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 Pedalboard for outdoors busking 
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Post Pedalboard for outdoors busking
I just finalised this battery driven minimal pedalboard for dual output signal treatments. I use it with my Roland Cube Street EX and it sounds amazing. These four boxes in this particular order offer a lot of inspiring sound design opportunities; it is not just two parallel chains of effects - IMHO it is an instrument in its own right.

The TubeScreamer is first on the melody side fretboard before going into one of the two Morley Volume Pedal channels, while the bass side fretboard goes directly into the other Volume Pedal channel. The two outputs from the Morley then go in stereo into the Flashback delay (straight delay tap on the bass side's and slightly faster triplet delay slaps on the melody side's signal) and finally both go in stereo through the Trinity Reverb. The Trinity I use for an almost one minute long "Shimmer Drone" sound (technically a reverb-like short delay with harmoniser and filtering added in the delay slap return loop to make the tails rise in cascades into a sort of cosmic cloud if you overdo it). Both TC boxes preserve tails so if having them turned off as default I can use them to "cut in" small chunks of my playing and have that bounce or cascade behind what I keep on playing. A second idea with having the Trinity as the last box is that I can catch a slow sound in that huge drone and free up a few seconds to hold down the Flashback's switch to silence it while tapping in a new tempo from my instrument. Alternative duties for the Flashback may be to add slightly tape wobbling slaps with just a few quickly fading repeats in the background. Or I sometimes crank the Flashbacks feedback to play less and build rhythmic lines within a long delay loop (different rhythm for the two fretboards) resulting in something between Steve Hillage's early tape delay guitar playing and the wishy-washy melody bouncing of Robert Miles Dreamhouse piano ambient techno stuff.

If I had a third leg I would love to add a wha but with my current bodily design I have to chose between the above mentioned foot stomping control options and the wha. I can still pop in my EHX as the very first box, before the TS808, and that is where a wha sounds best IMO.

Image

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Cheers / Per
Bamboo SG12, Wenge SG12, Bamboo Grand. PASV4 on all.
(+ Stickup modded by Emmett 4 the PASV4 blocks).
Fractal Audio AxeFx-III, 2 x RCF NX-10 SMA, Apollo Twin USB

http://youtube.com/perboysen


Wed Aug 27, 2014 4:15 am
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Post Re: Pedalboard for outdoors busking
Nice! Looks very functional. Mandatory use of duct tape included in rig. ;)

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Wed Aug 27, 2014 8:41 am
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Post Re: Pedalboard for outdoors busking
Per,
It's brilliant! just like you! I love how much you fit in there and the sonic pallette ( a vintage tube screamer!) that you have to choose from. Wow-Zee-Wow-Wow! *

You must be great at Tetris. I never would have thought to put the pedals sideways with a tradition "knobs at the top" so I can grunt and bend over and set them! :D

Thanks for sharing and I am sure we will all be inspired and get some great ideas here!
take care,
Dave Brosky "DBro on the dial"

*Christopher Walken on SNL as The Continental!


Wed Aug 27, 2014 8:53 am
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Post Re: Pedalboard for outdoors busking
dbrosky wrote:
can grunt and bend over and set them! :D
Actually, there is one more fix left for this board; big rubber heads on the Flashback delay's two knobs "Feedback" and "FxLevel" to allow me to change those two parameters by twisting a foot, while playing (not bending, not grunting...) :-)

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Cheers / Per
Bamboo SG12, Wenge SG12, Bamboo Grand. PASV4 on all.
(+ Stickup modded by Emmett 4 the PASV4 blocks).
Fractal Audio AxeFx-III, 2 x RCF NX-10 SMA, Apollo Twin USB

http://youtube.com/perboysen


Wed Aug 27, 2014 9:44 am
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Post Re: Pedalboard for outdoors busking
Looks great Per. Looking at the selection of pedals, I would probably have something similar if not identical to yours (although I might sneak in a dyna comp in place of the Tube Screamer - don't tell Nathen :) )

Do you use any of the looping on the Flashback? I had one of those and really liked it's versatility. Solid pedal for sure.

Tell us a little about the Volto? How long are you able to play on a single charge from it?

