More Music Stuff - My Go-To 'Pedal Board'

 When it comes to electric music instruments I am somewhat of a gear-head.

When I first acquired an electric violin and guitar, I subsequently began the process of piecing together an effects pedal board to give these instruments different voicings.

Eventually. I had a home-made board full of all kinds of effects pedals, including a Cry Baby Wah, a digital delay, distortion , an equalizer, phaser, chorus, etc., etc.

I found that such a setup had started becoming a bit 'fiddly' in terms of keeping it all hooked up and running. I also found that the board generated a lot of noise and unwanted hum.  At that time I was kind of new to the whole thing and didn't know about the art of proper placement of effects in the pedal chain. Additionally, I probably would have benefitted from the purchase of a noise gate unit and a compressor.

That all changed a few years ago when I acquired this piece of gear:

This is a Line-6 POD-HD500X digital processing board.

This baby is loaded with around 30 different amplifier models, ranging from the classic Vox, Fender, and Marshall boxes to the later 'boutique' amps (Hiwatt, Dr.Z, Soldano,etc.)

Also digitally modeled are a multitude of the most popular vintage and new pedal effects.

No shortage of distortion, delay, reverb, and others.

Also included is a built in expression pedal that can be set up as either a volume swell, or one of the many 'wah' model options.

The box has the capacity to set up hundreds of different presets, where a selected amp model and up to eight effects can be dialed in.

To date, I've only put together four presets. But these are carefully crafted in terms of amp and effects selections. One is for electric guitar, one for electric violin, one for acoustic/electric  mandolin and guitar, and most recently, a setup for electric bass guitar.

The board also includes such niceties as a tuner, a 16-second looper, input impedance selections, XLR outputs, stereo 1/4 inch jack outputs, a CD/PC audio input, and a USB connection for accessing some of those awesome online DAW recording sites. (I use Cakewalk by Bandlab).

Actually, I've only scratched the surface of all the things this unit can do, but it fully serves my purpose for on-stage performance, and at-home practice and experimentation.

Rock on...