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Pedal Board Vs. Effects Rack


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I have not the slightest clue about effects racks except that a lot of great players use them.

What are the pros and cons of each in comparison?

I truly am unsure as to what makes them different.

 

Also is there like a link out there to school people on rack-mounted effects ??

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There's a load of pros and cons to both and different people will have wildly varying opinions on them

 

Purely personally, the greatest strengths of a pedal board are:

 

It's simple, you can see what plugs into what.

What's off or on can be seen at a glance.

Pedals start at a lot less than racks making it cheaper to add some more options to your tonal palette.

 

The weaknesses are:

 

It is largely fixed with each pedal having a single setting as it is impractical to bend down and change the gain level or delay setting mid song.

You can find your self tap dancing with several foot stomps to change sounds. EG to go from a clean chorus sound using a reverb pedal into your amp's clean channel, to an overdrive pedal with delay using no reverb on your amp's dirty channel could involve multiple switches being hit.

You may also have to run a load of cables back and forward across the stage, particularly if using some pedals in front of the amp and some in the loop.

 

Greatest strengths of a rack:

 

Most FX processors have multiple effects and are controllable via Midi. This allows you to do the clean chorus to overdriven lead switch with a single push on a control board.

Flexibility - I like both a long and short delay settings in my unit. I can access both at the touch with a Midi Controller unit. I can't bend down and adjust a pedal so easily mid song.

Putting all the kit in a rack keeps the signal run away from the front of the stage. A single control cable is all that has to be routed.

Rack stuff starts out generally at a higher quality level. Note that you get what you pay for in both pedals and rack units however.

 

Weaknesses:

 

Complexity - you are going to have to spend a significant amount of time setting a rack system up so that the right effects come up at the right levels when you hit the Midi switch. Pedals tend to be twist a knob until you like it and leave.

Price - it is quite likely to be more expensive.

 

There's a load more than this to consider but that's a starting point. Some people are all about the pedals, other want it all in rack units, other use a mixture, others rack mount pedals and control them with a rack based switcher.

 

Personally I like it all rack mounted and set up and I just have a midi pedal out front, YMMV.

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Gorgon90 said it well. I, too, agree that a rack-based set up is the way to go. It may seem complicated at first, but it actually simplifies everything for me. Having everything in one well organized place that doesn't have to be tinkered with on stage is the best part. I'm a freak about having everything sound exactly the same every night and I change sounds a lot even just during a single song. A rack lets me do that. I can't be hitting four different pedals just before the chorus when I can just hit one button on my MIDI controller. It just feels so much more reliable to me in that way and leaves me free to focus on the show. And with a device like my Rocktron Patch Mate 8, you can incorporate pedals into your setup and still have all the functionality and organization of a rack.

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the one thing I don't like about Rack systems, unless you spend a fair bit on a large footcontroller, is spontaneity.... when you have your patches programmed they are what they are, you might be able to turn some things on and off but if there's a chorus for the patch you're using and you want to see what a phaser would sound like NOW....you're kinda out of luck, where as with stompboxes you just stomp on your phaser, assuming you have one....

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I use both. I made a riser bracket for a midi mate and bolted it to the far space of a pedal board. Plenty of space for pedals if I find I need them (The space is usually taken up but mostly for things like wahs, volume, tap tempo).

 

 

But as others have mentioned, once you have the patches made, it's one push of a button. Simple, fast, madly customizable. You have full control of all parameters (no turning knobs on the pedals, turning others off, etc etc....) That means more for me than having slightly more 'spontaneity'.

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Oh my that sounds incredibly useful and economical (musically). But say they don't make your favorite pedal in rack format do you have to compromise and use something else? Or is there a way around it?

 

 

Yes there is a way round it. Have a look at Voodoo Labs Ground Control and GCX system. It's a switching looping system that if you put your pedals on a rack shelf can be switched in and out of the signal path. This means you get the great sounds you have in your pedals and the control flexibility offered by a rack combined. Rocktron Patchmate mentioned above is a similar tool.

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Gorgon90's right, the Voodoo Labs product does the same thing as the Rocktron Patch Mate, but is a little more expensive, I think. Either way, what most guys do is hook their pedals into the switching system of their choice and put their pedals on a pull-out shelf in their racks. That way it keeps the clutter off the floor and they can switch all their rack effects and pedals to their heart's content with the push of just one button.

