Every time I buy the latest gen digital pedal board it isn't long until the honeymoon is over and I find myself wanting to put a physical pedal board back together.
I was using a mini board that comprised of a HX Stomp, a Delay and Reverb pedal for a year as a very workable compromise to help keep the stage noise level down in an 8-piece band. Interestingly though, since moving over to bass duties in that band, at home I’ve gone back to my analog guitar rig of a larger board and two real amps.
Meh, all-in-one multi-effects products are just clever marketing for mediocre effects and always will be. Dedicated circuits and craft for a specific effect will always sound better than bodged together all-in-one things.
Hey man what a fun video! I am a sound engineer by trade and guitarist as a hobby. But I'd say you worked at the sound processing parts with an order that made sense to me as an engineer and musician. The sounds you like as a guitarist are close to what I like and that made it a real treat to listen to you dial things in. Thanks for not using chorus Hahaha!
I do jazz gigs and any recordings any sessions with hx stomp. Once i had many pedals but hx stomp and replace it. Many multi effects out there but helix is the most organic sounding one for me. You got the right choice.
I've been using an HX Stomp for over 3 years, and it is very powerful and versatile. Here are a few tips that I've learned along the way that make dialing in faster and more enjoyable. When building a "new" Preset, start with selecting separate Amp and Cab Blocks. This will make it easy if you want to switch to something different down the line. Pick and Amp Block that is based on a real Amp you already know. Then pick a Cab Block by selecting a Speaker Type and Configuration you know as well. Then test the different Mics available in the Cab Block. This will get you the basic sound you'll be working with. Depending on your guitar, pickups, the Cab Block can often sound too bright. To fix that, turn down the "High Cut" in the Cab Block down to about 5kHz, as that is the Frequency Response of most Guitar Speakers. After you've got those Amp and Cab Blocks basically dialed in, adding Effects Blocks and dialing them in should be a simple and intuitive process. Always "Save" along the way. Explore and have fun. You're not going to hurt anything by turning the Parameters all the way up or down.
@@RotemSivanGuitarYes, one Block for the Amp, and one Block for the Cab. The reason is that if you use a "combined Amp/Cab" Block, you can't switch out just the Amp or Cab without loosing the settings you made in the combined Block. We have John Cordy to thank for this very useful tip. Another advantage with 2 separate blocks is that you can put different Effects Blocks between them, like Reverb.
Also a big tip for the Stomp is to have a general global high cut. This gets rid of high frequency digital noise and makes the overall sound more organic and nearer to the analog gear it’s emulating.
my 2 shekels: analog overdrive pedals sound a lot better than what's in the stomp. The reverbs and delays are amazing and just as good as the avalanche run. There are a ton of pros to modeling: presets, size, price, and you can switch out any sound whenever you want! There is a small amount of latency from converting the signal to digial and then back out which, in my opinion, hurts the feel of the instrument a little. But yea its pretty sweet and only going to get better from here
Digital effects - Yes absolutely, most are excellent. Digital amps and overdrives? Nah I don't think we are quite there yet. You can get an instant, satisfying tone & feel out of a good amp or OD pedal. But if you go all digital, it will take A LOT of tweaking to find a playable and responsive drive tone. That may be okay for recording, but not for live setups.
Digital effects are really good for live and studio usage but not all kind of effects are exists as processor's algorithms and most important part - sometimes even just boxes/knobs etc can inspire you for making music/playing guitar/etc.
Schrödinger's pedals. Individual and multi exist and don't exist at the same time. We've all been there. When you have pedals you desire multi and when you have multi you want individual.
Nope, I've never wanted an all-in-one multi-effects product in my life. Slightly useful sometimes but not really if you know what you're doing, basically. It's people who don't really know what they're doing, floundering around looking for endless products to make their music better that end up in these debates with themselves. And those, along with general beginners seeking an easier ride with everything, are the people these companies target with their marketing. A bit of experience and knowing what you want to do with your music leaves these kinds of "problems" non-existant. You make a pedal board, if you need one, and play your music...no problem at all. Companies wanting to sell you endless new products will make you think there's a problem there which therefore you need their products to solve.
A solution for a good drive sound is to add your favorite drive pedal in front or in the effect loop of the HX Stomp-and any other analog pedal you really like. It's makes your rig a little bigger, yet not that much, certainly not as big as your previous one.
The NDSP plug on a Helix pedalboard-to-HX Stomp video is a bit strange tbh, but overall a good video showing the power of the Helix and what the HX Stomp can actually do.
