All things pedal related.

[El°HYM]

While EHX - Pedals arent specifically made for Line - Levels they normally work pretty fine with those. Exception is the Overlord Thing which can be switched to Line, yet has a kind of weird Tone to it, imho.

[cptgone]

Welcome back cptgone!

indeed!!!

Thanks guys, it's good to be back.
I went through a rough patch, but many of the regulars were on my mind. I hope y'all are doing well.

A LOT of pedals will benefit from a reamp box. But it's not necessary for all. I've got Radial EXTC which is designed specifically for "using pedals in a studio setting" use.

While EHX - Pedals arent specifically made for Line - Levels they normally work pretty fine with those. Exception is the Overlord Thing which can be switched to Line, yet has a kind of weird Tone to it, imho.

All good info, thanks

[justin3am]

I also use EXTCs and ProRMPs for reamping with pedals and guitar amps. But sometimes I just run line levels right into pedals (or maybe through a passive attenuator). The EXTCs are nice because you can attenuate before hitting the input and boost the instrument level output. You also get a wet/dry mix and if you get the standalone version it has two effects loops.

I have a few fuzz pedals (including an old Big Muff) and a wah which will not pass line level signals at all. So for those pedals, a reamp box is needed.

Most digital pedals don't seem to care about impedence matching, as long as you aren't cliping the pedals inputs but since the outputs are designed to be fed to other pedals and amps, it's nice to be able to boost the output down stream, particularly if I'm planning to further process stuff with line level gear.

Many analog pedals will sound different depending on the impedence and signal level of the output to which they are connected. In cases like that, I experiment 'cause sometimes I actually like the rolled off sound I get when just running line level direct into the pedal.

I've encountered some issues when connecting a balanced TRS output to a instrument level unbalanced input, it's like some pedals don't react well if the negative/cold signal from a balanced connection is shorted to ground. I didn't do much experimentation on that one... so I'm not sure what was happening. I just stopped connecting TRS cables to pedals.

[El°HYM]

Coming from a Pedal + Synthesizer World, let me throw in another Reamping option here.
https://tkaudio.se/transceiver-2

[cptgone]

EU deal alert: many discounted products (musical and otherwise) at Slovakian shop Muziker (free delivery to Belgium over €199)

A few examples:
- Electro Harmonix 8 STEP €129
- Wampler Belle €133.19 with voucher "4SUMMER"

[vurt]

Welcome back cptgone!

indeed!!!

Thanks guys, it's good to be back.
I went through a rough patch, but many of the regulars were on my mind. I hope y'all are doing well.

we thought your pedal tower had fell on you and crushed you!!

sorry to hear about the rough patch, but happy to see you bounce back
you were missed

[cptgone]

we thought your pedal tower had fell on you and crushed you!!

I didn't realize the danger I was in until I read your post
I took immediate action.

My tower had a few disadvantages that bugged me.
Mainly the fact that some shelves had too little headroom, making it hard to identify knobs.

So I had another look at alternative solutions.
And I found a cheap metal rack, with 5 tilted shelves, made out of mesh.
It, too, is designed to house shoes (I'm a shoe rack gazer ).
Advantages, compared to the old wooden tower:
- tilted shelves
- mesh is see-through and hopefully will be gathering less dust
- mesh allows for PSUs to be ziptied beneath the shelves
- evenly spaced out shelves
- open sides, so I can plug my cheap M-Audio straight-jacked expression pedals into pedals at the edge

The old tower was meant to house Behringer PB600/PB1000 pedalboards, for a modular solution.
But those pedalboards wasted a lot of shelf 'headroom', so over time I got rid of the PB600s.
(They also have suboptimal power: daisy chain power cable, with insufficient mA for some pedals' needs - so I had already switched to Harley Benton PSUs, making the whole Behringer PB centered-ness a false-economy choice I regretted)

One huge Harley Benton pedalboard was sitting between the tower's legs, on a foot bench. Pulled out it gave my set up a terraced look (flanked by a Harley Benton pedalboard sitting on a laptop stand, hovering over another) which I found esthetically pleasing. But the new set up's clean look compensates for that (I did prefer the wood though, esthetically).

Here's a pic of my work in progress:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xl-h1g ... sp=sharing

While migrating my pedals to the new rack, I moved my stereo modulation pedals to another pedalboard (as I'm switching to recording in stereo). Sadly, I own 3 that have just a single mono input, so 2 of those will have to remain reduced to mono (EHX Ring Thing, MXR phase 99 - the lucky one being my EHX Electric Mistress, being smaller than the Ring Thing and more of a personal favourite than the MXR).

