Guitar Effects Guidebook, Vol. 20 [pdf]
static.roland.com
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It combines music, electronics, general nerding out (e.g. debating germanium VS silicon diodes), and some visual design if you want to make the enclosures pretty. You might even be able to sell some.
I started by building a kit pedal with one of my kids as a weekend project.
Some search terms to get you started: build your own clone, diy pedal schematics, tag board music effects.
It doesn’t look like they offer that anymore, but you could still do the same thing yourself. If I was starting over, I’d probably do eurorack, that seems to be where all the modern innovation is.
I have VCV installed but never use it because I have a large modular system - the hardware is just so much more fun.
I don't find plugging things into other things particularly enjoyable. More slow and frustrating.
And I don't feel that using a mouse - or a MIDI slider box - is that much more distancing compared to using a large panel of pots and sliders.
Two things immediately jumped out at me ... first, that undergrad circuit analysis does not help understanding circuits designed by wizened experts ... and second, that even the simplest circuits require all kinds of considerations beyond the y=H(x) transfer functions (and that linear systems don't begin to describe what i was seeing). Humbling.
It would be interesting to see how the Chorus schematic from 1985 compares to the Chorus schematic of 2023.
Is probably identical. The actual board is probably different in that they will have used surface mount to bring the cost down.
There is very little in the fx world that is not a tweak on a few classic designs... unless you are going dsp of course
Even the humble DS-1 has now a digital version which, contrary to its analog counterpart "chugs".
I've always felt that the signal to noise ratio in digita circuits just wasn't there, but perhaps there were some significant advancements over the years in this field which I missed.
Overdrives are likely to be identical
Delays are another story, search Sweetwater and you'll see it's dominated by digital options that bundle things modulation, stereo effects, and loopers. You won't see the same analog options as the 80's, or many analog options at all comparatively.
Digital has one advantage: your one PCB design can become many different pedals. Just change the design of the case, maybe leave the RAM IC out in effects that don't need a lot of memory, put different code on it and congrats: 90% of your product range are the same PCB and the same parts which is nuch more economical than doing a new design for every product.
Exception: Fuzz, distortion, overdrive and everything where you rely on complex characteristics of affordable analog parts.
It is not speculation at all, schematics for many many effects are available online. Manufacturers also freely admit to their pedals being clones of famous pedals. There is even a whole genre of pedals known as Klones because they are clones of a Klon. Have a look on Andertons YouTube and you will see them blindfold testing all the Klones, the Tubescreamer clones, the RAT clones etc. If you watch Josh Scott of JHS pedals he talks through how much they are 'exact same circuit' all of the time. Josh himself became famous due to a mod he made to the Bluesbreaker. Not as famous perhaps as Analogmans King of Tone (with a three year waiting list), which is a modification of a....Bluesbreaker. All the schematics are online. By the way you can buy dozens of King of Tone clones too, like the King of Blues, for 1/10th price.
When reviewing pedals it is common to say 'this is a modified x', or an 'x and y in the same box'
It is not even a secret that the analogue pedal market is selling the same pedals that were invented in the 60s-80's with minor tweaks for component availability. But of course they are, because what do most people want to sound like, of course it is their guitar hero from the 60s to 80s!!! I have a fuzz face for Hendrix, a big muff for Gilmour, and a Tubescreamer for SRV. All available today in exactly the schematic of the original, from multiple makers.
https://www.hobby-hour.com/electronics/s/boss-ce2-chorus-sch...
But can't find a modern Boss one. I guess they went to CE-5 after 1990:
http://thermionic-studios.com/wiki/images/2/26/Boss_CE-5Sche...
Guess I'll spend the next few days figuring out the diff.
My point is, you've provided just opinion. If you could have told me a thing or two about the actual circuits I might think you know what you're talking about. But rather than helping, you're just filling space with words in an attempt to sound knowledgeable.
https://www.electrosmash.com/boss-ce-2-analysis
This is why programmers tend to faceplant when confronted with analog circuits, it is absolutely black magic that can't be brute-forced. :)
Just a note of caution it is no way to save money though.
