Does every guitarist need an FX board?
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I'm been playing a lot of my Fender Squier Tele lately, and I love the sweet twangy highs, especially on distortion and using the bridge pickup. I've also been playing around with the amp (Laney) - and the different sounds - clean, overdrive, 2nd overdrive channel, and panning and all that stuff. Sounds great and I'm having a lot of fun, but they all sound pretty similar.
I'm wondering what other sounds a guitar can produce just with an amp? A lot of the CDs (espeically fast praise and worship) I listen to have all these cool sounding tones on them, and I assume they're using FX boards and gear like that.
Does every guitarist need an FX board?
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I'd guess it depends on what you're after. My Valvetronix has a bunch of built-in effects, but the only one I use regularly is reverb, and just a pinch of that.
Delay can be a lot of fun.
I don't like my amp's chorus effect (it sounds very digital), but I'm guessing that a good quality chorus pedal might be very useful, especially in combination with reverb and/or delay.
If you aren't getting the distortion that you want from your overdrive channels, then a distortion pedal might help - the Ibanez Tubescreamer is wildly popular, as are pedals by Boss and a few others.
A compressor will smooth out the sound levels and add sustain. Useful for recording and also for playing live.
My amp also has wah, phaser, flanger, tremolo, and rotary, but I don't get much use out of these and honestly I don't think they're very good. Well, the tremolo is realistic but not the others.
I don't use much distortion, but having a modeling amp gives me a lot of flexibility. My amp is set up this way:
"Manual" is my clean channel, set to the Black 2x12 model (Fender Twin) with a little reverb.
"Channel 1" is my mild overdrive channel, set to the Vox AC30 model with gain at 1:00, with just a pinch of reverb to keep it from sounding too dry.
"Channel 2" is what I call my "dirty blues / classic rock" channel, set to the UK 80s amp model (Marshall JCM-800), but I've got the gain turned down to 11:00 so it's not heavily distorted - I like to hear the individual strings when I play a chord. I use the compressor for this setting to get more sustain, with attack set relatively high.
There is a footswitch that I'm going to buy that will let me cycle through these three settings, but otherwise I see no need for added effects.
If I didn't have all of these features, I'd consider a lower-priced multi-effects floor pedal, like the ToneWorks AX1500.
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(This post was last modified: Mar 12, 2005, 07:34 by gd.)
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I use my Zoom GFX-8 (used it in church today also :o)
but if I had an amp which gave nice nice distortion sounds and I could switch channels easily (perhaps using a footswitch), then I wouldn't need these effects.
The only effects I use on my multi-effects is some overdrive and delay (or reverb)
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Hm... interesting. So even in a gig with say 5 songs, you only use one or two different sounds?
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Yes,usually I only use one or two different sounds  Depending on what is required.
Like today, I only had a clean sound and a overdriven sound.
and "one different sound" is getting many sounds from using the same effect, like getting less gain in the overdrive by adjusting the volume on the guitar
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Very personal and very depending on the style of music you play.
I used to own a Digitech GSP2101 before someone stole it. That thing had tons of sounds, but in the end I really enjoyed just playing with a good Valveamp's distortion and a bit of chorus or delay. But it depens what music you are playing, espcially for the real heavy stuff I loved the Digitech. I am actually concidering buying the same one again.
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A lot of the Planetshaker (and most rock band for that matter) material has gone through quite a bit of post-processing.
I've been to a few concerts where I've felt that the way the band plays the songs live is not as good to what you get from the album...
I usually pre-program patches so that I have a clean sound, a chorus sound, a mild overdriven sound, and a heavy overdriven sound to choose from. If the song requires something special, I'll pre-program a patch beforehand to use. My GT6 is quite handy that way...
But 've also done sets where it's just guitar through the amp, with the slightest bit of gain dialled in so I can get some crunch when I dig in. Those seem to be the times when I've had the most fun, as I'm not thinking about which pedal to stomp on next, which frees me to just play and worship.
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I use my American Standard Tele, G&L Strat and Handmade Dean Hardtail, through a 100Watt Custom head and 4X112 speaker cabinet with some fairly nice built-in effects. Top that off with a BCB-60 Pedal Board with super overdrive, octaver, delay compressor and chorus. But I like the straight RAW power of my Tele and the amps built in distortion. Also my Tele has a custom Seymour Duncan pickup in the bridge position. (Brent Mason Signature) I'm contemplating replacing that with a Seymour Hot stack. Or Hot rails. Not sure.
For effects, professionaly I used to carry a Roland GP 16 guitar Processor and a Roland D50 keyboard head with a guitar mounted GK2 driver on an old strat. Some of the keyboard sounds I could get were unbeleivable. And the sampled Bass sounds gave me one of the best octave sounds I've ever had. I connected the two processor heads via midi and controlled them both from an FC 100 foot pedal.Old stuff by todays standards. But at the time about 15 years ago every body was impressed. In the last 5 years I've returned to a more raw sound and use lower cost simple floor pedals. and even those I use sparingly.
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Tele's rock! 
I'm nowhere in your league, but I've got a Fender Squier Affinity Tele. Red!
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shuttertalk Wrote:Tele's rock!
I'm nowhere in your league, but I've got a Fender Squier Affinity Tele. Red!
How old is your squier. I had a squier Tele many years ago. It was one of the original when the Japanese were making them. It was an excellent guitar.
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Just started to have fun with my Eq pedal,
This is interesting to read
http://www.amptone.com/index.html
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I agree Adam. I got a cheap little Danelectro Fish 'n Chips 7-band EQ on eBay. Definitely the best investment I've made in "tone."
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guitarman Wrote:How old is your squier. I had a squier Tele many years ago. It was one of the original when the Japanese were making them. It was an excellent guitar.
Just got it last year, so it's made in Indonesia or China or somewhere like it. But it's still a excellent geetar for the price...
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