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Optimizing Digital Effect Processors in Live Performances

So everybody goes to analog pedals these days. what happens with digital effect processors anyway? yet is there anything wrong with guitar digieffects? Actually this is phenomenal. when music business demands originality and unique sound characters, people start to think to achieve the unique guitar sound by using boutique pedals, or at least modded analog pedals besides getting various amps, speakers and recording methods. many sources said that digital effect processors tend to have “robotic sound” while to determine what is robotic sound by ears only is not easy.

Well, frankly this is annoying. You come at stage and you hear people saying your digital effects processors aren’t good enough to achieve the optimal sound just because there’s saying about “robotic sound that digieffect tends to have”. even before they heard how you play guitar. it’s silly.

but leave it be and trust your ears, your playing and you will hear your guitar learning results singing all the way. while here I’ll share you some ideas in optimizing your digital effect processors for live performances purpose.

RULE (for every CONDITION that i will mention below):

leave the equalizers inside digital effects processors Flat, so does for the amps

By leaving the equalizer in flat position, you will hear the real sound of your guitar and you will know sound differences between your stratocaster and your lespaul, or hollow body and telecaster, superstrat and other guitar model. you can also get more sound definition by kinds of pickups. this is Very Important. by knowing this, you can determinate how overdrive and distortion works on guitar sound. how to flatten equalizers? we all know that’s the easy part. put all numbers in mid-position. if your equalizer has 0-100 range, put them all on 50 number’s value. at some points you might want to put all the treble, mid and bass on value 25. that’s what i do when I’m not sure about the gain and want more enhancements later. you can bypass the digieffects for sound comparison. for my setup, there’s almost no differences between the clean setup and the bypass sound except for the volume. i add some color later after this circumstance.

now.let’s move on to the digital effects processor. Mostly digieffects have preamp modelling and this is our start in fulfilling our needs in guitar sound. if the thing is, You meet Amps on stage or/and you wanna use them as your guitar main sound preamp, that’s the main idea of this article.

what you need to do is
– turn the digieffect’s preamp modelling OFF.
– decide your effects chains sequence.
you want the amps as the first sequence of your effects chain, so:
1. you can plug your “digieffect guitar IN” into “amps SEND” and “digieffect guitar OUT” into “amps RETURN” (plug your guitar into “amps INPUT”)

“digieffect guitar IN” into “amps SEND”—“digieffect guitar OUT” into “amps RETURN” — plug your guitar into “amps INPUT”

OR
2. you can plug your “digieffect guitar SEND” into “Amps INPUT” and “amps SEND” into “digieffect guitar RETURN” next the “digieffect guitar OUTPUT” into “amps RETURN” (plug your guitar into “effect INPUT”)

“digieffect guitar SEND” into “Amps INPUT” — “amps SEND” into “digieffect guitar RETURN” — “digieffect guitar OUTPUT” into “amps RETURN” — plug your guitar into “effect INPUT”

then set the effects sequence on your digieffect and make the “EXTERNAL LOOP” as the first in chain sequence.

here I’m using BOSS GT-8, I’m sure you can find this on other kind of digieffects rear panel such as POD X3 Live, DigiTech RP1000 or ZOOM G9.2tt

By doing this, you are disabling the preamp modelling and using stage Amps as your first sequence in effects chain.

please pay attention to the two above, because those two methods affect your guitar sound in general. they eliminate the robotic sound factor which is the preamp modelling is the cause of it.

now your default clean sound is your stage Amps sound, you can bypass the digieffect and find out that your bypass sound is still your stage Amps sound. Again, leave the Digital Effect Processors Equalizer in flat setting. I recommend you to set the equalizer for final touch of your rig setting. all I’m saying is if you set the clean sounds and distorted sounds in balanced/flat equalizer, you will consider more about balancing the volume and gain between each setting. by doing that, all your settings, include clean sound and distorted sound will easily be modified in one equalizer(the amps equalizer). This process is useful in understanding the guitar sound enhancements knowledge.

