Parallel mixing. And so it begins...

Jonathanthomas83

I bought my RJM Mini Line Mixer from @Gassage months ago and it's been sitting there waiting for me to "finish" my pedal board and get and idea of how I'm going to wire it. Well I've finished it (for now) and figured all that out. I took delivery of two RJM Mini Effects Gizmo's this week, one courtesy of @SpikeyMcSpikeFace and I finally got to plug them in today.

I was cruelly handicapped by a lack of patch cables, but managed to get three of the loops wired up to the mixer - a dry signal, a stereo feed from the El Cap and a stereo feed from the Big Sky. Each loop is able to be switched off, so I can benefit from a kill-dry for some smooth ambient washes with the either the delay or reverb, but it was awesome with the Big Sky, especially.



Looks messy as hell, but sounds absolutely outstanding. I didn't think it would make that much of a difference as I've got mix controls on the effects themselves, so expected it to be the same. But this sounds great, and it really opens up the sound and gives it space to breathe - makes it sound bigger!

Next up is to get a few more loops (I have 10 and need another 10ish), and another line mixer - then put it all neatly in a nice rack case! Oh yeah, and I'll need a way to control it all too! Any ideas? I like the compact nature of the RJM switching units as they don't have loops in them, something like a G-2 or ES-8 would be great, but I don't need the loops.

Jonathanthomas83

Looks like I took that photo in 2001 with my Nokia 3210.

Heartfeltdawn

Jonathanthomas83 said:

Looks like I took that photo in 2001 with my Nokia 3210.

I can give you the number of a woman who draws courtroom illustrations for news broadcasts if that'd be a help

SpikeyMcSpikeFace

Hey Jonathan - re control: check out the RJM Masterminds (the GT is a beast, but there's a smaller version too). Far & away the best MIDI controllers I've ever used. Enjoy ...!

BintyTwanger77

Ah who cares if it's messy, as long as it sounds good.

Jonathanthomas83

SpikeyMcSpikeFace said:

Hey Jonathan - re control: check out the RJM Masterminds (the GT is a beast, but there's a smaller version too). Far & away the best MIDI controllers I've ever used. Enjoy ...!

Thank you mate, I'll be sure to check out my options. To be honest, I'm enjoying this new setup enough to keep me happy until I've done my research. The RJM stuff is great, will be sticking to to their controllers, I think.

vasselmeyer

I have a BOSS ES-8 and one of the best things I have found is pedal re-ordering and parrallel loops. For example, putting a fuzz and an overdrive in parallel gives a distinctive sound that you can never hear from a serial effects chain.