My thoughts on this are pretty straight forward, If you are going to play live do not use digital effects. I have tried, it’s just so tempting to get like 20 effects for $200 – $300. The problem is that you might not notice it right away but it’ll start sounding brittle and well digital not organic at all. This might be cool if that is what you are going for but take that money and get 3 or 4 name brand individual pedals and start turning some knobs. Boss, Ibanez, mxr, there are tons of them just stay away from digitech and DOD… Blech!!! I also like that it’s like a crayon box where you pick out what you need to color with just at that time. I play country so I have a Boss compressor, Delay, and an Ibanez tubescreamer. I also have a boss phaser, Maxon chorus ( both to just break up the sound a little because we play for 4 hours a night ), and a boss Equalizer ( for a volume boost for solo’s). If I was playing hard rock I would more then likely keep the same pedals and switch out the amp using the distortion on it ( Mesa triple Rectifier for heavy stuff, or a Bogner… or an older Marshall for Rock stuff replacing my tubescreamer for a Ratt pedal… I’m also a big fan of the Roland Jazz chorus amp It’s super clean ( Tube amps vs. solid state is another article) )
Anyway I know this is a long rant but just learn from my mistakes and get single individual pedals instead of a multieffects thing. The bad thing about this is there are always exceptions, the average person who is not a guitar player listening to it might be fine… Also I’m a fan of true bypass, where the signal is not effected by the pedal in some adverse way. On boutique pedals, I like them… well I like the ideal of some small group working in their basement trying to come up with something they hear in their head. Looking for a certain sound reminds me of my dad who as a mechanic he is always trying to fine tune or get more horsepower out of his motorcycle. You never stop trying, you might be satisfied for a while but eventually you get the bug to experiment to see what works a little better and thats a fun thing for a guitarist. On Boutique pedals, right now I am eyeing a Nashville pedal from Eden Analog http://www.edenanalogeffects.com/Nashville.html… I want a new crayon for my box.
