Sorry this ended up taking so long, but the obvious effort Ace put into his review required something at least comparable in return...
Alright. It took me a while to decide how to handle this.
Here is the official statement: This is a midi controller and a rack. NOT a pedal board so, really does not apply. But you asked for item so you are gonna get it!
Glad I could entertain you for a while.
Tumnus, GT-500, HBE Fuzz/Oct. that's 7+ flavors of dirt, and all tasty choice pedals!
Including both channels on the amp I come up with 16 possible combinations of which I actually use 7, so good catch there Ace. I don't use the fuzz, Tumnus, and GT-500 at the same time because I haven't found a use for that sound; it gets mushy in a way that the fuzz into the amp's lead channel doesn't. I likewise don't use the GT-500 with the lead channel because that gets overly saturated and prone to feedback.
Chorus and Phase - and a again, WAZA and the EVH, so 4 styles there too!
I don't currently have any patches using the phase and chorus at the same time, but it's easy enough to make one and good to have the option I guess.
Cali76 is irreproachable (almost)
Have a beef with the Cali76? I don't really understand why people get bent out of shape about this processor or that tremolo pedal. This was the most expensive pedal I've ever thrown down for, but I wouldn't have paid up if it didn't deliver the goods.
I don't recognize the TC unit, but, TC rack processor - recognize!
The TC rack unit is a G-Major 2, and it's a pretty cool device, especially for $200! Processors like this are dinosaurs in an era where contemporary racks are built around an AxeFx, Helix, or Kemper while pedal boards stock the latest offerings from Strymon along with an Eventide H9 (or two). Ironically going this route ended up saving me a ton of money over a giant pedal board with multiple Strymons and a BOSS ES-8 or RJM Mastermind PBC/10.
Of course, the cool graphic Vox Wah is still cool.
We just talked about this, but :thanks:
But......
WHY THE HELL WOULD YOU RUIN THAT EPIC AWESOME BOARD?!?!?!?!?!?!
First of all, you DID put a board in there - and then you went and put that square ass, elementary school looking, pastel colors, square midi monstrosity on the board. News flash: IT DOESN'T FIT!!!!!! This may shock you, but when your Midi board is that big it is the effing board. That's alike putting a tire on a tire on your car. Seriously man, who does that? Perfectly awesome egos trashed. Now you have crooked alignment, wires showing, and you crowded the Vox, which is now a color eye sore.
You seem to think that I can't see my own board. I realize it's crooked, but as detailed
here, I made the best of a less than ideal situation. I'd love to have a 36" wide board that'd hold my pedals, controller, and expression pedals with a nice case that doesn't weigh a ton, but that doesn't seem to exist. My options were to DIY something which would weigh a ton and not have a case, have a sufficiently wide board custom built which would cost a fortune, or use what I have. What I have is a pretty sweet board that happens to be 31-32" wide, so it'll fit the pedals and controller, but maybe not in the most elegant way. Sorry to have offended your delicate sensibilities.
And hey - remember all the pedal selection love just a moment ago? Well, lets just effing forget that. The reason you buy those epic @$$ pedals is for the ENVY and PRAISE of other guitar players! Here is a little visual appeal tip: When you have amazing pedals and a cool board put them on it. Why is that you say, Aceman? Because when you put them in a draw in a rack NO ONE CAN EFFING SEE THEM!!!!!!! Might as well have a Behringer FZ300, a Dano Mini chorus and a Mooer orange 90.
Seriously man, you had probably one of the top 5 boards in this thread, and shot it all to hell with some kind of Pink Floyd/Bob Bradshaw bull$#!t fantasy. Now you have a Kindergarten-crooked setup that hides the only things worth seeing. All because you want to perpetuate the stereotype that white men can't dance because of your privileged guilt (as you secretly stash more than a years income of pedals for most people).
The only things worth seeing? Are you serious? Most hardcore gear heads (honestly the only people who bother to scope out pedal boards) know what a Mastermind GT is, and it's quite a bit cooler and more exclusive than any of the rather pedestrian pedals I'm hiding. Everyone has some sort of Klone, so that isn't particularly special. OK, so the Cali76 is pretty cool and HBE has a cult following, but outside of that no one really cares. Cool kids do not have a GT-500 on their board as I pointed out in the other post. That leaves us with BOSS and MXR, and I shouldn't need to explain those.
Speaking of explaining, how about explaining that "privileged guilt" you've somehow diagnosed Dr. AceBob? I'm not aware of any guilt in relation to this board at least, and I wouldn't want to go anywhere else that'd get this thread nuked. OTOH I can assure you that my lack of dancing ability is no stereotype. I may be able to convince longcat to take a break from hiatus and vouch for me, but I'd prefer if everyone just took my word for it.
If I "secretly stash more than a years income of pedals for most people", you must either live in your car or have a really sh*tty job. I'm "hiding" a total of six pedals, and I'll go with current used prices for sake of simplicity. The most expensive are the Cali76 and UFO at $250 and $200 respectively, followed by the CE-2W and Tumnus at $150 each, with the Phase 90 and GT-500 at $90 each for a total of $930. I really hope you're making at least that much in a
week. Maybe you meant income from music, but I doubt many of us make enough from music in a year to finance one pedal, let alone a full board. I have no guilt from my day job funding a hobby.
Everyone....this is an example of how to go from king of the pedal world to midi malignancy and board-room irrelevance, and spend a crap-ton of money while doing it.
Damn, I'm sure that midi board works great, but it's about one step away from a black board with sticky notes on it aesthetically.
This kind of change would suggest serious underlying problems. Are you having trouble in the bedroom, maybe? I'm really feeling the juxtaposition of the epic pedals with this sort of Midi Masturbation and the helter skelter "board on board" arrangement as having some sort of serious psycho-sexual implication in the unconcious.
And, just to avoid the years of Psycho acoustic analysis:
This used to be You:
What the hell happened man?
:lmao: :lmao: :lmao:
In case you're wondering, that was what happened when I showed longcat your remarks about "having trouble in the bedroom, maybe?". I'm confident that
absolutely no one wants a detailed answer, but suffice it to say that we're good.
As far as "what the hell happened", two things. First of all, I had two previous rack systems in the mid to late 2000s, so I knew what was possible in terms of single-button sound changes. Why would that matter you say? It matters because I've also been a vocalist for the majority of bands I've played in. It matters because the music I play isn't wah > boost > delay > amp > done. If I were covering everyone's Sunset Strip favorites where I only needed a boost for solos and a chorus pedal once or twice per set, there's no way I'd build this. I'd probably bring this board to that gig:
(that's my Lead 12 / backup board, btw)
The music I prefer to play is kind of psychedelic / shoe gaze with elements of prog thrown in. With this system I can reconfigure any of the sounds I use with one button press.
The second thing that happened was finding a great deal on the G-Major 2, followed by the GCX, rack, and even the Mastermind. I parted out and sold my two earlier racks because they didn't sound as good as my Marshall 2555, and I couldn't afford to build something that would have at the time. That changed in April of last year, so I decided to build the rack I'd essentially always wanted.
