Bedroom Guitarist : Multifx vs Amp+Pedals (Part I)

V8

Heya,

I'm going to be sharing some thoughts/opinions on topics I think we all can share all some insights on. So take my thinkings as a starting point for a discussion (and not fact!)

So comment away, feel free to tell me I'm wrong (or mad) - let the debate begin ?

I've always preferred multifx to pedalboards. Mainly for one illogical reason - you can store presets.

I don't play or gig a specific sound, so having a set of pedals dedicated to one specific set of noises makes no sense to me. Particularly on delays - I tend to play a lot with delays so I'd forever be fiddling to get that combo of delay&feedback times as I jam about.

The other obvious plus is bang for buck, you do get a lot of toys!. Also, if you are new to the world of fx (outside of drive/distortion pedals) - it's a cheap way to try out a lot of sounds.

There's two main flavours of multifx (though they do overlap)

Pedalboard style - usually just fx and designed to work with your amp (usually in the fx loop). I think of it as a pedalboard, because you can switch individual effects via the footswitches, without having to change patches. Examples include : Boss ME50, Line6 M9/13, etc
All in one - Amp/speaker simulations & fx & kitchen sink/coffee maker. Examples include: Zoom, Boss GTxxxx, Line POD/X3/HD

Thoughts:

The first downside to the multifx is that the presets almost always suck - unless you have experienced the originals the sims/models are based on - it's challenging to find recognizable tones. How many of us know what a Marshall JTM800 or Fender Blackface sound like cranked to the full spinal tap?

I really started to understand my multifx better, having (even briefly) experienced the originals. Something in my head had to hear a 'sound with a face'. Useful for amp sims and really useful for cabinet sims. In my limited experience, Cabinets can make or break your sound

My memory of a 8x10 cabinet? Thunderous Woof. A 2x12 was balanced and full, a 2x10 bright n punchy and a 4x12 overpoweringly loud. On my b2 I treat Cabinets as a simple one knob eq, from bright (none) to woofy (8x10). If I'm using drive/gain tones, I'll usually use a cabinet sim to tame the fizz before going to the eq section to dial something in/out.

The second is you'll want to 'Get Another Amp' - something that has a full range speaker. Guitar amps/speakers colour the sound a lot, which you'll likely want to be doing in the multifx (if using the amp/speaker sims). In a pinch a bass amp will work, acoustic amp better and a pa might be best.

Thirdly, plan out what patches you want, get old school, paper + pen! My basic patch is as close to the bypassed sound as possible. I aim for the same vol from the patch (no sims/fx) as I'd get from the bypass'ed sound. From that base patch I'll work on

Sparkly clean
- with delay/reverb
Slightly dirty blues amp (breakup)
- with reverb
Gainy metal/rock
- with delay/verb stadium shreddy style
Fuzzy/synthy autowah

All the while referring back to the basic/bypass'ed sound, trying to keep the basic patch and subsequent patches vol's similar so I don't get a big bump in volume when switching between patches.

Hope you dug Part I, I'll dig more into the topic in Part II

Hasie

V8 The first downside to the multifx is that the presets almost always suck - unless you have experienced the originals the sims/models are based on - it's challenging to find recognizable tones. How many of us know what a Marshall JTM800 or Fender Blackface sound like cranked to the full spinal tap?

Exactly. But what if you had a Marshall CODE? It only has 24 effects and 5 simultaneous ones though. You can switch them on or off with the footswitch or change preset banks and presets with the footswitch. I may be biased because I just bought one, but the amp/power-section/cab sims on the presets I tried sounded awesome.

V8 The second is you'll want to 'Get Another Amp' - something that has a full range speaker. Guitar amps/speakers colour the sound a lot, which you'll likely want to be doing in the multifx (if using the amp/speaker sims). In a pinch a bass amp will work, acoustic amp better and a pa might be best.

I agree fully on this. Playing songs from your phone through the aux in sounds really bad on electric guitar voiced speakers.

V8 All the while referring back to the basic/bypass'ed sound, trying to keep the basic patch and subsequent patches vol's similar so I don't get a big bump in volume when switching between patches.

That's the tricky bit right there - Balancing the volume differences while keeping the tone of that patch.

NorioDS

Nice! Me likey.

I really struggled to get full use out of my GT-10 (or was it a 9? Don't remember). A little bit of guidance would have gone a long way.

And I never paid much attention to cabinets until I saw everyone in here upgrading their speakers to Celestions. I've been playing guitar for almost 20 years I think... still green as the grass in spring ?

Looking forward to more!

V8

NorioDS I really struggled to get full use out of my GT-10 (or was it a 9? Don't remember). A little bit of guidance would have gone a long way.

