scottkahn

I've been a hug fan throughout the years. I would definitely credit the strong vocal performance to Simon being a professional singer for the past 25 years. I was sorry to see the reunion, though. While it's great to have John back on bass (amazing player), Warren Cuccurullo was a much stronger guitar player than Andy -- after all, Warren came from the Zappa camp and then Missing Persons.

In the G-Major, delay happens before Reverb. Reverb is the last effect in the chain... or parallel! There are actually flexible routing options -- effects can be in series, like your pedals -- one after another and so on, or they can be run in parallel or semi-parallel, where the G-Major puts some effects in front of each other but others run next to each other, so for example the same dry signal goes to your delay and goes to your reverb instead of the delayed repeats going into the reverb. You should download the user's manual from the TC Electronic web site and read up on it. You'll find it's quite flexible. It also has a compressor built in. Wiring your setup provides for numerous options. 1. Get rid of the CE-20. TC makes the best sounding choruses out there. 2. If you really like compressing your signal up front, then leave the compressor at the front of your signal chain. In your effects loop, go into your DD-20 and then into the G-Major, then return from the G-Major back to the amp/preamp. It's not ideal. Really, you should get rid of the DD-20. It's a great delay, but you don't need it with the G-Major's delays. Or keep it and use it for special effects. I don't really know anything about the koch pedaltone to comment on it.

The order of the effect blocks is not critical depending on your style of playing. The effects order is fixed in the most popular order based on what is considered the "optimal" signal chain by most pros. Do you really like to put your reverb in front of your chorus, followed up by your compressor? Probably not! So I wouldn't worry about this -- first become comfortable using rack effects before you try to do complex signal routing. The G-Major is a great unit, and as you mentioned, something like the G-Force is out of your price range.

I love the G-Major. It absolutely offers pro-level sound quality, and it's price of $400 in the US these days is an incredible value. It lacks some of the programming flexibility of more-expensive gear (changing effect block order, for example), but it's one of the easiest pro effect processors to program, and setting it up for MIDI control is as simple as it could get. The Rocktron Intellifex is a comparable product price-wise and sound quality-wise, but I don't have any experience programming it.