Re: Effects Unit for my Mark IV
Ugh-
That question brings me pain. I've used the POD 2.0, and tried other units like the Boss ME-50. Used to have a Digitech Valve FX several years back. Now I have settled on using pedals for everything. I think that effects processors are cool in theory, but it is really easy to completely lose touch with the actual playing and music if you end up having to spend hours messing around with a processor to get it to do neat things for you.
The big complaint I have about processors is that their best selling point is also one of their biggest drawbacks. Processors are cool because you can step on one button and get a whole bunch of different effects to toggle on and off. This is convenient. But you also need to spend a lot of time making sure that your levels are comparable, which can vary a lot from room to room.
And what if you want to toggle various things on and off at different moments? Well, a lot of processors now have stomp-box-like controls as well, so supposedly that's covered. But then there's the issue of switching time. A lot of midi foot controllers have a slight delay in switching, which can be noticeable or at least annoying. Some controllers don't have this (I think the ME-50 doesn't have that problem?). And I'm sure a lot of higher end gear doesn't have the switching delay.
The thing I like about pedals is that you can be completely random in your decisions. If you make a spontaneous decision to use a certain effect at a certain moment, you don't need to ask yourself if that sound is in the bank you are currently using.
The other BIG scary thing about processors is it seems like there is always the chance that an accidental pedal depression (or double hit) can cause you to switch to some unknown la-la-land, or edit mode, and there you are in the middle of a song, on stage, and you have no clue what just happened.
Of course, if you decide you want to use all pedals instead of a processor, you might start liking that Mark IV a lot less... that's what happened to me. Once I accepted that I could just use pedals for all, I built a nice pedalboard, and switched to using a Twin Reverb because it's a louder, cleaner, nicer sounding amplifier.
To give you a final anecdote... I was playing covers with some guys a while back,and one of them was a definite gear-head. He had bought the Zintera modeling amplifier, which is like the Mercedes of modeling amps. However, if he wanted to get a Marshall-like sound for some AC/DC or Aerosmith, he was flipping through the banks of the amplifier, and invariably every bank had oodles of delay and chorus on it as well, and the sound was brittle and overly bright. In the meantime, with my little Mesa Maverick amplifier and a RAT pedal, I was already cranking out Highway to Hell with a damn good approximation of the right tone.
If you want to make your bandmates happy, keep it simple.
