That sinking feeling.......

Muad'zin

Fractal Fanatic
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When you're about to gig and your pedal board doesn't work.

I was at a small festival and the headliner, Navarone, was going to take the stage and soundcheck and the guitarist in front of me did something I was intimately familiar with. Strumming the guitar and not getting the sound you wanted. Or as I like to call it: catastrophic pedal board failure. His dirt worked as it should, but whenever he tried to hit his cleans he got this anemic gated farting noise. God am I familiar with this problem when I still used pedals. And the frantic searching trying to find and isolate the problem. The poor fellow, I really felt for him, tried frantically with the guitar tech and his fellow guitarist to find the problem, ripping out pedals, cables, even the Boss looper switcher. In the end, like a good pro, he went with what he got and gigged with only his dirty sounds. Still a rockin' show. Kudos for that. Well done.

This is why I am glad to use the Axe FX. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and a pedal board is a very complicated system, with lots of potential weak links. Now I just plug in my guitar, plug two XLR's into the FOH and I am set. Thanks Fractal, for giving me this great tool that has the sound of a massive pedal board, without the hassle of a massive pedal board.

I'm a member of a local guitarist facebook group, and these guys are doing great things to help guitarists and their gear, organizing workshops and stuff. Good work, but they are a bit snobby on the analog side, always making fun of modeling. So, because payback's a bitch, I posted this pic with the caption 'That sinking feeling when you know your pedal board is not working and you should have gotten an Axe-FX'
Man did that drew a big response. Usually the average post gets a few likes and reactions. I really stirred up the hornets nest of the analog fanboys this time. Bad troll, Muad'zin, bad troll.
 
This is why I’ve used one multi-unit at gigs, or as few pieces as possible. I’ve seen this pic way too often at gigs, and you literally can only can pull or reseat every single cable to find the problem.

You could argue with the Axe, if it goes down, that’s just one thing. But many people can’t gig if this or that single pedal goes down either.
 
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When you're about to gig and your pedal board doesn't work.

I was at a small festival and the headliner, Navarone, was going to take the stage and soundcheck and the guitarist in front of me did something I was intimately familiar with. Strumming the guitar and not getting the sound you wanted. Or as I like to call it: catastrophic pedal board failure. His dirt worked as it should, but whenever he tried to hit his cleans he got this anemic gated farting noise. God am I familiar with this problem when I still used pedals. And the frantic searching trying to find and isolate the problem. The poor fellow, I really felt for him, tried frantically with the guitar tech and his fellow guitarist to find the problem, ripping out pedals, cables, even the Boss looper switcher. In the end, like a good pro, he went with what he got and gigged with only his dirty sounds. Still a rockin' show. Kudos for that. Well done.

This is why I am glad to use the Axe FX. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and a pedal board is a very complicated system, with lots of potential weak links. Now I just plug in my guitar, plug two XLR's into the FOH and I am set. Thanks Fractal, for giving me this great tool that has the sound of a massive pedal board, without the hassle of a massive pedal board.

I'm a member of a local guitarist facebook group, and these guys are doing great things to help guitarists and their gear, organizing workshops and stuff. Good work, but they are a bit snobby on the analog side, always making fun of modeling. So, because payback's a bitch, I posted this pic with the caption 'That sinking feeling when you know your pedal board is not working and you should have gotten an Axe-FX'
Man did that drew a big response. Usually the average post gets a few likes and reactions. I really stirred up the hornets nest of the analog fanboys this time. Bad troll, Muad'zin, bad troll.
Seen it with my own band... accompanied by the usual "It was working fine last night when I tested it, and at our last practice/gig".
There's not much you can do except go with whatever you can get working within the available time.
As @chris said.. "You could argue with the Axe, if it goes down, that’s just one thing. But many people can’t gig if this or that single pedal goes down either."
 
Methinks it pays to have a backup to your pedal board, like a multi-fx unit. It won't have the sound of your beloved pedals, it might even suck, but something is always better then nothing.

