TC Electronic Alter Ego x4

Ankhanu · Post by **Ankhanu** » Fri Dec 12, 2014 3:50 am

In the summer, some of you may recall that I picked up a TC Alter Ego. As my first delay pedal, I was pretty pleased with it... and still am. I did, however, find myself wanting to be able to switch between different delays in a single song; I had ideas that I wanted to try out, but couldn't. My first thought was to just get another Alter Ego or similar and chain them, but then realized that the Alter Ego x4 would give me much the same thing, for a bit less cash. So, though I'm happy with the Alter Ego, PGS having the x4 on sale for Black Friday at $189, I jumped on it and placed the order. My bandmate is buying my Alter Ego to help with paying for the new model.

The x4 arrived today, and I got to play with it for a few minutes before my daughter went to bed, with both my Hellcat VI and my Jaguar.
With the Alter Ego, I pretty much only used the EchoRec and DMM settings, which are available on the X4. While it loses a lot of the more standard delay emulations, the x4 has several of its own presets that I was pretty interested to try out. It's a little different than the Alter Ego, and will take a little play to figure out exactly where I need to twist the knobs to get the sounds I want, but, that'll come with a little play. The TR Organ setting is one I was pretty curious to try out, but it proved a little bit of a challenge to get a good sound out of, but I've found settings that work for both VI and guitar... more play will coax better sounds, I'm sure.

My first impressions on the Alter Ego x4 are fairly positive (ya know, from about 15-20 minutes of play), but I haven't touched on the tap tempo or looper features yet, and likely never will use the MIDI and the like.
I hope to try to do an demo at some point, with both the x4 and the original for VI, and possibly for guitar too.

NickS · Post by **NickS** » Fri Dec 12, 2014 9:55 am

So is this a Line 6 DL4 on steroids?

riotshield · Post by **riotshield** » Thu Dec 25, 2014 10:29 am

Haven't heard the PGS demo yet, but this looks interesting. However, can you report how the ONCE switch works? I mean can you retrigger the loop from beginning every time you press, or if you press it just means that the loop stops when it reaches the end of the recording?

Ankhanu · Post by **Ankhanu** » Sun Dec 28, 2014 4:38 pm

Honestly, I haven't tested the looper yet... I'll give it a go later this afternoon and get back to you.

Here's the ECHOFL (EHX Echo Flanger) setting, just fuckin' around
[youtube][/youtube]

Ankhanu · Post by **Ankhanu** » Sun Dec 28, 2014 9:23 pm

The Once switch will play the whole recording once. Alternatively, when in continuous play (Play), when you click it, it will stop playback once the loop finishes. Hitting it twice doesn't seem to have any effect.

The Undo button removes the last loop recorded, and will restart it again if you click it a second time.