What rig would you use?

Evo

Hi all!

I’m contemplating how to approach a new band I’m with in terms of the best rig to gig with them. 

There’s a few things I’m debating so I thought I’d see how folks on here would tackle each of the requirements. So, here’s what needs to be achieved, I’d be really interested to hear what would be chucked into the boot of your cars…(guitar/guitars?…amp?…fx?…modeller?…)

1) Classic Rock - There’s some Rainbow, some Queen, some Kansas, Deep Purple, you get the idea. 

2) Metal - There’s Metallica and Maiden which needs covering. Think tonally, but also this requires a trem of some sort. 

3) 80s Rock - I need the hot rodded Marshall thing going on for some Van Halen, Def Leppard, Bon Jovi etc. But there’s also some Toto in there so a Luke style chorus drenched tone with silly delays would also get used. 

4) Eb bits on a couple of tracks…2x guitars? Retune? Or pitch shifter?


I have enough gear that I can cover all the bases, but I also have some budget which could go into other options so I’m curious…

What would you take?

maltingsaudio

Two guitars and this

Nerine

One amp, one guitar and a modest pedalboard would cover that pretty easily. The tones aren’t that difficult to come by. My rig is setup to cover broadly similar ground. 

TheBigDipper

Just on the Eb side of things.

I'd either... tune my guitar to Eb and use a capo for standard tuning - unless you are happy with the chord voicing when playing songs whatever the underlying tuning is. 

Or.. take a second guitar and swap as and when.

Pitch shifting never sounds good to me as the player unless the guitar tone is pretty distorted. Even just a semitone down doesn't sound right for me if the guitar is clean. I used to play Dogs in one band, and the chords only sounded right if the guitar was tuned down 2 semitones. I took a guitar tuned and set up just for that song and tuning. Pitch shifting (Morpheus Drop) couldn't do it for me and I've not looked at pitch shifters since then. But that was 2011. I wouldn't be surprised if things had improved.

Jonathangus

We've got a couple of songs in our set which were originally tuned down to Eb.  We just transpose them up a semitone and play them in standard.

Cols

A Floyd-equipped superstrat, DSL40, a Crybaby and some sort of Boss multifx to cover the delays and modulation should do the trick.

Regarding the Eb stuff - any reason you can’t just do the covers in standard tuning (I.e. up half a step)?  Normally Eb tuning is used by a band for all their stuff to reduce string tension and bring things into the singer’s natural vocal range.  Or because Hendrix, SRV and EVH did it therefore cool.

In any case, if you really need to do it I’d bring a second guitar.  Pitch shifting wouldn’t sound great and the audience would get pissed off watching you retune your entire guitar between songs (which would be a disaster anyway with a Floyd-equipped guitar).

Nerine

Just on the Eb thing. The best tool for the job that I’ve found is the Digitech Drop. I’ve not found a better pedal for this. That includes the Virtual Capo in the Fractal units etc. 

Brad

This rig gets me through pretty much everything and certainly a lot of what you’re after which I also play often. 

HSS Strat
Wah
Compressor
Couple of ODs
The Sidekick jr is a great multifunctional pedal
Amp of choice 

Nerine said:

Just on the Eb thing. The best tool for the job that I’ve found is the Digitech Drop. I’ve not found a better pedal for this. That includes the Virtual Capo in the Fractal units etc. 

The Drop is an excellent pedal. There’s a few occasions where a band tunes to Eb and to save bringing another guitar or messing up the feel of one, I just use a drop. The tracking in Eb is exceptional and completely gig worthy. Once it gets lower than a tone, things do waver a little bit but on the whole, it’s well worth it and I always keep it with me just in case. The dry and octave is good fun too  

stickyfiddle

I prefer pitch shifting over a second guitar just for a different tuning for a couple of songs. 

The digitech stuff is great and the new boss one looks ace

But I’d also see if the singer can do it in standard before buying anything! 

matt_sefton

Nerine said:

Just on the Eb thing. The best tool for the job that I’ve found is the Digitech Drop. I’ve not found a better pedal for this. That includes the Virtual Capo in the Fractal units etc. 

I have the Boss XS-1 Poly Shifter and it does a superb job too. Plus you can go up as well as down.

Danny1969

I was in a well know Portsmouth hair metal band for 7 years in the nineties. We tuned to Eb and played everything in that tuning.

We covered Def Lep, Queen, Bon Jovi, Van Halen, Poison, Whitesnake, Toto, Cinderella, Kiss, Judas Priest, House of Lords, Mr Big, DRL, Rainbow, Metallica and more than I can remember.

I used a Marshall Jubillee with a delay and chorus pedal, other guitarist used a Fender Princeton Chorus

That music is so much fun to play. I don't listen to it but do miss playing it.

I would use a Marshall, a delay, and a chorus and just stay in Eb. Being a semitone  down helps with the vocals and the guitar is nicer to play.

snowblind

Brad said:

This rig gets me through pretty much everything and certainly a lot of what you’re after which I also play often. 

HSS Strat
Wah
Compressor
Couple of ODs
The Sidekick jr is a great multifunctional pedal
Amp of choice 

The lime green seat is an essential as well I suppose?

Brad

snowblind said:

The lime green seat is an essential as well I suppose?

Indeed, an integral tone stool

flying_pie

Line 6 HX one pitch shifter is great for Eb or even D.

I've covered stuff like that just using either a Friedman IR-J or Tonex One/Airstep TX with just 4 amp tones - edge, crunch, gain and high gain. Add in guitar volume, pickup selection and playing dynamics and you can cover loads without it seeming strange. With that you can use FRFR & PA but it's easy to turn off the IR and run into a power amp/cab 

Of course a 1 or 2 channel and a couple of pedals can cover that too 

You don't need absolutely song perfect tones. If your Maiden tone is more like VH or Ozzy then nobody is really going to mind. If you have a completely different tone for each song then it might start to feel disconnected, never mind trying to balance the volumes between patches.

Sounds like a great band to be gigging with

Fez

Compact: Laney loud pedal& HX one. A couple of superstrats.

Or Marshall amp HX one drive pedal if required 

Evo

Thanks for all the responses so far, it’s been very helpful to read how you’d all come at this. 

I figured now would be a sensible time to weigh in with how I originally approached and what I was considering changing. 

Firstly, I opted for a fractal fm3 into a Yamaha DBR wedge. I had no issues with the quality of the amps or the fx. 

Eb was handled via pitch shift block in the fractal. Again, no complaints as it was only really for Fuel by Metallica and Sweet Child O Mine, both of which feature wah which can help cover up any digital artifacts. 

One thing which was apparent was that multiple sounds are definitely needed. The VH and Metallica stuff could possibly share some tones but the earlier Rainbow style stuff just had too much bite and snarl when warmth and thickness was needed. 

This was really illustrated in the cleans too. VH/Def Leppard style stuff needs that JC120 style chorus spank, but a lot of the other tracks needed that “plexi with the volume backed off” thing. Then slap bang in the middle of the two is the Lukather clean (but in fairness I could probably get away with either). 

I think based on these suggestions I’m going to stick with the FM3 and pitch shifting for now. I’m going to simplify a bit and hop between a plexi based preset and a jcm800 based one and see if that ticks the boxes.