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Rack Effects

Posted: Thu Nov 26, 2009 6:55 pm
by cobascis
Who here uses them? I was just looking around and found a 4-band noise suppressor from behringer along with some other stuff. Most notably the proco r2du. What are the benefits over stompboxes besides the excessive features?

Posted: Thu Nov 26, 2009 7:02 pm
by laterallateral
tidier, more streamlined use of floor real estate, all issues generally non performance related (power, patching, parameters) taken away from performance area.

Posted: Thu Nov 26, 2009 7:26 pm
by Haze
Racks and MIDI things scare me. I know nothing about them and will keep it that way for some time!

Posted: Thu Nov 26, 2009 7:42 pm
by stewart
i've got a couple of rack multi effects, they're ok for what they are. they don't really suit my current setup though.

a band i used to be in ran to a sequencer and all the effects patches were set to change at certain points with MIDI. the guitarist used an alesis unit for everything except dirt, so he only had one or two pedals to worry about.

Posted: Thu Nov 26, 2009 9:42 pm
by filtercap
stewart wrote:the guitarist used an alesis unit for everything except dirt, so he only had one or two pedals to worry about.
Used to do something like that, using an ART multi-effect unit with a garishly-painted (i.e., stock) ART MIDI footswitchplex. It was decent for having preset combinations of EQ, reverb, echo, etc. Easy to set up too; carried it around in a 2-space padded rack bag. Used a separate pedal for distortion, a volume pedal, and that was about all. One downside was making adjustments -- the little LED readout and all the scroll/tweak/save button pushing was not as visual & immediate as twisting a few knobs. I think I'd ended up replacing it with Dyna Comp plus delay pedal (keeping the dist & vol peds) by the time that band finished up.

Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 3:47 am
by Sloan
stewart wrote:
a band i used to be in ran to a sequencer and all the effects patches were set to change at certain points with MIDI. the guitarist used an alesis unit for everything except dirt, so he only had one or two pedals to worry about.
Some metal dude used his line 6 head like that, so it would switch channels and everything with the sequencer. I've always thought that was kinda cool, but would take from the spontaneous nature of real rock n roll action.

Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 10:12 am
by stewart
yeah, it can be a bit stifling. you'd be halfway through a song thinking 'this isn't fast enough' and there's sod-all you can do about it. not really something i'd want to do again. plus, from my own experience of playing with such a setup and seeing other bands doing it, there's usually always a big fuck up at some point during a gig, and sound engineers DO NOT LIKE YOU.

Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 8:01 pm
by less_cunning
Sloan wrote:
...the spontaneous nature of real rock n roll action.
the spontaneous nature of real rock n roll action would make for a most EXCELLENT album title. amiright?

amiright...???