racks / pedals?

[kelvin]

i noticed that john petrucci didn't have many pedals.
he mainly uses rack effects (that is multi effects?) ...

anyone one knows why?
people say that pedals do much better than multi-effects.

even his crybaby wahwah is a rack.
players like hendrix,satriani,vai, lynch ++ uses crybaby pedals.
?

[proxy]

Re: racks / pedals?

To me it has always seemed to be personal taste.

[FretFire]

Re: racks / pedals?

Petrucci has a HUGE rig, with an insane amount of bells and whistles. I suppose he uses a rack setup for simplicity's sake. If he allocated all the pedals he'd need to get the same sounds, he'd probably have a mess on stage. For one example, let's take delay. He uses it, but not just one setting or type. One song might call for slow repeats the same volume as the original signal, and the next might need faster repeats at a lower volume, etc. He also has a pretty cool switching system and expression pedals for on-the-fly parameter control (say he's using tremolo and has the pedal set to control the rate, he could rock his foot back and forth to make it slower or faster).

All of that being said, I still prefer guitar->pedals->amp personally, I had a rack setup (just 8 spaces, nothing insane) and it was such a pain and a good deal of overkill for what I need.

[echofinger]

Re: racks / pedals?

i noticed that john petrucci didn't have many pedals.
he mainly uses rack effects (that is multi effects?) ...


people say that pedals do much better than multi-effects.


?

Once upon a time, back in the 80's mostly, when dinosaurs still ruled the earth, rack mount units weren't known for there amazing quality effects. If you did have a good one, it cost you 3 grand.

These days however, I beg to differ. Throw in 20 years of advancement in chip and computer technology, and the score is even.

Now, on ocassion, you might find with a pedal, that if you turn the knobs just so... it puts out a noise that you can not replicate on your favorite rack mount.

That incidence however, is few and far between, in my humble opinion.

People use rack mounts because they are easier to transport, have built in power cords, and it is easier to keep the power lines away from your instrument cables. You can also purchse a high quality rack mount that does the job of 10-15 pedals, saving you space and time. This makes them quieter, especially if you want/need a huge variety of effects, with many of them turned on at the same time.

Also, a guy like Petrucci may have up to 5 different effects settings in a single song, and perhaps has five different settings in every song! With the wonder of MIDI, he can make a preset for every setting, and instead of bending over to twist knobs after every song, simply steps on a pre-assigned pedal, thus giving him more time to concentrate on the task at hand, which is to make you wish you were him.

[echofinger]

Re: racks / pedals?

Wow.

Three of us posted simultaneously.

If that ain't a goocher, I don't know what is.

oops a daisy...

[kelvin]

Re: racks / pedals?

thank you all for the great replies