You can save money over expensive boutiques, but if you want a Tubescreamer for less money, Behringer make one for $20!
If you want to tinker though, it really is fun
Detailing the enclosure is a whole other level on top of that.
This is the source I use for most builds.
I tell you what I'll trade you the gear for the chance to play the Marquis club in the 60's! There was so much to learn about what guitars could do back then.
For a touring musician the modeling route is just WAY better. Recalling your sound night after night without working with sensitive and fiddle equipment great.The bottleneck for sound quality is always FoH and never your rig. A Kemper or helix is the better option for nearly everyone.
That being said, I wouldn’t ever use modeling in the studio. Stumbling upon a great sound when exploring doesn’t happen in the same way. Editing patches becomes a chore and analysis paralysis becomes a force of destruction.
Recalling that sound in a live setting though…
I hear this a lot, but I've never actually seen any proper testing done on this.
Personally, I think the early stuff (Digitech 2120, etc) wasn't good enough. I did use it (and loved it when gigging for exactly the reasons you outline) and it was great, but there were some elements of it that weren't as good as the 'real' thing. Ironically the Wah was the weakest part of that particular rack unit, and it was the only analogue thing in there!
However, now I don't think there's any reason why you'd take the stomp boxes over a Helix. I've done some back-to-back testing with some of the pieces of gear, and I can't tell the difference.
I agree about editing - it's certainly not the same experience as a bunch of pedals, but in every other area, it's a no-brainer for me, including in the studio.
I mean an old friend just linked me their bandcamp. It has a few dozen songs that sound great. Turns out half were made with only a Kaossillator Pro. The other half with only an original Kaossillator.
Working that way wouldn’t work for me, but it works for Sy. And ordinary folks would say that’s a poor way to make songs.
In a studio, I'll use a good modeler all day long. Going direct and modeling in the box is the best - you can change your virtual amp and cab after recording to get the perfect sound/mix. You would never be able to tell the difference in the right hands.
Blind experiments with long time musicians keep showing this claim to be flat out wrong, over and over.
Playing on a Kemper with a Helix, when set up properly (and that's hardly a science anymore, tons of people have done the preset tweaking for us by now), is simply indistinguishable from analog.
It's actually the opposite. Modelling can absolutely reproduce any audible effect you can find or imagine.
What is true is that, for any specific effect or device or technique, there probably isn't a ready-made model for it. Or there is, but it's for some variant of the amp that the software author used and not the one you want. Modelling is expensive in engineering time.
But if you just want a stable of high quality effects from which to assemble audio for recording or performance, analog junk frankly has nothing to offer in the modern world.
I’d love to experience this, but so far it still seems like the technology is more in the “good enough for most people/situations” rather than indistinguishable.
On a modeling amp, I have not heard one that doesn’t introduce extra digital artifacts into the tone. It’s like the difference between GCI and IRL.
Another is on the other end of the amplitude spectrum, very quiet playing, where I hear extra digital artifacts introduced.
As the other poster mentioned though, these differences may not come across at all in a metal/pop setting.
But there are always exceptions. As someone that worked as a recording engineer for 7 years, and spent time intentionally training my ears with blind tests, I can tell you that there is a definite aural difference between a real tube guitar amp and a modeling amp. Other recording engineers I assisted could hear it too.
If I played metal, or was backing a pop group, one pedal di'd to the desk sounds like the dream
I don't play live so for me it isn't an issue, I just have set of monitor speakers to play on.
>amp induced sustain
As in Feedback? This too is applicable primarily for live setting, but I don't know how well it'd work as I haven't tried it.
I think my favorite thing about it is that it just allows me to play more. I run my computer output through the rig, so everything comes out my headphones. This means I can play rock as "loud" as I want, with any song on the planet, and the whole house can be sleeping. Very much worth the trade offs for someone who just wants to play and not geek out about gear.
Programmable DSPs have led to the rise of innovators such as Chase Bliss, Meris, Hologram Electronics, Fairfield Circuitry and Empress releasing tools in a pedal form-factor that are northern Thai street food compared to Boss' Whopper Junior.