[pekbro]

Heh, that's a lot of pedals

I have close to that many as well I'm sure, I should look into a tower maybe. Mostly I just swap them out.

[justin3am]

Woah!
That's quite a tower! Looking good.

The EHX Super Pulsar was the thing that made me wish my whole pedal chain was stereo.

[vurt]

yeah, thats cool!
some nice pieces there too

[cptgone]

Heh, that's a lot of pedals

I have close to that many as well I'm sure, I should look into a tower maybe. Mostly I just swap them out.

I have them all chained up cause:
- I like to compare pedals
- I don't want to impede the creative process (and being used to have all VST's ready to go, I wanted the same immediate access to the pedals I bought the last few years)

There are, of course, disadvantages.
- overlong signal path + increased risk of pedals not getting along and causing noise (that never happened AFAIK, except in the case of my Behringer UC200 chorus, which I didn't like anyway and was able to sell)
- cost of cables and PSUs (luckily, Thomann's Harley Benton range offers unmatched value, even more so as I bought many PSUs at reduced b-stock price)
- I'm using a Harley Benton branded Joyo looper, which (affordable as it is) doesn't allow to re-order loops. In my old set-up it was hard to reach the cables to re-order loops manually, so I was kinda stuck having e.g. overdrives in front of fuzzes. Not anymore though

[cptgone]

- I had another idea to solve my problem routing mono in / stereo out pedals (of which I own 3).

There are pedal-sized mixers that would allow me to connect all 3 to the rest of my stereo pedals, using Y-cables (TRS to 2 x TS).
(The affordable ones prolly aren't hi-z though, and my EHX Ring thing is analog, so as justin3am pointed out, more likely to be impacted - not that that needs to be a deal breaker, as justin3am and El°HYM pointed out)

But... I'd need a tiny affordable 1[+] in / 4 out mixer to connect those pedals to the mono part of my pedal chain, upstream.
I cannot seem to find such a thing.
UPDATE: Lehle 1AT3 SGOS gets close: 1 in / 1-3 out (€198 at Thomann); Lehle P-Split Stereo can do the same, passively (€229).

- Therefore, I intend to resort to manually switching between the 3 mono-in pedals.
Due to pedalboard space restrictions, I'd also have to remove my stereo tc Vortex flanger from the chain (and buy a Y-cable long enough to reach my Harley Benton branded Joyo looper, for when i want to use said Vortex - assuming a TRS-to-2xTS would work).

[Uncle E]

I finally got a pedal I've been after for several years, the Zoom G5, and, welp, it's a bit a of a letdown. The sounds are probably fine (too early to tell) but the main reason I got it was for its dual axis expression pedal and that thing isn't nearly as useful as I was hoping it would be.

[mumpcake]

I was watching Austin City Limits last night. The War on Drugs were playing. Dude had one of the largest collection of pedals I've seen on stage in a while.

[cptgone]

It seems I was way too harsh about this pedal.

- The zero-length recordings are said to be unrequested surplus recordings (at the end of each requested one).
- if you have a USB cable with a mini-B connector, transferring recordings to a computer is said to work.
Sadly, that doesn't allow for easy management of recordings, as the storage is set to read-only in that context. Which also precludes putting exting recordings on the pedal.
Using the pedal's buttons, it's possible to delete any given recording, or delete 'em all.
The former is slightly awkward though, as there's no way to know if you've checked it to the end (IIRC). Which isn't a real problem unless you sometimes activate the pedal, and then wait a few minutes before you start playing.

I'd much prefer a stereo version though (so it can sit at the end of my chain).
Philippines, if you're listening...

Buyer beware: tc electronic Wiretap (a recording pedal, to quickly save musical ideas) seems to require the app of the same name to manage recordings, and it is a dysfunctional royal pain.

- to transfer recordings, the pedal must be paired over Bluetooth to a phone (mine is an up-to-date Motorola Android).
Pairing fails all the time, usually requires me to [repetitiously] restart my phone, and when it does work, the connection is lost when trying to transfer/delete seemingly corrupt recordings.
- many recordings seem to be corrupt, as transferring always gets stuck at the same % of completion. And you won't know, untill you notice (no notification).
Trying to delete 'm doesn't succeed either.
- the recordings can be long (8 hours recording time in total IIRC) so you can imagine transfer is sloooow.
- trimming a recording works, but the trimmed version can only be saved to a new file - which fails.
- uploading to GDrive fails (luckily I can circumvent this, using Android's Files feature).

I tried to update the pedal's firmware (it got a minor update 5 years ago) but I don't have a USB cable that fits.

Unless I find a solution, I have no use for such a thing - but I cannot even wipe it for resale.