Stomp Racks: Effects Modules

My idea of the ultimate rig @ 15

I remember, in high school, staring at that Boss pedal display at the guitar center thinking, "If I slowly save up for each one,
my rig will be unstoppable!"  I also figured that after buying each
pedal, Guitar Center would probably just give me the multi-tiered
display itself.  Yep, I was pretty much a huge dork.

All hail, Lord of the Dance!

I managed to get my hands on some pedals and they were great but soon
I grew both bored and frustrated.  I wanted more options.  I wanted to be able to switch smoothly between sounds without having to Riverdance on 5 switches.  Not to mention, all those  pedals seemed to weaken my overall tone even when they weren't on.  I eventually switched to a multi-effects pedal board.  Boom!  Now I
had effects that I never had before.  A tuner, less tone suck, and the the ability to change multiple effects with one-button by using presets.  Was I satisfied?  For a bit I guess.  It was very convenient for recalling parts of songs in bands, but seemed restrictive when it came to spontaneously creating new sounds.  Sure I could create a preset with the perfect fuzz, flanger, and delay but what if I wanted to change from a flanger to a chorus?  I would have to create a whole new patch.  Scrolling through menus while trying to be creative is a great way to kill whatever "vibe" you might have found.  Sure, I could make a few changes within a given patch but then it got to be huge memory game of which function button in which patch changed which effect which way.  In other words, I was lacking real control over what you would call "global changes".

I then resigned myself to the fact that I would have to construct a "rack".  I knew it would take me a long time to save up for each component.  Living in NYC with a lousy back, makes transporting gear a
nightmare with subways and buses. I already started to have anxiety about carrying both the rack and the footpedals around, but I was willing to do it to have the level of control that I wanted.  Besides the size and price, a rack-based system would give me all of the flexibility I wanted but it just

Mike Vegas of Nice Rack NYC built this amazing board

seemed like a bit much.


Enter the midi floor rig. 
It seems like a lot of players getting to a
similar place from two directions.  Getting their rack on the floor or adding midi control to their stompboxes.  Either way the benefits are clear.


Eventide Factor pedals are a good example of these new specialty
multi-effects pedals.  Each of the 4 pedals control an
effect type.
The Time Factor is a dual delay unit.  The Mod Factor has a boatloadof modulation and filter effects effects.  The Pitch Factor features the Eventide pitch shifting that I grew up hearing only world famous players have.   Finally the Space pedal produces classic reverbs and massive

Eventide Pitch Factor

atmospheric and ambient effects.Each pedal can be used as a section of your effects chain.  Much like a modular synthesizer has sections consisting of oscillators, modulations, voltage-controlled amps and filters, guitarist  signal chain can be looked at the same way. Each of these Factor pedals can hold midi presets that can be changed
with the units footswitches or a midi controller.  With certain midi
floor controllers you cansimultaneously send midi signals to each of

Eventide Time Factor

the units with one switch.  No more Ben Vereen when changing tones.
You can then change the settings on each of the Factors foot switches
to give you what you want at that moment.
The effects on the factor pedals are often a blend of effects typessometimes covering the ground of two or three simple effect types. There are pitch mods with delays, reverbs with filters, and delays with
modulations.  It's clear Eventide cares more about dynamic, modern effects than aping classic tones.  That's probably why I dig them.

A few other companies are making pedals that work in a similar way.

Strymon Timelin

Strymon has just released the Timeline Delay  which is

Nova Drive

similar to the Time Factor and are set to release a competitor to the Mod Factor in 2012.  TC Electronics has the Nova Drive which is an all-analog

Line 6 M13 and M9

dual-clip pedal that uses midi presets, and Line 6 has the
M5, M9 and M13 pedals with midi control over 100 different effects.
Extremely useful and agreat way to experiment with a huge number of new effects before you shell out for specialty units.

Next time we'll talk about how to reign all of that in with midi.

-Jay Bois