FYI: this may not work for some other digital effects processors because the lack of External Loop features on them. unless you have made your own good observations, ask the shop guy to demonstrate the features of anything you wanna buy from the music store. if you don’t, you might end up in regret.

next thing is easy. what you do after that above is setting the stompbox modeller which all depend on your taste. you can set them in patch mode or manual mode. try them both to get the efficiency in performing live. make sure you put the overdrive/distortion(fuzz, dist, crunch, etc.) before modulation/ambience(chorus, delay, reverb, etc.) to get optimal tonality especially in tone precision and clarity. I’ll write about it for next posts. Have a good day, guitar learners! 🙂

August 31, 2014
Frankenstrat Just Beat It

Such a great collaboration history made when the king of pop Michael Jackson meet Eddie van Halen in one stage and performed “Beat It”. Yes, that song is legendary and Eddie van Halen was the guitarist who fill the guitar solo track for that song.and you know what? EVH and the frankenstrat guitar appeared on MJ concert. The frankenstrat has magic spells which brought guitar into new steps and inventionsand van Halen is surely my guitar learning inspiration. Here’s Kramer 5150 frankenstrat variant appeared on MJ’s concert

Eddie Van Halen and Michael Jackson perform “Beat It”

well, frankenstrat had just beat it, and surely it brings back some memories. i just wanna say:

Happy birthday Michael Joseph Jackson
(August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009)
August 29, 2014
four humbuckers pickup wiring diagram – all hotrails and quadrail

Recently i installed my spare pickups to my Fernandes FR 55, they are Duncan Designed hotrails pickups and a quadrail pickup(brand unknown). It is temporary until i get the pickups i want,though. but here’s some problems i encounter when i installed them:

– can’t find the right phase for all pickups

– cable colors are confusing

well, it’s actually only two problems, but i spent the whole day to get the right phase for these pickups. you can solve this problem with an AVOmeter, but since i don’t have it, i have to try it one-by-one with cablejacks and miniamp to test the connectivity.

and this is what i got from that:

FYI: i forgot to draw the unwrap cable output from pickups, but i solder them all to ground. and consider that some unknown brand using different cable color for hot and ground. this was my real problem with the unknown brand quadrail pickup.. it has the same cables colors, but when i connected them according to seymour duncan cable coding, it is gone out of phase. the pickup wiring diagram above is exactly what I’ve done to get the right phase.

the sound i got from that pickup wiring diagram:

i use the coiltap to split all the pickups. so in lifted-coiltap, i have S-S-H pickups formation. AND, in pushed-coiltap, i have the H-H-HH pickups formation.

the output is actually awesome, BUT, my pickups are the default factory ones, so, their sound quality isn’t that good. can’t get more clarity, since the default pickups usually are average-to-bad pickups. it’s muddy, but i can overcome that with compression pedal.

but, i tell you, this could be awesome if you have high-quality hotrails and quadrail pickups. the hum-cancelling works perfectly. there are no noise on my guitar sound output. the tone is actually hum-free with very good sustain. but i need better hotrails and quadrail, though, to get the wood tone comes out of my guitar. (my fernandes is maple neck and mahogany body, tough one)

August 20, 2014
and i destroyed my guitar pickups! – fail guitar pickups wax potting

well, this is embarrassing. i read some pickups modification and had decided to do pickups wax potting. actually it was my fault. i just didn’t get the thermometer and my wax was overheat. here i share you the fail guitar pickups wax potting pics:

they are destroyed Fernandes pickups. the plastic shrunk and i totally fucked up this time. they are not in reversible shapes. but one thing that interested me.

Fernandes pickups destroyed after wax-potting, only G&L pickup were survived

from all those destroyed pickups, there is one survivor. i have a G&L pickup which is not affected by the heat.. it is in great shape and ready. it was the same process since I’ve put them together in the same time and duration.

from this DIY guitar stuff this is my worst ever. actually i kept the wax in moderate heat.. but the pickups plastic material just couldn’t stand up against the heat. well, thanks to G&L pickup which stand by my side. it is tough enough to defend me against the shrunk pickups case.

it’s a hard lesson for me. and all i can conclude are:
– depends on what kind of pickup plastic materials, wax potting could be freakin dangerous to your pickups.
– MAKE SURE THE HEAT IS APPROPRIATE. it’s 65 degree Celsius or better below. don’t worry about pickup magnetism against the heat. i did this and check the magnet were totally fine. you need to pay attention more to pickups plastic material.
– be ready to buy new guitar pickups. if you’re in low budget, postpone the wax potting until you get enough money to cover your loss.
– if you consider your pickups are antique, just let them be. or you can take the chance to be like me, who curious about any guitar stuff.

well, since I’m a curious guy, I’m gonna put those destroyed pickups into my guitar (my first guitar, which become my lovable experiment objects.

shoot, it was a big failure but i feel so HAPPY … this is what I’m talking about in guitar learning process.
August 16, 2014