Probably a GT-10 or a GT-8 - both are still pretty usable today! I had a GT-6B (bass version of the 8). Rather complicated and heavy - the autowah was terrible, it had to go.

But the guitarist in the previous band improved his sound hugely when switched over from a a ever changing pedalboard to a GT-10 (four cable method, using amp's fx loop). The biggest difference was more consistency between practices - and his amp really began to shine (It was a Peavey 5150) when all the crappy boost and eq pedals were deleted from his rig.

The other guitarist had a set pedalboard, it NEVER changed, I reckon he had superglued all his pedals knobs to their settings and just tweaked the amp when needed. Much more consistent sound practice to practice - but he never used his pedalboard outside of practice..

However both were inflexible when it came to volume, not a issue in practice - but gig's tend to be quieter than rehearsals (PA = micc'ed up cabinets) so when they dialed down the volume, tone suffered.

Whether Pedalboard/amp/multifx - you can't get away from having to know your gear and - importantly - be able to tweak to whatever room/venue you are in.

V8

Hasie But what if you had a Marshall CODE? It only has 24 effects and 5 simultaneous ones though. You can switch them on or off with the footswitch or change preset banks and presets with the footswitch. I may be biased because I just bought one, but the amp/power-section/cab sims on the presets I tried sounded awesome.

24 effects should be enough for most! 5 simultaneously can be worked around too - I usually use the amp as my first 'gain' stage - making a gainy path would mean a JTM style amp, a bluesy one - some flavour of fender. Then add boost/fx to flavour?

RodneyVikens

Interesting views and comments. I have a couple of basic pedals, but I would love to have a good multi fx. Pedals are just too expensive, and to me sometimes way overpriced, even secondhand. I will never be able to own the right amount of pedals to get the sound I want. The only thing I can never get used to is pedal distortion or overdrive simulators on multi fx boards or pedals. The same way you use auto tune on voices and can clearly hear it, there is just something in an amp simulators that has that sound that irritates me. But for the delay, reverb, chorus etc. effects, I would love to own one. But those Helix and Kempers with IR would be a great toy to have.

V8

RodneyVikens t. The only thing I can never get used to is pedal distortion or overdrive simulators on multi fx boards or pedals. The same way you use auto tune on voices and can clearly hear it, there is just something in an amp simulators that has that sound that irritates me.

One thing I've learnt about multifx's - generally, cab sims sucked. Not as much as auto-tune, but it's darn close. I've underestimated just how much a speaker does for guitar tone, particularly for overdrive/distortion tones. Not that a decent cab sim solves ALL issues - but it really helps the 'real feel'.

Now we can play with custom IR's, which is much, much better - though one still has to find a decent IR (not all are equal or good).

Mostly I'd want plug n play usability (which I feel the Katana has) - because I want to play not program ? But still, one has to be familiar with how guitar is gain staged, where boosting the signal has the effect you are looking for, how a 1x10, 2x12, 4x12 colour the sound and more... before you'll get the most of out any multifx (I think this also applies to pedals).

Imho, that understanding can be hard earnt...(though in hindsight, it all seems common sense and I was an idiot who read the manual but didn't understand it!)

guidothepimmp

I had multifx gt6 way back when. Never bonded with it. Im a 1 trick pony kinda guy. I like 1 drive, 1 clean and 1 boost. So i always played straight into the amp with a simple channel switcher. Now that i have a single channel amp.. i play into a drive that goes into a clean amp on the verge of breakup.

So depnding on amp. If the amp has reverb. I simply go into a drive and stack pedal. If the amp has no reverb.. i go into the same.. but then have reverb and delay going i to effects loop.

The 11rack i precinfugured a bunch of sounds on 5 or 6 banks. All have a clean. A breakup. A drive. Heavy drive and high gain. That i control with a roland midi controller which basically turns it into a multifx.

But my drive sounds all sound helluva similar.

The 11r i use exclusively into the daw. Although i can bypass all the amp sims and go straight into an amp too.. its just too big a pita to do though.

guidothepimmp

V8 yeh. Of im honest. There was nothing wrong with the multifx. I just didnt have the patience and know how to dial it in. I found it a difficult bit of kit to learn and use

RodneyVikens

This guy:

V8

RodneyVikens This guy:

The Thumb! Previous band guitarists worshipped Tobin Abasi - he's a beast. Not that I think it's all that listenable...I do dig many of the grooves but the prog side of things gets a bit weird for me.

But getting that super low, yet distinct grind tone that works for both rhythm and leads...yeah, he's probably spent as much time dialing in his rig as he has getting his hands to work like that. Our 2 guitarists had two approaches, one ran a pedalboard into a beastly laney 2x12 and let the amp do most of the work with a light eq and boost pedal setup.