If you're interested, I recommend Knobs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_BLyPxShG4
It’s opinionated granulated synthethesis; it’s a good way to get that sound but if you find yourself not liking something about the sound, tough luck tweaking it.
practicing electric guitar without a loop pedal is like building a website without live server.
Does anyone know a working software solution that just mimics a basic pedal? Should also be trustworthy, I'm hesitant to install random free VSTs.
I'm just somebody who has used it a lot, not associated to Ableton in any way.
Another popular DAW for loop-based recording is FL Studio (a little less expensive than Ableton with lifetime free updates and plenty powerful). Also a longtime user of FL.
once you get to be more of a wizard, you'll want things like backwards playback and multitrack looping and midi sync. you could progress toward more advanced boss pedals, or start looking at things like the electroharmonix 95000 (i have one, i bought it because i saw a video of reggie watts using one)
it's always gonna be a tradeoff between simplicity and complexity, and honestly more complex isn't always better. i find myself reaching for the rc-1 way more than the ehx95000 because it's so simple. just experiment, figure out how YOU like to loop. there's no right or wrong way. the gear should make you want to keep playing. if it doesn't, trade it in for something else. don't burn too much time deciding.
It takes a little effort (and sometimes money), but you can definitely get latency low enough to be able to use the DAW live. Consider that almost every electronic artist playing music on stage today is using Ableton Live.
The basic components are:
1. Make sure your OS's drivers aren't introducing too much latency. I hear horror stories about the default audio drivers on Windows but as a Mac user I've never had to worry about this.
2. Make the buffer size small in your DAW. DAWs process audio a block of samples at a time because it's much kinder to the CPU's cache and gives you better overall throughput. But chunking obviously adds latency because you don't hear a single sample from the buffer until the entire buffer is done. Controlling the buffer size lets you make the latency/performance trade-off wherever you want.
At a 48k sample rate, each sample is ~0.02 milliseconds long. So a buffer size of 1,024 adds 21ms of latency, which is low enough for doing things like tweaking effects and arranging live, but high enough that you will definitely notice it if you're playing individual notes on an instrument. Dropping the buffer size down to 128 gets you down to ~2.6ms of latency, which is essentially unnoticeable.
3. Make sure your audio interface doesn't introduce too much latency. You can find sites that measure this precisely. My experience on my Mac is that even my cheap Focusrite audio interface is low enough to work fine. If you really get into this, you can spend extra money and get interfaces with lower latency.
There are other hardware options, like Aeros loop studio or even things like Akai MPC One, for example, but these get more complex than just a simple looper.
There are basic looper pedals but I suspect most people want something like an RC202 or RC505 for basic but multitrack simple live looping.
If there a simpler, more basic place to use them, like an effects box app for raspberry pi?
If I'm not mistaken, one he does miss out on is Synth1, but then that would be 10 free VST's, and also gives www.kvraudio.com a reason to exist.
*The real problem is, people writing crappy VSTs and installing bits of crud all over my PC (and that inclludes DAW software writers), but hey,that's why backups and rollbacks exist, I guess.
To specifically answer your question "Does anyone know a working software solution that just mimics a basic pedal?" - which particular pedal? The software you may be hesitant to install may have the answer you require: I've found software that sounds better than the pedals they emulate, but aren't as easy to control (with a mouse), and are equally at the mercy of a DAW crash (looking at you Steinberg :-).
What is cheating in music? All I can think of is deception, like lip-syncing.
Whether you prefer electronic or acoustic just comes down to personal preference. I still play alcohol powered instruments (double bass, cello), and ride an acoustic bicycle, though my friends badger me about when I'll switch to electric.
But of course, I am advocating used gear.
[1]: Also makes a pretty good headphone pre-amp that just needs USB power (like from a power brick).
Most any USB audio interface will have an "instrument" input/mode that will allow you to plug directly in and will work with Mac/Windows/Linux directly with low latency. Most of the come with some software bundles as well with free amp and pedal models.
Such a dizzying array of options and sounds to be discovered when they're chained together; and I can happily spend hours down the rabbit hole looking for tunes that compliment the distortions that have been twiddled up!