Big G wrote:
Speaking as someone who went from no effects to a couple of stomps, then full on multi-effects, and then back to stomps, I am not sure if I like this?
...and speaking as someone who has done the effects-go-round completely two times, I do like it.
Software
is the future, but it needs solid, gig-ready companion hardware to go with it. And user interfaces that even a
guitarist can use. ? And that is ever improving.
A change that has helped with this is that sound setups are increasingly well managed and controlled systems. Even small rigs are fairly high quality and feature-rich compared to days of yore. In-ear monitors are providing a reliable and consistent stage experience too, so there is far less need to continually tweak and be ready to cope with the chaos that used to be a live gig.
Another change is that more and more musos are conversant in technology and are used to dealing with more levels of the music creation process themselves - we are all becoming live, mixing and mastering engineers and a little bit computer geek on the side. As a generalist who has always thrown myself at every aspect of music I used to be the exception, now I'm fast becoming the norm.
What more could a man want (or woman)? ?
Compactness, control, flexibility, reliability, power and yes, even simplicity. Sure, there's more tweaking involved, but once you get your tweaks done, they are saved and there are less problems in the future - at the worst, you have a good starting point and a few gross changes in volume and tonality to suit the application bring everything into line (and that's a skill you learn). You do have to make sure you have quick and easy access to those controls that still matter in the heat of the moment - volume and tone, otherwise, once you've done your basic setup, you're done.
