Johan Allard
Power User
Yesterday I played my first gig without my Axe Fx II since I bought it well over a year ago. We played a 40 minute set at a festival and they provided a backline and just a short changeover time between bands. I also used this as a great opportunity to create a backup rig for myself should I ever need one. So over the last couple of months I've been buying quite a few mainly used pedals on eBay to try out and A/B against each other. In the end, this is what I came up with:
One of the challenges with I guess any backline gig is that you won't quite know what you're going to play through so the last couple of rehearsals I rented a Fender Twin and a Marshall JMP to try this out with and it all worked nicely. On the gig I was very happy to see a Marshall JCM900 and a 4x12. Since this was outdoor on a fairly big stage (we mainly play pubs indoors) I could play a lot louder than I normally do and still keep things balanced. It sounded great. I got a lot of compliments on my tone and one mate even said that I should start playing real amps more. So very happy with the result and as a backup rig for the future, this is pretty much perfect.
What I noticed compared to the Axe Fx II:
If I was planning to use this board a lot, I would probably go for the Pedaltrain mini instead. The only pedal I'm not 100% happy with is that Mooer. So on a pedaltrain mini I would look into maybe like an Eventine H9 to add some different flavours. And maybe another AC flavourish drive pedal. But as a small, dependable, reasonably flexible backup rig that you can through in front of a clean amp and be happy with, I think this is almost perfect. It was fun playing around with some pedals again for a while, and I know this will now be placed in the closet and I'll bring it for gigs as a backup. But I wouldn't be surprised if another year goes by without me playing it again.
- The ChiWahWah - is the only pedal on this board that I had kept from back before the Axe Fx II. If you want a wah and want it to be small. This is an awesome choice.
- The Mooer Ninety Orange - I'm not a big modulation guy but I wanted something on there. I tried the Mooer Mod Factory but it was just too much tone suck and volume drop on a lot of the effects that I ended up with this much simpler thing to just have something on there. On the gig yesterday I only used it on one song as a sort of faux vibrato it the rate dimed.
- The Wampler Dual Fusion - I tried a few drive pedals, most of them where just too compressed. I assume that whenever I need this board I'm going to set the amp clean and rely solely on bringing my own dirt. The right vintage side is very natural and uncompressed, easy to clean up with the guitar volume and still kicks when pushed hard. This is my main tone. The left modern side is much more compressed. I set this for a slight dirt/volume boost over the vintage channel. And when used together it's a very nice sustaining lead tone. I'm very happy with this choice.
- The Tech21 Boost DLA turned out to be a great delay pedal. The knobs are very sensitive. The boost affects both the main tone and the delay trails so you can use this as a volume boost alone if you want. I like analog delays for my lead tone and the fidelity at 9 o'clock gives very nice dark delay trails. And for one song we played yesterday I wanted a digital sounding bright delay for a clean arpeggio section so fideilty at 1 o'clock gave me exactly that. And it has tap tempo. Very happy with this choice as well.
- Pedaltrain Volto - should the shit really hit the fan I wanted to be completely unreliant on anything else and bringing my own power is just one more thing that could go wrong that's been eliminated. I played a 4 hour rehearsal without seeing the power drop more than 1 bar. I'm sure if you run a couple of strymon pedals it would last a lot less and I've been very impressed. It charges with a standard USB cable and it can power the pedals and charge at the same time should you ever need.
- This is all fitted on a Pedaltrain Nano. This is the smallest one they make and I wanted this backup rig to be as small as possible.
One of the challenges with I guess any backline gig is that you won't quite know what you're going to play through so the last couple of rehearsals I rented a Fender Twin and a Marshall JMP to try this out with and it all worked nicely. On the gig I was very happy to see a Marshall JCM900 and a 4x12. Since this was outdoor on a fairly big stage (we mainly play pubs indoors) I could play a lot louder than I normally do and still keep things balanced. It sounded great. I got a lot of compliments on my tone and one mate even said that I should start playing real amps more. So very happy with the result and as a backup rig for the future, this is pretty much perfect.
What I noticed compared to the Axe Fx II:
- Even with just the 4 pedals. The amount of tap dancing compared to using scenes is quite immence. This could well be down to being spoiled with scenes and maybe I'm just used to switch more often because of scenes but playing with the Axe Fx II when it's dialled in is just soo much easier and less stressful.
- Between the three amps I played through (not counting using the pedals in front of my Axe Fx at home) they all responded quite differently to the drive pedals. The JMP with hardly any drive would just not give me a volume boost and I had to dial down the drive to almost nothing to make it work. Luckily the JCM900 on the gig was easily the best and I had to dial down the volume on both the drives to get to a more even level. And obviously if I went back to my own amp I would know how it would react all the time but again this is just another thing where the Axe Fx II is just soo much nicer and dependable and sound exactly how it's dialled in.
- Speaking of sounding exactly the same - the Fender twin I played through kept getting darker and darker as the reharsal went on. Before I realised it was the amp playing up I kept fiddling with the tones on the drive to compensate. Maybe it was really old tubes in there but again - nothing I ever have to worry about with the Axe Fx II. I also found that I had to be more more vigilant when playing to how everything sounded and I found myself playing around with the tone and volume a lot more to keep the sound the way I wanted.
- I don't use a lot of different amp models when I play live but I do like the choice when it's there. Even if it sounded great on this gig, it was still just a few basic tones. I'm just really spoilt for choice these days and I missed at least having an AC variant for cleanish sounds in addition to the Marshall.
- Looking back at some pictures from the gig - having two Marshall half stacks (we're two guitarists in the band) on stage just looks rock n' roll. This in the end is probably the only place where the Axe Fx falls short. It's really hard to beat that iconic image of Marshalls on stage
If I was planning to use this board a lot, I would probably go for the Pedaltrain mini instead. The only pedal I'm not 100% happy with is that Mooer. So on a pedaltrain mini I would look into maybe like an Eventine H9 to add some different flavours. And maybe another AC flavourish drive pedal. But as a small, dependable, reasonably flexible backup rig that you can through in front of a clean amp and be happy with, I think this is almost perfect. It was fun playing around with some pedals again for a while, and I know this will now be placed in the closet and I'll bring it for gigs as a backup. But I wouldn't be surprised if another year goes by without me playing it again.
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