Show us your guitar setup

[rumorazzi]

Last iteration of my setup, used this one for the last gig:

Guitar to dirt and H9 and then to the amp’s front in.
Fx send to Drolo then all the way to the end of chain and back to the amp’s stereo return.

[WeAreTemporary]

Like many musicians, I’ve been riding the pedal renaissance pretty hard as of late (whether for synths or guitar). But given that a lot of the more complex pedals have surged enormously in price (often well in excess of $300), I’ve become more curious about rack effects from the 80’s, 90’s, and early 2000’s.

One pedal in particular—the Alexander Pedals Ski-Fi—had roused my interest last year. From what I could gather, it was largely based on an 80’s rack reverb algorithm—as forum rumors had it, specifically the Bloom algorithms of the Alesis Midiverb ii. I loved the Sky-Fi, but I couldn’t help but notice that this was a $200 pedal emulating a rack effect that could routinely be found used for $50-80 bucks.

Needless to say, that got me wondering about all sorts of forgotten rack units, how cheap they often were, and how they compared sonically to contemporary pedals. Since then, I’ve been on a bit of a rack bender… Alesis Midiverb ii, Ibanez DM2000, Yamaha SPX-990, Lexicon LXP-15, Roland DEP-5, various ART and DigiTech stuff…

The first two things I noticed with almost all of these units were the following:

A) pedals were definitely more conducive to spontaneous experimentation and real-time tweaking

and B) by God do a lot of those older rack units still sound phenomenal!

So I’m now happily running a hybrid system of pedals and racks (making excellent use of EHX’s new Tri Parallel Mixer pedal).

Soooo… now I’ve become deadly curious… who else has discovered / never forgotten this magic hybrid world of pedals & racks, and what rack effects are you running as part of your pedal setups? Share pics, love poems, odes to your rack effects… go!

[Ithacus]

Rack gear is great! I love the 80’s digital stuff. It’s just the shear size (and difficulty of moving it around) that puts most off I think.

I’ve got a Korg SDD1000 and Roland SDE 2000 that I use with guitar a lot.

The newest pedal I bought is the EHX Attack/Decay and it is fantastic for ‘synth’ type guitar sounds (it works really well polyphonically).

I’ll have to get a picture of my current setup.

[zebra]

lexicon vortex forever

[mattlowery]

modify some scripts to add a tap tempo as well.

Was thinking about thinking during my commute today. So many scripts that I’m using at the end of my chain would benefit from tap tempo. I’m not quite there in lua yet, but it’s on my list to learn!

[mattlowery]

This is great! How are you navigating the line level/instrument level mismatch, or is there one? I often get caught up on that when doing these kinds of thought experiments.

[WeAreTemporary]

A) A lot of racks allow you to switch input sensitivity between -20/+4, which goes a long way to address gain staging issues.

B) If the rack effect in question doesn’t have instrument level inputs, then one of the neat features of the Tri Parallel Mixer by EHX is that it allows you to set both send volume and return volume separately to address precisely the kind of level mismatches you mention.

[909one]

I sold almost all of my pedals to buy modular stuff, thinking I would process guitar with modular but I’ve had so much more fun not playing guitar that guitar has suffered greatly. I just recently bought an Empress Zoia though, and next show I play with guitar that will pretty much be the only pedal I use.

[mattlowery]

Here is my “idea rig”. Would never play a show with this unwieldy best. But hot damn, one can make some wild noises very quickly in the studio.

[DoS]

Steel bass guitar fabricated from scraps of metal; pictured shortly after being handed out to anyone willing to play it and a whole collection of home-made instruments at a festival in 2008. The guitar on the right was not mine, and was made from something like a warming pan.

[WeAreTemporary]

Such a beautifully curated sound design board. I bet you could get lost for hours and hours just gently brushing chords and soft arpeggios.

[mattlowery]

Thank you! And, yes, it’s fun to input very little by way of playing and see what comes back.

[onewayness]

Current setup. Primary guitar is a slightly frankenstein’d early-80s Peavey T-60 with a cheap Chinese Tele neck…

[Leumann]

Here’s my main setup with the band!

[rick_monster]

This is my fave setup, home made tube amp on the trolley plus a guitar on my back. It’s this or a lunchbox amp on all my gigs, only brought pedals to one show in 2019 and didn’t even use them…

Amp is a hybrid of different 50s fender circuits, all point to point wiring. Guts out for a long overdue dry joint repair:

Guitars have come and gone, I’m currently fixing up this baha Tele to get close to the instruments played by Danny Gatton:

Stripping lacquer off modern factory made electric guitars really brings the sound to life in my experience:

I’m planning to overhaul about half my guitar collection this year to some extent. Next in line for attention is a 50s hofner archtop which has suffered greatly over the years with various bad pickup arrangements and gruesome repair work…

[stephenvit]

wow, that’s beautiful!

[jlmitch5]

my main guitar is an hss strat and I’ve been eyeing a reverend semi-hollow that’s at the local shop for a bit now. what do you end up using your bilt for vs. the strat?

[ludvista29]

Reverend’s are great for the price! I sell them a lot at work

[jlmitch5]

yes, I had a chance to try out the one there (hardtail club king 290), as well as a 12 string at another store. I love how both of them played. The 12 string felt a lot easier on my fretting hand than a rickenbacker 12 string they also had (tho of course setup plays a lot into that too so it’s not straightforward to compare).

They also have Jenn Wasner’s signature which features artwork from one of the people in the band wume. Find that pretty incredible as I feel like most artists who have signature instruments are extremely not my thing hah.

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The thing stopping me is I don’t really know what I would use it for that I wouldn’t use my strat for.

[jlmitch5]

Here’s my current guitar setup:

Newest addition is the Earthquaker Plumes, which is an incredible little overdrive! EQ curve it puts on the signal is perfect for making the guitar stand out a bit more.

Also, my bandmate who lives in a studio apartment is graciously letting me be the keeper of his Twin which I’ve got set up on the other side of the couch for stereo fun