 

Overall, I'm not sure how economical it is, but the end result is far more versatile and preferable in my opinion.

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That's true to some extent.


I say that because depending on your equipment, you can inject that same spontaneity with some clever programming :-)

 

 

yeah... I have no doubt about that at all.... to me just for share ease of use I'm staying away from switching rigs as much as I REALLLY wanted to go that way in the past but I realised it's just not for me

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very true.... the only other downside IMO is the amount of gear you have to carry.... a pedal board is one trip, with the rack stuff the rack can be kinda big and then there's the foot controller as well...

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Good thread...kind of the age old question.

It really depends on your gig and your style....

 

If you're playing the same 2 or 3 sounds all night long a rack is excessive

If you need a large variety of tones and effects it's worth considering a rack

is the simplest way to say it....it just gets more complex from here

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Great thread with good insights!

 

I personally have a simple rack with just a couple of pedals thrown in front. I use a Dunlop Q-zone and DOD Corrosion for mid boost and overdrive functions in front of my rack, but use a Triaxis and G-major to change my sounds in the rack. I like the versitility of being able to switch from a Mark IV clean to a Mark III lead, then a Dual Recto rhythm sound.

 

Another nice thing about rack based effects with a stereo power amp is that you can pan from one stereo side to another. I found recently that I really love using a Mark III sound through my 4x12 cabinet with Celestion 80 watt speakers, but I love using the Rectifier sound through my friend's Vintage 30 filled cabinet. With just a tap between patches, I can shift the volume from one cab to the other to emphasize the different speakers.

 

Granted, if you're just looking at effects being rack or floor-based, this doesn't apply; it's just one point of versatility that I have grown to enjoy from my stereo rack system.

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I ran with stompboxes for a while. But doing mostly cover band stuff that got real old. I got real tired of needing to switch from a clean channel with some chorus to a distortion with some delay and flange while singing and playing at the same time. I needed 3 or 4 feet and to be as ambidextrous as Neil Peart. I'm now using a second gen. Rocktron Chameleon that I bought in 1996 along with an ART X15 controller. Run through a Rocktron Velocity 300 amp to a Legacy 2x12 cab. So far I've been able to get whatever sound I want out of it.

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I just cut my pedalboard down by 3/4, I bought a Line 6 M13 stompbox modeler. This thing sound so real it would be hard to tell it from the original effect on a recording. It has over 100 stomp box's built in, and these are those guitarist use all the time. They are tweakable also. I use a looper in the FX Loop and Volume/expression pedal and it covers just about all the bases. If you try one out, it is hard not to use it all the time..........

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I'm with ibbluesman but I went with the RP1000 and love it. This has everything. Amp modeling, every effect you'll ever need and it's programable. You don't have to use the amp models and you can use it as a effects pedal board in foot pedal mode. In this mode you can program effects per patch as with the amps. Also in this mode you see the pedals that are on so you can turn them on and off when you want if needed. It has an amp loop as well. With the 4-cable method you can use the power amp section of your head to power the amp models so you here the actual sound of the amp model, not a blended sound of your amp with the model.... a really cool feature. It's extremely flexible and comes with a usb port for recording direct to your computer. Plus there's patches you can download from Digitechs website.

 

http://www.digitech.com/en-US/products/rp1000

 

Watch the demo video.

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When I gig, I take Traditional Strats, Super Strats with Floyd Roses, A Les Paul Custom, A "71" Flying"V" for various sounds ; Blues, Classic Rock, 80's Metal, Thrash / Speed Metal and what ever. I love my ancient Digitech RP-1 and RP-12. I can get any sound I like. If we do an SRV, Pantera, Yngwie, EVH, UFO, Rush, Trower, Hendrix, Satriani, Vai, Police or sound like Trevor Rabin's " Owner Of A Lonely Heart" tone with synthesizers .... it's there at a tap of a botton

I put a VHT Valvulator II at the front and at the end of my pedal board to get that killer analog tone from the ones and zeros from digital effects board.

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Racks are cool because the knobs are at arms level (not her the units)

If you have to tweak something you aren't grabbing your ankles on stage with foot pedals which always looks amateur to an audience. Tweaking the foot pedal knobs with your feet can cause accidental tweaks too, blasting a setting or cutting off.

