Too many options?

Jemwiz00

Jemwiz00

Member
I was just pondering an issue that has beset me for most of my musical career.
We are so spoiled with technology that often this embarrassment of riches will impede
our creativity. I've always been sort of a "more is more" type of musician. I love effects, and my rig has gradually progressed over time. I went from a sliver face Fender Twin with a modest pedalboard, to a Mesa Mark 5 with a rack of effects and a Midi switching system. Sometimes having a fuzz pedal into a clean amp can give me all I need. Since I "downsized" to the AX8 (I still have my old rig) I have been battling my instincts and am constantaly saying to myself, keep it simple! I was wondering how the community here feels about such things. What suggestions can you give for keeping it simple?
 
i just bought a new pedal for my acoustic gigs. the TC Helicon Voicelive 3 Extreme. I can record tracks, 3 loops, vocal and guitar effects... I spent 2 hours today setting it up for the gig tonight. I was excited to use it.

got to the gig, forgot the power supply! So I just plugged my guitar and mic straight into the pa and played the gig. This let me focus on singing the songs well, I could try 5 new songs tonight without having to worry about effects or preset changes.

simple. so freeing too. just, play.

so force yourself to use a single amp or tone, or whatever is appropriate for your type of gig. strip it down to the bare minimum every now and then and see what you can do. it's nice.
 
To me if you only had one sound, it'd be like only playing one style of music or only using one scale to play leads. I know many have made it doing just that but variety is the spice of life. It's easy to get carried away and get so complex you can't enjoy playing, so there is a balance. Also learning your equipment is as important as learning new songs and techniques, so IMO just having options without knowing how to use them doesn't really help in real world playing. Myself I use about 5 or 6 sounds and though I experiment with more I always comeback to these, because I'm familiar and know what to expect and somewhat control them.
 
I keep my digital rigs simple. A bank of presets and a row of IA switches to toggle on and off just like a pedalboard. I use a guitar/amp rig that best suits the style of music I am performing. I'm too old to pull off the man-bun, and have too much pride to sport a mullet, but I can select a rig that really suits the song. Love my FAS gear.
 
This is the problem I have with IR's... every week there is another pack that "is the grail" of all ir's ... uggh.
 
I am constantly amazed at the options within the amp block. The Ax is frequently opening my eyes to amps I've never considered before. It almost opens up more possibilities than "real life". Haha. I was having a lot of fun the other night at practice just sticking with the Badger 18 and a drive pedal (and compressor, delay, wah and reverb). I found it warm and responsive.
 
I keep it simple usually one preset per song. However that one preset may service many songs. And in some cases the presets are copy's of others presets, the only real difference scenes are rearranged.

I like (and everyone else) seems to like the consistency. If doing covers, not busy cloning every artist sound. Use my sound, or shall I say sound of the day. A fun thing for me is coping my presets to other banks and just changing the amp/cab block and keep everything else the same. (There is still tweaking involved to get everything balanced)

But in the end I might be in a Marshall mood and use those presets, or a Fender or Mesa and so on and sometimes there are combinations through X/Y switching.

John
 
If you want to keep things simple, get an amp and a small pedalboard, with around 5 pedals. If you have an AX-8, you probably wanted that simple rig too, only digitally. If you got yourself the Axe IMHO you owe it to yourself to go overboard because otherwise you should have gotten the AX-8 instead. What the Axe can do continues to amaze me every time. Hell, the only reason I got it was because I had an insanely complicated pedal board that I wanted, no needed, to be recreated digitally.
 
yek said:
1 preset, 1 Amp X/Y switch, 5 switches for other fx.
Click to expand...

This is shockingly close to how I roll for my live rig. I moved to AX8 and love it. I use a physical guitar cab, which eliminates another universe of complexity. My cab sounds great and I appreciate the consistency of using the same one for all my foot-switchable sounds.

A single preset is still WAY more complex than tube amp + pedals though. I always wonder how my current rig can be made to sound even better. Physical gear changes cost money, but inside the Fractal it's like running through Guitar Center taking every amp and pedal you can find, for free. Hard to resist that.

In conclusion... YES there's too many options. :)
 
yek said:
1 preset, 1 Amp X/Y switch, 5 switches for other fx.
Click to expand...

This.

I can go through so many types of music with a Plexi 50. Although I put a Fender in the 'Y' amp, I rarely use it because it cleans up so purty with a volume knob. With drive(s), vibe, verb, delay (haas), rotary, I can cover a lot of territory...(off to another amp for Sevendust covers tho...) I probably only use 5 - 10 amps total on a regular basis, another 5 that are 'widget' amps for very specific songs rarely played.

I love HAVING the options, and I make a point of trying new things each time, but there's a comfort in that I don't NEED to. Especially on stage, since I tend to have a pile of things to do (sing, solo, acoustic, play keys in spots.)
 
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As many presets per song as needed. As many scenes per preset as needed. As many blocks per preset as needed. As many hours developing tone as needed. I find the process enjoyable. But I find core modeling changes requiring an amp block reset to be torture. Every silver lining has its cloud.

The Axe II XL's incredible number of user-writable presets, combined with scenes and X/Y switching, make the process much easier. I started out with a guitar, a cable, and an amp. I loved it then, but I'll never go back.
 
I try to keep it pretty simple, while still giving myself (and the songs) some variety. My current AX8 setup is a few presets (a Hook, Vox, Matchless, and Twin) for varieties of clean / lo-gain, and then above them on switches 5-8 I have more crunchy versions of the same presets for more mid-gain type sounds. In the next bank I have a couple of fairly hi-gain presets - a Recto, JCM 800, and Soldano for our heavier songs.

I don't always know which is going to sound the best for a given song, so as we work through learning our songs and adding/subtracting from the setlist, I try to re-use as many as possible so as to keep my sound fairly consistent but with some variety to keep it interesting. And then I have a few presets for specific songs that require unique effects or tone combinations where it's just easier to have a dedicated preset. Right now that's only about 3 more presets so it keeps management fairly easy, updates for new FW aren't too time-consuming, etc. In the past I've had a lot of presets for a show, and it was fun but was more of a headache to keep the levels correct, get consistent sound, and so on.
 
Keep it simple... er well Fractal gear ain't gonna do you any favors if you're borderline ADHD like me. o_O When I walk into a home improvement store, I have an urge to buy all the tools. All of them. I must have them all. My Fractal gives me all that for the guitar. Restraint is futile.

Robboman said:
but inside the Fractal it's like running through Guitar Center taking every amp and pedal you can find
Click to expand...
:) And you can play with anything in any combination for as long as you want, and there's no sales guy pointing to a sign that says "NO STAIRWAY."
 
Or, start with an end goal in mind. Say you want to play a certain song live. Look at Moke's presets (not to mention many others').

We have so many options, that without an end in mind, it can be confusing.
 
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