Band in a Box ... What Band in a Box?
Array | Soundeffects | What's it all mean?
Soundeffects:
Finally, BOSS has made a pedal board sized digital looper that I now use instead of the old cassette arrangement. This has lots of time on it and I can control the tracks setting with a FS-5L foot switch.
The power for all of the stomp boxes comes from inside the case itself.
All the effects pedals and the desk mixer get power through one surge protected unit. In all, I have the one AC power plug out for power to the guts of the rack, the line out from the Radial Tonebone pick up "dragster" and line in and out from the echo and VL4 harmony volume level pedals.
Not too unwieldy actually.
The DigiTech VL 4 uses 9 volts but has a proprietary plug-in for power, so it can't be part of the main daisy chain for AC. This is unfortunate since it means yet another all wart inside the box AC.
As mentioned, all of these lines are carefully wound together so it comes in and out as one large group of wires bound together rather than several wires scattered around. Very neat actually ... I use old curly chords to wrap around these separate wires. Holds things together very nicely.
Packing up means closing off the separate pedal board with its zip cover and shoving the wires back into the case.
I don't have to zip the main box case up all the way (so the wires have a spot to come out of the case). The second board lays on top of the actual large case and all gets wheeled out back to the car.
Leaner show = a leaner board (I use the same thing as noted at the start in discussion of electrics)
I'm still using a smaller board for shows where I don't have time to use the full set up rig. This arrangement has the looper as well just not as much stuff or the desk mixer. I used to use the TC Helicon as a mixer and still send one wire to the house.
KEITH's electric rigI also have a DigiTech VL 2 unit that forces two feeds (vocals and guitar) but I can live with that - just pressing the sound guys a little more to "be on their game".
This package has the signal going through a Jangle Box to a BOSS T2 tuner to a BOSS C3 compressor (this is the modified version to give more output and it really does) the DigiTech VL2 and thru to a ROLLS small mixer (I actually split this into two signals to the mixer. A further split starts at the tuner where another signal goes to the ZOOM effects unit. This goes into the ROLLS directly. My effects go to the ROLLS directly as well. I can control the amount of wet to dry by the volume control at the ZOOM G1 unit. Works especially well on my electrics which I've started to use now.
I do note the split and eventual mix-back of the wet and dry signals is a key to getting great tone! I really recommend this approach for any one wanting to get into effects. The effects on their own suck tone badly and you really need to keep some dry sound around to allow some of the original tone to shine through.
Array | Soundeffects | What's it all mean?