 

Pedals can be trouble free once they are set, but they can take up allot of valuable real estate on stage.

Getting to a mic on a dark stage can be dangerous and the occasional drunken goofball who wants to be lead singer who migrates to stage when you aren't looking can do allot of damage to your pedals stepping on them accidentally.

 

I mainly use rack units in the studio where I can take the time to tweak them fro the recording. I've never been too happy tweaking them to drive an amp. Its a pain in the butt adjusting the settings "perceived loudness" vs. actual loudness where it blends in with a band. I can set up a whole bunch of banks I think are right and then when it comes to playing live and having a drummer going some wind up being too loud and others bet buried. This can be an issue recording too but you don't have an audience waiting for you to tweak things.

 

I can say Rack units often have better sound quality depending on their generation. Some have the full arsenal of effect like the ART SGX 2000 I picked up a year ago. I can insert the drives and effects in any order up to 8 of them at once I believe. The Midi pedal that I also have lets you turn any of the effects off and on just like foot pedals, plus you have two expression pedals that can be set for any parameter of the effects.

 

This is a very cool feature. I cant count the times where I would have liked to ramp the chorus up like a Leslie cab, vary the echo speed or length, adjust the gain of a drive vs changing the gain going into a drive pedal with a volume or any other parameter you can think of.

 

If the rack unit also has effects loops (like mine) you can stick additional effects within the chain of the racks effects. I do this on mine. I have a very cool preamp called a REXX that was part of a Preamp Power amp combination. Its got all kinds of push pill knobs for gain mids and bass that give me all these cool driven tones. I stick that one in the racks units mono effect loop.

 

The unit also has a stereo effects loop near the output. I stick a good Alesis or Lexicon unit in that loop for some super big sounding verbs and echoes. The ones in the rack aren't bad, but having a stereo ping pong or maybe even two different effects like a Space echo and a reverb sounds very interesting.

 

I can say a rack can take allot more tweaking because there are so many parameters you can tweak but in the process, you can find totally unique tones too. Pedals for me are pretty much set um and forget un. On stage I don't want to be distracted by may hardware. I focus on my performance and entertaining the audience so I usually go with some simple basics.

 

I have one little pedal box made by Rocktron that lets me fit 5 boss sized pedals in there. I'll stick a compressor pedal, Two drive pedals lie a Tube Screamer and Governor, Chorus and Echo pedal in there. I can run them all off a spot one power adaptor and it has a removable lid and handle. It would be nice if the lid had a little more space for the guitar chords, but its no big deal. I can set up in seconds and be ready to play.

 

In comparison, a rack unit can be a cinder block you have to haul around. Then tioy have midi chords for the pedal board, patch cables between the units and the amps, then all that stuff needs to have power. I built my own rack cases for a few of my units and had enough space to install a power strip inside with a real long cord. I can plug everything into the power strip including my amp and when I'm done playing I just unplug everything and the chords roll up in back of the unit and I just clap the back lid on. The bonus is you aren't worried about running extension cords out to the front of the stage that you can trip over.

 

Like I said each have their plusses and minuses. I suppose it comes down to what you have and what you like. Last working band I started I had been off the road for 10 years mostly doing recording. I had the rack units and few if any pedals. I eventually built up my pedal collection again and used them mostly live and left the rack units in the studio. Now I'm back to recording allot, I'm using the rack units allot more and my pedals mostly sit.

 

So my answer comes down to having both either separately or together is the best of all worlds.

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I think it is a preference thing. Lots of Pros still use pedal boards. I was at a gig once for Los Lobos and the rack effects piece went down for the Keyboard player. I will never forget it because he was whipping it with xlr cable. The downside unless you have a spare you lose all your effects which could be a killer.

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I have to bump it again because i was a gear head in the early 90s when rack stuff was every where. I felt like i was going into the future with this equipment and i really loved it. Being able to swap out different sections was alot like pdals but IMO way better quality. I just recently got back into rack stuff i really miss this stuff. If you take the time to learn this gear it can do alot of amazing stuff. All the stuff i have now uses midi and if you setup midi you can dont have to do anything. Your patches can be switched by a keyboard player, or by a drum machine click track, not just with a pedal board.

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