confirmed multi-FX user...

The amp modelling in the ME70 and ME80 is way too digital. For inexpensive effects in a smaller, lighter unit, I concur...stick with the ME50 as it's the best value used. The ME70 and ME80 do give better foot switching options though. 

A very good friend of mine has the ME80. I disliked the amp modelling and although the distortions are useable I don't share @ICBM 's enthusiasm as most are not great IMO, but the FX are mainly very good. 

If you're going to use just a few patches or just as a simple stomp set up, these units get the job done. But for anything more involved for gigging, for me personally the biggest problem of all these units is a lack of patch naming. 

Although I have a conventional pedal board for the last 5 years I've used my Vox Tonelabs (SE and LE) for gigging. A used TLLE will give you a really good combination of good quality amp models (very important for me), effects, patch naming (vital for me) stomp option, Expression pedal, MIDI, control pedal, tuner and more, and it's simple to tweak on the fly. 

2 months ago I bought a Line 6 Pod Go which is blindingly good and the first MFX unit at a sensible price that has been able to wrench me from my Tonelabs.  So, although @ICBM and I have adopted different solutions, we are both confirmed MFX devotees.   

  

exocet

So I had my first gig last weekend - it was outdoors (obviously), so I opted for my AX8.
I have it with two external expression pedals which are set for Wah and Volume.
This is the first time that I've used the AX8 live for 6 months - fired it up, no issues - played for a bit and thought "this sounds a little bright" - so I turned the treble control down a bit and then saved it in the current preset.....as a SCENE! - nice and easy.
It turns out that it was bright because the Wah was off it's end stop so had engaged itself and I'd now saved the Wah's new default "on" state into the Preset / Scene.
It took me half the gig to work out why the Wah kept engaging every single time I changed to Scene 2 - my only course of action was to keep disengaging it everytime.
I've corrected it now though next gig on Friday, I'm going back to pedals!!!

Handsome_Chris

exocet said:

So I had my first gig last weekend - it was outdoors (obviously), so I opted for my AX8.
I have it with two external expression pedals which are set for Wah and Volume.
This is the first time that I've used the AX8 live for 6 months - fired it up, no issues - played for a bit and thought "this sounds a little bright" - so I turned the treble control down a bit and then saved it in the current preset.....as a SCENE! - nice and easy.
It turns out that it was bright because the Wah was off it's end stop so had engaged itself and I'd now saved the Wah's new default "on" state into the Preset / Scene.
It took me half the gig to work out why the Wah kept engaging every single time I changed to Scene 2 - my only course of action was to keep disengaging it everytime.
I've corrected it now though next gig on Friday, I'm going back to pedals!!!

@exocet , is it because when you saved Scene 2 the wah was on?

ICBM

exocet said:

I've corrected it now though next gig on Friday, I'm going back to pedals!!!

I've left the wah on and spent ages "fixing" the "bad tone" with separate pedals too, it's no defence!

One of my big bugbears with multi-FX is finding that no sound comes out or it's just unusually quiet, checking the guitar volume control, checking the cables, checking the amp... then finally noticing that the expression pedal is heel-down, which with most of them - when the wah isn't engaged - makes it a volume pedal. That's something I would prefer to have to deliberately select, since I very rarely use a volume pedal.

Handsome_Chris

ICBM said:

One of my big bugbears with multi-FX is finding that no sound comes out or it's just unusually quiet, checking the guitar volume control, checking the cables, checking the amp... then finally noticing that the expression pedal is heel-down, which with most of them - when the wah isn't engaged - makes it a volume pedal. That's something I would prefer to have to deliberately select, since I very rarely use a volume pedal.

