Anyone abandoned individual pedals and gone back to a multi-FX?

kjdowd

I had a couple of pedalboards on the go and was well down the rabbit hole. Have since gone Fractal FX8 - Helix - Fractal AX8 (decided I wanted amp modelling too, and the helix filled a hole until the AX8 came available). V much doubt I will go back to a pedalboard. Multi-FX quality is right up there these days (and prob as been for a while). Drives are always the issues, but there's usually something in there.

For me, the multifx thing makes me concentrate on playing more than gear. Weirdly, I also find myself using the guitar controls more with the AX8 than I ever did with a real amp and pedals. Not sure why that is.

Teetonetal

I way preferred the gt5 to the gt6. But it's a 20 year old unit now. Aren't there quite a lot if limitations regarding fx oder etc? 

This is where helix and es8/5 score hugely for me. The ability to do complex RE routing from an interface. Huge step forward and no more rewiring. So long as your pedals remain the same...

jaytmon

I recently took the plunge into FX8 territory, but I've found I still prefer analogue drive pedals, so I use them. Time based and modulation effects are generally pretty awesome to be fair, but time spent setting it all up has been a ballache and I'm still not entirely happy.

I tried a T.C. Electronics Nova System a few years back and didn't get on with it at all. I thought the FX8 was the answer to my prayers, but whether I keep it long term or not remains to be seen. 

What I decided was that if I didn't like it, there's nothing stopping me going back to individual pedals. Try it as an experiment, see how you get on!

vasselmeyer

I really liked my Line 6 M13. It was great for mods, reverbs, delays and even the wahs were good. I wasn't too keen on most of the drives but the Tube Drive and Boost Comp were great. It even worked in 4CM. I suspect if it had channel switching then I'd still have it. I've gone to a BOSS ES-8 which is much bigger but is amazingly flexible.

digitalscream

Yes, the GSP1101 - and now I've gone back to pedals.

Of course, I was trying to solve a different problem to you (specifically one-touch-ness), and realised I was lugging around a rack unit just for delays and reverbs...and I didn't really like reverb anyway, so now I have a MIDI-controlled Eventide Time Factor with a MIDI relay unit for the amp.

Horses for courses. Digital's pretty much king of most things these days, so unless there's something you're absolutely wedded to in terms of an analogue effect, there's no reason not to.

When the Helix comes down to Eleven Rack prices, I'll probably end up getting one of them anyway.

ToneControl

I had a vg88, great fun
then a vg99 - even better - could do insane  tunings and textures
I sold that when I got an AxeFx2, since I now tend to use dedicated guitars for tunings I like, and the only vg99 patches I was using were done as well on the AF2

I'd say get a vg99 or AF2 (or a vg88)

For FX into a valve amp.  I still use separate pedals.

StuartMac290

Yep, for live use I've gone to an FX8. Still have a board for studio use, though. 

english_bob

I'd quite like to, but I can't do it.

For gigging songs with fixed arrangements it's fine, but I spent the last year or so of my last band doing more writing and arranging at rehearsals than gigging, and in that sort of context where I don't necessarily know what sound I want for a given part I'd much rather have the flexibility of individual pedals. I found the restriction of not having access to every effect under the sun creatively stimulating too- I worked with what I had rather than spending ten minutes constructing my own little sound world of half a dozen effects, only to find that it didn't sound as cool as I thought it would.

Sure, once everything was written there were times when I wished for the ability to change multiple things at once the way you can with a multi-fx, but that would most likely have involved spending as much as I had invested in my pedalboard again, and several hours of programming (if I was lucky) to reproduce all the sounds I wanted. I don't have the time, the money or the delusions of rock star excess for separate "business" and "pleasure" rigs.

If I were playing a more fixed setlist- say, with a function band or something where I'd know before the first rehearsal of a new song roughly what sounds I needed, then I'd probably seriously consider going the multi-fx route.

ICBM

english_bob said:

For gigging songs with fixed arrangements it's fine, but I spent the last year or so of my last band doing more writing and arranging at rehearsals than gigging, and in that sort of context where I don't necessarily know what sound I want for a given part I'd much rather have the flexibility of individual pedals. I found the restriction of not having access to every effect under the sun creatively stimulating too- I worked with what I had rather than spending ten minutes constructing my own little sound world of half a dozen effects, only to find that it didn't sound as cool as I thought it would.

Sure, once everything was written there were times when I wished for the ability to change multiple things at once the way you can with a multi-fx, but that would most likely have involved spending as much as I had invested in my pedalboard again, and several hours of programming (if I was lucky) to reproduce all the sounds I wanted. I don't have the time, the money or the delusions of rock star excess for separate "business" and "pleasure" rigs.

