A bit of a fun, hypothetical (perhaps) thread, but what do you guys think the next 'big thing' in the wonderful world of FX is gonna be?
I think its fair to say the Quad Cortex was said product, but turned out to be a bit underwhelming it seems?
Just to say these can be real products you know are coming out as well as your 'dream' product, that might not necessarily exist (within reason).
For me, I'd be really keen to see Strymon step into the world of all-in-one units, with some sort of multi-fx modeller that combines all their pedals and the Iridium into one unit.
I also think the HX Stomp 2 will be amazing.
And when oh when are Kemper gonna release the next gen Kemper? Imagine a Kemper floor unit with inbuilt power amp for example.
Comments
The fact that "ive gone helix" became a regularly heard phrase with guitarists selling their amps says it all!
I think we don't know what the next generation will look like till we see it.
The cloud stuff was really the only thing that the quad cortex is doing that is new, aside from that, capturing, touch screens etc have all been done elsewhere.
I'd also like to see some more developments in lightweight amplification options along the lines of the Powercab, Redsound etc that help with a more satisfying "in the room " experience.
The Tone Master series is killing it for Fender so hopefully that sets a trend for other companies to follow.
View my feedback at www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/comment/1201922
I've come to think lately that being able to do knobs with labels on is a very good thing. Boss ME-80
And then somehow to make it small enough to be really convenient to move around and set up. About same size as TC plethora.
And then put a lithium rechargeable battery in it.
Then add wireless to your amp and your guitar (obviously zero latency)
Not sure about a big screen to see your settings easily.
Obviously I have no idea how to design something that ticks all those boxes. Apart from sticking together all of the boss 200 series pedals with gaffer tape and then applying a shrink ray, then sellotaping a battery underneath and then buying 2 lots of Boss wl-20 wireless dongles.
I am applying for a patent so if Boss releases this in future you saw it here first and I'll be a millionaire!
https://www.instagram.com/insta.guitarstuff/
they are currently using older processors and a hardware update should fix that and allow many improvements.
I suddenly got the itch for a quad and considered selling the keeper but after digging in beyond the hype it seems the metal guys are the most vocal about it. So decided to hold out till Kemper are ready.
I do think there are companies that are good technically but poor sonically in the modelling world and it’s probably a bit of a black art designing digital systems that do a good job of giving us a digital representation of some piece of 50’s or 60’s very analog technology.
for me currently Kemper is more than enough and the HX stomp fills in when I want something different..
Yesh I agree with this basically (although I don't know those effects!). More weird synthy stuff - I'd love for the digitech bass synth wah to be properly modeled.
For amps this has already sort of happened. Some modern tones might be very challenging to get from an amp and were always intended to be digital.
When it's run at less than that volume, the experience is just as underwhelming as a valve amp (no BOOM!).
So...they've recreated the exact same experience for me, sonically. Ideally, the next step would be to improve on it.
Of course, in the real world, they've improved on the overall experience by default, because a modeller is always vastly better in terms of usability and the quality-of-life stuff that 99.9% of the time you just don't get with valve amps without masses of expenditure (or at all in some cases). Patches, snapshots/scenes, routing, weight, reliability, lack of maintenance etc etc.
I don't think there's going to be a "next big thing" revolution, because it's already happened. Fractal brought modelling to the serious crowd, Kemper let you create your own "models", and Line 6 brought it to a reasonable price point.
The only thing I can think of is complete (and accurate) realtime component modelling, such that you could literally design your own amp from the ground up. While the market for that would be pretty small on the face of it, it would be more of a platform than a modeller - you could build a whole ecosystem around it. Open source amps!
Live or in the studio, I'm pretty much 100% in the digital domain. Or at least I would be if I didn't have to reconvert in order to go from one digital unit to another. My live set up is guitar into Helix, with a Boss SY-300 in one of the fx loops, into a digital mixer. My vocals go into a TC VoiceLive 2 then to the mixer and there is an analogue send from the Helix to the VoiceLive (so that the VoiceLive knows the key / chord).
Once digitised everything comes down to algorithms and processing power. I can see a future, not too far away, where I’ll just need to take my multi input interface (such as my Behringer XR-18) and my laptop. Everything will be native.
Trading feedback here