I adore musicians who play and travel light and don't use any pedal. And I fully understand musicians who research and develop their sounds in studio with analog pedalboards and then store those sounds in digital pedaloboards for their live performances.
love the hx. uafx modelling has caught up, simpler more intuitive on the fly tweaking in live situaation. never liked the l6 drives and mods. digital seems to loose substance live. so i keep a pedalbased drive and mod chain with a analog delay in the end as my dry rig, hxstomp beeing part of the wet. the delays pitching glitching and reverbs are amazing. but for quick sound tweaking live, when the room filled up, and your home adjusted preset sounds to dull, seperate pedals are better.
For travel,? I would use a digital for reverb, delay, HX one? Stomp? A switchable drive (kernom,) compressor,/boost ....small midi switcher should fit in a briefcase, small backpack. Digital alone is not really satisfying. IMHO
A Europe Tour and who is left out again? Austria! I feel thrown back into Pre-EU times when all the cool bands only went to Munich and no one evre played in Austria. We are a small country, agreed. But Vienna is a beautiful city with a huge Jazz community. Porgy and Bess would be the address to go to.
Ja leider, aber eher bei amerikanischen Bands, sonst kommen eh viele nach Wien. Ich komme aus Salzburg, ich muss auch immer nach Wien oder München. Aber naja, so ist es, Österreich ist halt nicht so arg relevant.
Man you are the paradigm nerfwrecking noodle guitarist.. do they pay you for notes per second.. admiring your sound guy for his patience.. ps. And then he started to play base and everything was clear
No, they are not. I've been a gigging musician for 44 years. I've tried my share of modeling and IR amps and pedals. While they may work fine for the bedroom tinkerer, they are worse than disappointing for live performance. Why? Because EVERY time you need to make adjustments for resonant frequencies and other issues affecting your sound from venue to venue, you must connect a laptop and dive neck deep into the weeds. NO THANKS! I won't make other band members and the audience wait between songs while I go full geek to accomplish a task that should be quick, easy, and at my fingertips. I use a pedalboard of 12 effects pedals, a switcher pedal, a wah pedal, a tuner, and a quality DI box with onboard amp simulation derived from solid state circuit components, not IR data. My ampless rig works swimmingly allowing me to maintain momentum and flow through the show. Modeling gear is useless in a live environment.
@@RotemSivanGuitar if I saw your patch correctly on the phone screen, you put the distortion after the delay and reverb. That makes it really messy (you want to have distortion on the guitar sound and delay of that). I think you should try order like: compressor - distortion - amp (& cab separately) - delay - reverb This will give you much cleaner and nicer driven sound. Poly-effects take lot of DSP, so you need to more carefully choose the amp - the different amps (as well as effects) use different amount of DSP. Try the Litigator for example.
Digital multi-effects become obsolete over time. The markets will always demand separate pedals for resale. Personally, I prefer analog dirt, tube preamps, and power amps. Separate digital pedals for time-based effects. No multi-effects.
Typically, if you can't get the sound of the stompboxes out of a multieffect unit it's because of the lack of programming skill by the user. Even multieffect processors from 30 years ago can outperform a pile of stompboxes.
Pedals never should have made a comeback years ago. Multi-processors have an entire display case full of effects in it and are fully programmable. Why go back to old stompboxes again? Doesn't compute.
Instead of getting the HX to sound like those pedals, how about getting all those pedals to sound like everything the HX can do. Because they can't. Plus, after you create ONE SOUND with the stompboxes, how do you instantly change to a different sound? Again, you can't. It's a no-brainer, dump the pedals and get a multieffect unit. It's like being a chef in a fully-stocked kitchen. You can create anything.
Come to hear us on tour in Mexico & Europe! (would mean the world ❤) www.bandsintown.com/a/4841946-rotem-sivan-band?came_from=251&
If you like Neural DSP so much, why bother with a Stomp and not go straight for their Quad Cortex?
Every time I buy the latest gen digital pedal board it isn't long until the honeymoon is over and I find myself wanting to put a physical pedal board back together.
Interesting yea... I feel you
I was using a mini board that comprised of a HX Stomp, a Delay and Reverb pedal for a year as a very workable compromise to help keep the stage noise level down in an 8-piece band. Interestingly though, since moving over to bass duties in that band, at home I’ve gone back to my analog guitar rig of a larger board and two real amps.
Meh, all-in-one multi-effects products are just clever marketing for mediocre effects and always will be. Dedicated circuits and craft for a specific effect will always sound better than bodged together all-in-one things.
Hey man what a fun video! I am a sound engineer by trade and guitarist as a hobby. But I'd say you worked at the sound processing parts with an order that made sense to me as an engineer and musician. The sounds you like as a guitarist are close to what I like and that made it a real treat to listen to you dial things in. Thanks for not using chorus Hahaha!