I've lost count of the number of times when I experienced catastrophic pedal board failures. The biggest one was when we played a big stage during the biggest festival here in Nijmegen. Man was I stressed out trying to find the problem. I think we started 10 minutes late by the time I got it back working. After that gig I swore to simplify my rig. And downsized from 2 very large pedal boards to one large pedal board. Still insanely large and complicated looking back at it, but still only half as large and complicated as before.

The most stupid case was a gig where I also had gated farting guitar sound. Dirt sounded okay, but clean was anemic. I had to hit with all the boosts that I could to get it working. I found out afterwards what was the problem. I used a small 2 loop DIY switcher at the start of my chain to mute my sound and as a tuner out. I had used DPDT switches so there were no LED's on it. One loop had the tuner, the other was empty. Turned out I had somehow hit the switch of the empty loop. And rather then nothing happening, as you would think would be the case, if the signal is going nowhere, a tiny amount of signal would still make it through bypass. So I had been playing the entire time with that tiny amount of signal the entire time. That's when I really learned the values of why its a good idea to have LED's to show if things are on or not.

Second most stupid case was a gig where my sound sounded muffled as hell, like a massive low pass filter was on. We had no time to find out the problem, so we played and I was basically non existent for almost the entire set, until halfway into the last song I discovered that the wah pedal was on and in the heel down position. D'OH! LED's from now on in all my wah pedals.
 
Gear problems at a gig are a drag, no matter what rig you use. The analog snobbery does not bother me. Ignorance is bliss. They are just blissful. Every guitar player must choose what gear he or she wants to play through. As for me, I chose FAS almost 10 years ago, and I have never regretted my decision.
 
Analog /tube snobbery is kinda funny to me. Being a tube/tone snob myself and having a Fractal, I can give an informed opinion. Whereas the tube snobs can’t because they refuse to own or try the modelers our without bias.
 
I too immensely appreciate the axe for all the things mentioned, but just like any other piece of gear, it's not infallible, despite being as rock solid as they come.

Backups are a must, whether you're using an axe or a POD or a Klon - a simple multi fx like the HD stomp can save the day though the tone would suck lol

But hey, the pretty girl at the front of the stage can't tell your A chord from your G chord...

I've been looking at the RK5-2 as a backup unit lately.....sounds amazing, super compact and lightweight....I can run a gig on that with a decimator. I've used lots of the tech 21 character pedals before, and they all sound great! All analog, small form factor and lots of physical knobs - I'd recommend them as a backup for sure
 
Analog /tube snobbery is kinda funny to me. Being a tube/tone snob myself and having a Fractal, I can give an informed opinion. Whereas the tube snobs can’t because they refuse to own or try the modelers our without bias.

They say that kids eat with their eyes. If it doesn't like cake, pizza or fries, they just don't like to eat it. Sadly enough, most of us never grow out of that mentality. This is why blind A/B testing is so damn important, to overcome any confirmation bias.

I too immensely appreciate the axe for all the things mentioned, but just like any other piece of gear, it's not infallible, despite being as rock solid as they come.

Backups are a must, whether you're using an axe or a POD or a Klon - a simple multi fx like the HD stomp can save the day though the tone would suck lol

But hey, the pretty girl at the front of the stage can't tell your A chord from your G chord...

I've been looking at the RK5-2 as a backup unit lately.....sounds amazing, super compact and lightweight....I can run a gig on that with a decimator. I've used lots of the tech 21 character pedals before, and they all sound great! All analog, small form factor and lots of physical knobs - I'd recommend them as a backup for sure

Seems fine if you're used to a regular pedal board. Although kinda limited if you're an FX hound like me. Or are used to presets. Anyone ever tried the Nux Cerberus? For that price it looks absolutely sick. And pretty damn useful as a backup.

https://www.thomann.de/gb/nux_cerbe...iLCJjdXJyZW5jeSI6IjIiLCJsYW5ndWFnZSI6ImVuIn0=

Look at the drummer man in the back... like he is thinking "what the hell are those maniacs doing"

If the drummers I know are representative he was most likely thinking what are knobs? The dude did know how to drum though. A good drummer.
 
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It's fun when your at one of these pay to play places, and you have 7 minutes to set up and then the sound guy starts threatening to boot you off if you don't get it fixed now...ugh. playing out it so over rated. Haha
 
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