If I were playing a more fixed setlist- say, with a function band or something where I'd know before the first rehearsal of a new song roughly what sounds I needed, then I'd probably seriously consider going the multi-fx route.

That's the reason I have an insistence on one particular mode of operation which is not universal on multi-FX… I don't ever want to switch patches on the fly, with a resulting complete change of 'soundscape' - what I want is the ability to save what are effectively different pedalboards on a per-song basis, then turn on and off individual effects. That's exactly how I ran my SE-70, but it has the limitation that you can only use two footswitches with it. The GT-5 has five - or even six, if you assign the CTL pedal to one of the effects. You can recall a patch then switch to Manual mode and use it just like an analogue pedalboard.

The fault with the ME-50 is that although it does have a Manual mode, it's a single separate preset which doesn't track the patch you're on - it reverts to the current knob settings. Which is fine if you only want to use one range of effects, but useless for me… that's why I've sold two of them - I bought the second because I missed a couple of the sounds, but it wasn't enough.

John_A

I had a GT-3 lying around from years ago and came up with the bright idea of using it rather than my pedalboard for rehearsals and backup, it really didn't sound anywhere near as good as I remembered, so sold it.  However lots of people use them and sound great.  Have a Helix now which is in a whole different league, but then again it was 20 times the price so it should be!

i also have a Zoom G3 which I think sounds great, so would recommend one of those or a G5 if you want something bigger and more flexible, IMO they sound loads better than the old Boss stuff, can comment on newer Boss multi FX units as I've never had one

RocknRollDave

I have a Boss GT-5 sitting around here that a mate of mine was getting rid of years ago and insisted I had off him for nowt. If you fancy trying it out, I'm happy to ship it to you for postage at cost on long-term loan.

dindude

No, I have tried to like multi effects many times, and admittedly I've not tried the high end stuff like FX8 and Helix. 

At at the lower / middle end though (Zoom /GT100 /GSP1101 / Line 6 M series etc), none of it competes with a decent anolog counterpart IMO i.e. Certainly for drive and modulations. Reverb and delays are the only digital fx allowed on my life, but these only work if you get a blended anolog signal dry through.

i also find menus abhorrent on guitar gear.

i appreciate this makes me sound either like a tone snob / or Dan for TPS!

RocknRollDave

My, very limited, experience is that Multi FX are great for modulation, reverbs and delay but pants for OD.

...but then I haven't really tried out the OD on a Multi FX unit for donkeys' years

EricTheWeary

I may have missed it but there doesn't seem to be a multi fx that does just that - mods, verbs, delays - unless you go relatively posh like the H9. One of the Zoom ones ( CDR) pretty much does but then you have to scroll through for patches (IIRC) and that's pants live. Something like an M9 with no drives, bit more compact, £200, add drives/fuzz/wah/tuner to taste and that's your pedalboard done. Considering that the sounds in a £99 Zoom are up to the job (jam night, pub level gigging)then putting them in usable format seems like a plausible thing to me.

RocknRollDave said:

My, very limited, experience is that Multi FX are great for modulation, reverbs and delay but pants for OD.

...but then I haven't really tried out the OD on a Multi FX unit for donkeys' years

 

RocknRollDave

@EricTheWeary

Agreed. I have a zoom multi-FX stompbox sized effort which has great sounds and is easily good enough for all my trem, autowah, delay, phaser etc etc needs. It also has decent enough amp simulations to get me through a "NO AMPS ALLOWED!" gig. Only problem is that since my Boss DD-whichever-it-was died, I need the Zoom for my delay pedal and switching other patches/ effects in/ out mid-gig on the Zoom is something that still eludes me - I have sat with the instruction book to try and programme patches and can't get it to do what I think it is supposed to do - so it remains a "one effect at a time" unit for me. I'd love to have some tremolo on, but that means having to squat down and change it to delay later in the set...

english_bob

ICBM said:

That's the reason I have an insistence on one particular mode of operation which is not universal on multi-FX… I don't ever want to switch patches on the fly, with a resulting complete change of 'soundscape' - what I want is the ability to save what are effectively different pedalboards on a per-song basis, then turn on and off individual effects. That's exactly how I ran my SE-70, but it has the limitation that you can only use two footswitches with it. The GT-5 has five - or even six, if you assign the CTL pedal to one of the effects. You can recall a patch then switch to Manual mode and use it just like an analogue pedalboard.

That seems to me like a superior way of working, for a gigging musician anyway.