My workaround for this is to create a stock preset with everything 'as it should be' accord to my method of working.  Any other presets that I need for particular songs are just a mutation of that.  This means that I can plug into any amp and tweak the pedals accordingly.  This is due to the pedals in the original being linked to the pedals in the other presets.

exocet

Handsome_Chris said:

exocet said:

So I had my first gig last weekend - it was outdoors (obviously), so I opted for my AX8.
I have it with two external expression pedals which are set for Wah and Volume.
This is the first time that I've used the AX8 live for 6 months - fired it up, no issues - played for a bit and thought "this sounds a little bright" - so I turned the treble control down a bit and then saved it in the current preset.....as a SCENE! - nice and easy.
It turns out that it was bright because the Wah was off it's end stop so had engaged itself and I'd now saved the Wah's new default "on" state into the Preset / Scene.
It took me half the gig to work out why the Wah kept engaging every single time I changed to Scene 2 - my only course of action was to keep disengaging it everytime.
I've corrected it now though next gig on Friday, I'm going back to pedals!!!

@exocet , is it because when you saved Scene 2 the wah was on?

Something like that. I haven't plugged it in to AX Edit since so haven't looked more closely but it highlights issues with tweaking and saving "on the fly". I also don't have the Wah Block state displayed on the main performance screen - that's probably not wise!

Roland

Doesn’t the AX8 have an auto engage option for the wah?

ICBM said:

I've left the wah on and spent ages "fixing" the "bad tone" with separate pedals too, it's no defence.

You and every other guitarist. It hasn’t happened to me since I started using auto engage.

exocet

Roland said:

Doesn’t the AX8 have an auto engage option for the wah?

ICBM said:

I've left the wah on and spent ages "fixing" the "bad tone" with separate pedals too, it's no defence.

You and every other guitarist. It hasn’t happened to me since I started using auto engage.

The AX8 Wah Block can be set to engage with a switch (could be an AX8 control switch or an external switch built in to the Expression pedal). Or, you can set Auto Engage like I do, in which case the Wah State is triggered by the position of the Expression Pedal - you can set the value to be within a % of either end of the pedals travel.

Trouble is - I think I pressed "save" when the Wah was not fully off - the Wah Block was therefore "On" and this state was saved into a Scene for that Preset. The only way to turn it off whilst playing was to quickly cycle the pedal up and down again to use auto engage to turn it off again. I actually think it was Scence 1 (my clean / default sound). So going to Scene 2 (Drive) was fine but reverting back to Scene 1 engaged the Wah at its toe down treble setting......lesson learned!

hollywoodrox

ICBM said:

Beaten to the ME-50 .

It really is a great halfway house - most of the standard effects you’re likely to want, all controlled with knobs not push-button editing, and you can configure it as individual pedals or programmed patches. It does have some limitations, but for a typical second hand price of around £100 it’s unbeatable in my opinion.

Most remarkably of all, some of the digital drive settings are genuinely as good as their analogue equivalents - that’s not an exaggeration, and I am very fussy.

I prefer it to the more up-to-date ME-70, although that does have the advantage of amp modelling which the 50 doesn’t - although it does have a very basic speaker-emulated output which would get you by if your amp went down.

After many years with an analogue pedalboard I am now a confirmed multi-FX user...

I know a guy who gigs one in a tribute band with an amp sim box 

PeteC

I like both.   I have the Zoom MS70 too, but found that it’s noisy unless run off a very clean power supply. 

I still have plenty of pedals cos that’s what I’ve used all my life - so it’s kind of a habit thing too.  

DaevidJ

I made the switch from separates to multi fx (Pod XT and Floorboard) and back again. These days I am more happy with the pick and mix of separate pedals and living within certain limits. With the Pod as probably now with most multi fx there are so many options especially when you add amp modelling to the mix that it can be overwhelming. I love the tactility of pedals more, though tap dancing was a mare. I have learned though that I do not need to tap dance so much so long as I have timed the changes to fit in with the song. The main thing I love is being able to find a specific pedal and flavour of sound to meet a need, something which I find lacking in multi fx. 

Handsome_Chris

May I say that this has been a lot more civilised and reasoned discussion than similar threads comparing modellers to valve amps.

For my money, I believe that Boss have got it right with their GT-1000.  I find it easy to tweak on the fly, especially as they have Bluetooth apps for smartphones and tablets.