Thanks man!
I do jazz gigs and any recordings any sessions with hx stomp. Once i had many pedals but hx stomp and replace it. Many multi effects out there but helix is the most organic sounding one for me. You got the right choice.
I've been using an HX Stomp for over 3 years, and it is very powerful and versatile. Here are a few tips that I've learned along the way that make dialing in faster and more enjoyable.
When building a "new" Preset, start with selecting separate Amp and Cab Blocks. This will make it easy if you want to switch to something different down the line. Pick and Amp Block that is based on a real Amp you already know. Then pick a Cab Block by selecting a Speaker Type and Configuration you know as well. Then test the different Mics available in the Cab Block. This will get you the basic sound you'll be working with. Depending on your guitar, pickups, the Cab Block can often sound too bright. To fix that, turn down the "High Cut" in the Cab Block down to about 5kHz, as that is the Frequency Response of most Guitar Speakers.
After you've got those Amp and Cab Blocks basically dialed in, adding Effects Blocks and dialing them in should be a simple and intuitive process. Always "Save" along the way. Explore and have fun. You're not going to hurt anything by turning the Parameters all the way up or down.
Thanks!! So you do 2 blocks - one for amp & 1 for cab?
@@RotemSivanGuitarYes, one Block for the Amp, and one Block for the Cab. The reason is that if you use a "combined Amp/Cab" Block, you can't switch out just the Amp or Cab without loosing the settings you made in the combined Block.
We have John Cordy to thank for this very useful tip.
Another advantage with 2 separate blocks is that you can put different Effects Blocks between them, like Reverb.
Also a big tip for the Stomp is to have a general global high cut. This gets rid of high frequency digital noise and makes the overall sound more organic and nearer to the analog gear it’s emulating.
my 2 shekels: analog overdrive pedals sound a lot better than what's in the stomp. The reverbs and delays are amazing and just as good as the avalanche run. There are a ton of pros to modeling: presets, size, price, and you can switch out any sound whenever you want!
There is a small amount of latency from converting the signal to digial and then back out which, in my opinion, hurts the feel of the instrument a little. But yea its pretty sweet and only going to get better from here
I'll see you in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico next week ! I recently moved to modeled amps and pedals (Fractal FM9) ... love it so far.
Digital effects - Yes absolutely, most are excellent. Digital amps and overdrives? Nah I don't think we are quite there yet. You can get an instant, satisfying tone & feel out of a good amp or OD pedal. But if you go all digital, it will take A LOT of tweaking to find a playable and responsive drive tone. That may be okay for recording, but not for live setups.
I have fender DR tone master and I love the sounds I get when I put OD pedals on it
Digital effects are really good for live and studio usage but not all kind of effects are exists as processor's algorithms and most important part - sometimes even just boxes/knobs etc can inspire you for making music/playing guitar/etc.
Yes, for me it's seeing if I can tour w that set up
100% more comfort or that 5% more sound almost nobody notices.. this is the question
Schrödinger's pedals. Individual and multi exist and don't exist at the same time. We've all been there. When you have pedals you desire multi and when you have multi you want individual.
Nope, I've never wanted an all-in-one multi-effects product in my life. Slightly useful sometimes but not really if you know what you're doing, basically. It's people who don't really know what they're doing, floundering around looking for endless products to make their music better that end up in these debates with themselves. And those, along with general beginners seeking an easier ride with everything, are the people these companies target with their marketing. A bit of experience and knowing what you want to do with your music leaves these kinds of "problems" non-existant. You make a pedal board, if you need one, and play your music...no problem at all. Companies wanting to sell you endless new products will make you think there's a problem there which therefore you need their products to solve.
A solution for a good drive sound is to add your favorite drive pedal in front or in the effect loop of the HX Stomp-and any other analog pedal you really like. It's makes your rig a little bigger, yet not that much, certainly not as big as your previous one.
The NDSP plug on a Helix pedalboard-to-HX Stomp video is a bit strange tbh, but overall a good video showing the power of the Helix and what the HX Stomp can actually do.
I like strange. Thanks man
I adore musicians who play and travel light and don't use any pedal.
And I fully understand musicians who research and develop their sounds in studio with analog pedalboards and then store those sounds in digital pedaloboards for their live performances.
Digital compact efficiency for the win!
love the hx. uafx modelling has caught up, simpler more intuitive on the fly tweaking in live situaation.
never liked the l6 drives and mods. digital seems to loose substance live. so i keep a pedalbased drive and mod chain with a analog delay in the end as my dry rig, hxstomp beeing part of the wet. the delays pitching glitching and reverbs are amazing. but for quick sound tweaking live, when the room filled up, and your home adjusted preset sounds to dull, seperate pedals are better.