I did use my Zoom G3 in a similar way with that same band for quite some time- when I joined, the majority of the existing material was quite simple and folk-y, so all I really needed were a couple of delay settings and an overdrive. For any more than three effects at a time though it got complicated because you'd have to scroll across to the effect you wanted to switch (pressing two metal clicky switches at the same time, which is a bit too taxing for me in the middle of a gig). 

I switched to pedals eventually- as we developed more stuff that needed different effects it became more practical. I was using the G3 on a little pedalboard anyway- I had my Polytune to circumvent the shit onboard tuner on the G3, and I needed an external switch for tap tempo on the delays. I figured that I was carrying a pedalboard to gigs anyway, so it didn't really make any difference to setup/teardown times what was on it, and apart from the practical problems of using it for more than three effects, the G3 just didn't sound as good as the individual effects.

Where I wished I had multi-fx style switching back again was when we wrote a song that required me to go from a clean sound with delay, reverb and compression, to a dry sound with overdrive and octave down, back to the clean/delay/reverb/comp sound, then to an overdriven sound with delay within about 32 bars. While singing backing vocals. Ideally without distracting too much from our singer by doing a full Fred Astaire routine too.

ICBM

english_bob said:

That seems to me like a superior way of working, for a gigging musician anyway.

Thank you . It took me quite a while to formulate that idea so simply - I originally started doing it because of the switching delay when changing patches on old multi-FX, but I quickly realised it had real benefits for a consistent sound in each song, which is where I feel a 'soundscape change' type setup falls down.

The way I had the SE-70 set-up was very simple - each patch was set and named for each individual song, so as long as I was playing the song it said on the box, I couldn't go wrong! No matter what the exact effects they turned on, the left footswitch was always 'louder/solo' (ie dirt, volume boost etc), and the right one was always 'special effect' (modulation, delay etc) appropriate to the song, and the expression pedal controlled whatever parameter it needed to. Totally idiot proof.

The limitation with it was that it was by its very nature also very rigid. Great when I wanted everything exactly as I had previously wanted it, not if I wanted to do anything different. The SE-70 isn't the easiest box to edit on the fly - even though I got very good at it, it was still multiple button-pressing and scrolling which just takes time, and there's no way around that.

But single pedals are also very rigid in their own way, and that's started to frustrate me too...

EricTheWeary

RocknRollDave said:

@EricTheWeary

Agreed. I have a zoom multi-FX stompbox sized effort which has great sounds and is easily good enough for all my trem, autowah, delay, phaser etc etc needs. It also has decent enough amp simulations to get me through a "NO AMPS ALLOWED!" gig. Only problem is that since my Boss DD-whichever-it-was died, I need the Zoom for my delay pedal and switching other patches/ effects in/ out mid-gig on the Zoom is something that still eludes me - I have sat with the instruction book to try and programme patches and can't get it to do what I think it is supposed to do - so it remains a "one effect at a time" unit for me. I'd love to have some tremolo on, but that means having to squat down and change it to delay later in the set...

I'm always saying that multi fx do too much. The answer is always 'you don't have to use it all' but I want them to be as user friendly as possible - editing stuff out of presets or scrolling past unused options just makes life harder. I know that for many people setting up a preset on multi fx is no more challenging than sending a text but there is, I think, a reasonable group of people who like the idea of a multi but find them hard to get on with and little is meeting that demand.  If you look at the flyrig type stuff (including the T Rex ones) that's close but again so much of the real estate is an overdrive that you don't necessarily want and they don't have the flexibility of a 'proper' multi.
Oddly enough my favourite multi ( sort of)at the moment, based on YouTube content, is the Keeley Dark Side. A pedal aimed at getting David Gilmour sounds - fuzz, modulation, delay in one box. Much as I don't really like Pink Floyd Keeley seems to have inadvertently designed a great pedal for 70s reggae!

relic245

I bought a gt5 the week that they came out, paid over £500 for it in the 90's. I still swear that after all of the gear I've owned that the best sound I ever had was the vox model of the gt5 into the front end of a fender vibroking . I've had a gt10 and gt100 too and to me they lost some of the character. You've got me thinking now.....

jaytmon

english_bob said:

Where I wished I had multi-fx style switching back again was when we wrote a song that required me to go from a clean sound with delay, reverb and compression, to a dry sound with overdrive and octave down, back to the clean/delay/reverb/comp sound, then to an overdriven sound with delay within about 32 bars. While singing backing vocals. Ideally without distracting too much from our singer by doing a full Fred Astaire routine too.

Another option to consider (that I tried for a while) is using a pedal switcher and programming that, with the added advantage of (hopefully) less signal degradation by bypassing unused effects. One that can be switched between manual mode and programmable mode. You still have the downside of considerable rearrangement if you decide to swap out pedals mind.