The other had a Peavey 6150+ and 4x12 with pedalboard which never quite worked for me...either muddy rhythms or overly shrill leads.

Eventually, he worked out how to get a Boss GT-10 to play nicely with his amp in a 'four cable method' - that worked for what he was doing. Not sure if how he setup his patches on the GT-10 or where most of his gain was coming from - just glad my ears didn't bleed as much during rehearsals (live was another story though).

RodneyVikens

Rabea you legend.

The other thing, and I think it is mentioned above, is also the guitar/pickups you use. The Friedman Vintage with that Marshall cab has a really nice bright tone which I think helps a lot.

While listening to the Gibsons in this video (maybe find a better one?) it really sound crappy to me.

Can also be the settings?

But even this one I don't like the way Gibson sounds:

guidothepimmp

Dont know how much of it is the gibsons fault as it would be the tune and tone dialled in. As a general rule whether its a gibson or tokai LP i need to boost the treble otherwise its muddy as hell.
I do have BK pups in mine though that are voiced with a higher treble freq to balance out the guitar. The LP tends to be quite dark sounding. Well... from my examples anyways.

RodneyVikens

guidothepimmp no I don't say Gibson /Les Paul's is the fault. Just that the multifx rarely sound good to me if the pickups are not bright or high treble.

guidothepimmp

RodneyVikens yup. I agree. It can mush up quickly

ScottyDogg

Personally, I'd rather do pedalboard and real tube amp (either with a cab in a live setting or with a loadbox and IR loader like my Mooer Radar and IR in my 'bedroom' context) but for me, that's mostly cause I don't really use many effects really.

If I was to use a multifx device of some form, it'd be with the Line 6 Helix (or one of the 'mini' versions). It's epic what sounds you can get out of it and it's in a much nicer form factor and more 'usable' than a Kemper for me.

I just find it really easy to hear when a digital high gain sound is used (digital sounding high end - in Youtube blind tests I can always pick out the real amp between a Kemper, Helix etc.) and much prefer a real tube amp.

I do love the look of the Synergy modular amps though - great sounding and interchangeable preamp modules (to my ears, the preamp makes the biggest difference to tone where the power section adds a little extra colour):

For a cheaper option, I would look into the Mooer Preamp pedals, run them into the effects return on my JCM 900 and be able to have different sounding amps on the fly for variety.

My current setup that suits me fine is Guit - Tubescreamer - JCM900 - Mooer Radar with and IR and some EQing - Interface (I have a delay pedal for when I need it, an NS2 noise gate and a Zoom 505ii (lol) for other effects like Chorus when I want to play clean sections)

Other than that, I have high gain bridge pickups that I use 99% of the time and I only ever use neck pickups when I play clean.

guidothepimmp

ScottyDogg what we need is a gear pic.. sounds epic ?

guidothepimmp

ScottyDogg quick question re GGD and kontakt. I downloaded the kontakt player. Also tried a few of the vsts through the player before splashing out dosh on the drum libraries. Everything is opening in demo mode. The web says its because these vsts are designed for the full kontakt which needs to be paid for.

Do you have this issue? Are you using player or full kontakt?

ScottyDogg

guidothepimmp I’m using Kontakt Player (the free one) and what you’ve read is correct with some libraries requiring the full Kontakt to run.

So some libraries have a licensing agreement with Native Instruments that allows them to be run in Kontakt Player with no limitation (eg the Getgood Drums stuff) but I think that’s where the makers of the libraries pay licensing for this to work and hence you probably won’t get free libraries that can run in player)

What you could always do is play around with the software to get your sounds right and then render down into multi tracks and not get hit with the demo issue (but then you’re pretty much having to commit to sounds early)

I’ll organize a gear pic or two later ?

Edit: I know this pic is a bit rubbish but this is pretty much my setup. I have a random piece of furniture (pictured) with baskets as drawers. There just happens to be space to run cables through to the drawers.

So from right to left; Ibanez TS7 (in TS9 mode as a boost), to NS2 (apparently Adam D from Killswitch uses his tubescreamer in the effects loop of the NS2 so I think I’ll try that - sucks too much tone if I do the 4 cable method with my amp), to zoom 505ii (pretty much always on bypass for tuning but occasionally I might use chorus on it), back up to JCM 900 input, speaker output to the JP Le Roux DeadEnd (load box so I don’t have to have a cabinet connected to my tube head), to Mooer Radar (with Ownhammer IR), to Focusrite Scarlett 2i2.

ScottyDogg

ScottyDogg This guy is onto something here with this:

For a portable rig, it’s hard to beat