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Wed Aug 27, 2014 10:26 am
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Post Re: Pedalboard for outdoors busking
Hi Gene,

I'm not using the Flashback's patch for "looping". But I do indeed loop with it by using a certain tape delay patch I have downloaded to its TonePrint memory slot. I never close the two loops (straight for Bass and slightly faster triplet for Melody) so everything I play will only loop back once at a decent fidelity and then it will come back more and more degraded by tape saturation simulation for a couple of rounds. When playing compatible melodies, chords and scales in a fitting tempo this tape delay noise sounds like sequenced dreamhouse synths and lush string pads in the background. Making use of the volume pedal and the different PASV-4 timbres on both sides is essential to create a good "ambient mix", keeping it clear and avoiding midrange mud to build up as four layers are summing up in the speakers. I've noticed that I'm selling more CDs if alternating improvisations like that with "normal" Stick instrumentals and it makes playing for full days more fun than if only playing tunes.

I have not tested gigging with the VOLTO yet but my educated guess is that it will provide somewhere around 40 hours effective playing time with these stompboxes to feed.
http://www.pedaltrain.com/volto/
Before I got the VOLTO I brought two freshly re-charged batteries for the Flashback and changed it after two hours. Sometimes I have gone too long on the first battery and what happens then is that the Flashback just stops working abruptly.

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Cheers / Per
Bamboo SG12, Wenge SG12, Bamboo Grand. PASV4 on all.
(+ Stickup modded by Emmett 4 the PASV4 blocks).
Fractal Audio AxeFx-III, 2 x RCF NX-10 SMA, Apollo Twin USB

http://youtube.com/perboysen


Last edited by Per Boysen on Thu Aug 28, 2014 1:54 am, edited 1 time in total.

Wed Aug 27, 2014 10:54 am
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Post Re: Pedalboard for outdoors busking
Nice...

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Wed Aug 27, 2014 3:06 pm
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Post Re: Pedalboard for outdoors busking
Per, great looking pedalboard. Already giving me ideas. I have a couple of naive questions. The "Shimmer Drone" on the Trinity - is that a TonePrint? Did you create it yourself? Also, I'm not that familiar with the Flashback - does it let you assign different modes to each input? Thanks

/rick


Tue Sep 30, 2014 12:50 pm
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Post Re: Pedalboard for outdoors busking
RickC wrote:
The "Shimmer Drone" on the Trinity - is that a TonePrint? Did you create it yourself?
Hi Rick,
It is a TC TonePrint named something like "A Room With a View". But I don't use the Trinity now; only the TubeScreamer on the melody side, both sides going into the stereo volume pedal and finally both sides through the Flashback - one in each stereo channel.

And I decided to shell out for a Pedaltrain Mini so I can have the VOLTO under it - very neat and portable. The reason I keep it this simple is that it allows me to play better and that's what you're supposed to do when street busking. And sonically it also sounds more "present" - I mean, a lot of the architecture I play in adds an interesting ambience, even some shimmer effect on some places, and I found the music works better that way; the listener gets the ambience from 360 degrees around but can still follow quite well what I'm playing. It got too mushy with the Trinity reverb.

RickC wrote:
Also, I'm not that familiar with the Flashback - does it let you assign different modes to each input?
I use it "in stereo" but feeding it two mono signals; melody side and bass side outputs. The two output channels from the Flashback goes into melody amp channel and bass amp channel on my Roland Street Cube EX. I'm adding a bit of reverb in the amp to both side's channels.

The Flashback has a three way switch to chose between (1) straight 1/4 note delay slaps, (2) triplet slaps or (3) 1/4 notes in one channel and triplet in the other channel. I only use setting #3 and prefer 1/4 note slaps on the bass side and slightly faster triplets on the melody side. That gives the echo slaps a kind of poly rhythmic relation between what you play on the two fretboards. Below is an example recording that draws a lot on exactly that delay setting:


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Cheers / Per
Bamboo SG12, Wenge SG12, Bamboo Grand. PASV4 on all.
(+ Stickup modded by Emmett 4 the PASV4 blocks).
Fractal Audio AxeFx-III, 2 x RCF NX-10 SMA, Apollo Twin USB

http://youtube.com/perboysen


Last edited by Per Boysen on Fri Mar 13, 2015 5:46 am, edited 1 time in total.

Tue Sep 30, 2014 1:38 pm
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Post Re: Pedalboard for outdoors busking
So cool! I was looking at the Flashback specs but missed that switch. Thanks. Love your playing btw

/rick


Tue Sep 30, 2014 1:49 pm
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