@RotemSivanGuitar are you still using the stomp? Did it replace your pedalboard? What is the update on this?
Actually I am!! I keep adjusting the EQ and effects but getting better. I might add midi controller to have more options love w the stomp
@@RotemSivanGuitar love it. Thanks for the update mate and wishing big magic for all your shows!!
You came to Arkansas? When was this? Also, when do you come back?
Is that Zia cross shirt? Cool.
I'll see you at the Zinco Jazz club in mexico city bro
Amazing!! Please spread the word 🙏/ say hi!
For travel,? I would use a digital for reverb, delay, HX one? Stomp? A switchable drive (kernom,) compressor,/boost ....small midi switcher should fit in a briefcase, small backpack. Digital alone is not really satisfying. IMHO
I hear you.
yesss
❤️
A Europe Tour and who is left out again? Austria! I feel thrown back into Pre-EU times when all the cool bands only went to Munich and no one evre played in Austria. We are a small country, agreed. But Vienna is a beautiful city with a huge Jazz community. Porgy and Bess would be the address to go to.
I would love to come out there. If you know a good booking agent let me know or someone that can help please let me know 🙏🙏
@RotemSivarGuitar Or Kapu in Linz is great and legendary, Nirvana played there, it’s not too big.
Ja leider, aber eher bei amerikanischen Bands, sonst kommen eh viele nach Wien.
Ich komme aus Salzburg, ich muss auch immer nach Wien oder München.
Aber naja, so ist es, Österreich ist halt nicht so arg relevant.
Your pedalboard wiring gives me anxiety
Yes, for me as well
Cool
🙏❤️
How can I trust that guitar? It's a lyre.
Man you are the paradigm nerfwrecking noodle guitarist.. do they pay you for notes per second.. admiring your sound guy for his patience.. ps. And then he started to play base and everything was clear
Tom! So happy you stopped by. Wishing you a very happy evening.
No, they are not.
I've been a gigging musician for 44 years. I've tried my share of modeling and IR amps and pedals.
While they may work fine for the bedroom tinkerer, they are worse than disappointing for live performance.
Why? Because EVERY time you need to make adjustments for resonant frequencies and other issues affecting your sound from venue to venue, you must connect a laptop and dive neck deep into the weeds.
NO THANKS!
I won't make other band members and the audience wait between songs while I go full geek to accomplish a task that should be quick, easy, and at my fingertips.
I use a pedalboard of 12 effects pedals, a switcher pedal, a wah pedal, a tuner, and a quality DI box with onboard amp simulation derived from solid state circuit components, not IR data.
My ampless rig works swimmingly allowing me to maintain momentum and flow through the show.
Modeling gear is useless in a live environment.
overdrive seems to be the digital problem, never heard a good digital overdrive, except very fusion ultra gained tones.
I feel you, that's a tricky one
@@RotemSivanGuitareven with analogue pedals its hard to acquire a good jazz overdrive sound, haha
@@RotemSivanGuitar if I saw your patch correctly on the phone screen, you put the distortion after the delay and reverb. That makes it really messy (you want to have distortion on the guitar sound and delay of that). I think you should try order like: compressor - distortion - amp (& cab separately) - delay - reverb
This will give you much cleaner and nicer driven sound.
Poly-effects take lot of DSP, so you need to more carefully choose the amp - the different amps (as well as effects) use different amount of DSP. Try the Litigator for example.
who cares, the fun is not the same
not even talking about self made effects
Digital multi-effects become obsolete over time. The markets will always demand separate pedals for resale. Personally, I prefer analog dirt, tube preamps, and power amps. Separate digital pedals for time-based effects. No multi-effects.
Yes but also what about flying with all the gear...?
Nope. Digital isn’t still quite there. Also the tactile aspect of pedals and the ease of tweaking in live situations are still missing in digital.
What a mess....are they on a board ?.....just looks like you have just thrown a load of pedals on a table.
Typically, if you can't get the sound of the stompboxes out of a multieffect unit it's because of the lack of programming skill by the user. Even multieffect processors from 30 years ago can outperform a pile of stompboxes.
Pedals never should have made a comeback years ago. Multi-processors have an entire display case full of effects in it and are fully programmable. Why go back to old stompboxes again? Doesn't compute.
Instead of getting the HX to sound like those pedals, how about getting all those pedals to sound like everything the HX can do. Because they can't. Plus, after you create ONE SOUND with the stompboxes, how do you instantly change to a different sound? Again, you can't. It's a no-brainer, dump the pedals and get a multieffect unit. It's like being a chef in a fully-stocked kitchen. You can create anything.