ilovefuzz.com

I was seriously hoping that you would all discourage me, and I could just live happily. But there's always the potential to plumb the depths of sonics, I guess, and y'all aren't helping.

Galvar: thanks for the drawing. It does help, and I'll think a little more about how I might incorporate that idea. I know nothing about vactrols, but I'm already thinking that just picking up two more cheap expression pedals (totaling three) would give me control over the boomerang, PF, and CT5. CV would take care of the rest, and I wouldn't have to worry about the conversion. And to hell with that mixer--thing is wild.

Rob: I hear you, and that's one of my reasons for creating this thread--to see if there are any issues like that I hadn't thought of. Shielding could be a concern, but likely only in terms of the quality of the 3.5mm jacks I'd buy. Everything up to that point would be good to go, as would the 3.5mm patch cables themselves.

Delta: I'm really resisting the urge to go modular. I have all of the necessary qualifications, I'm afraid, except cash. I am now the sole provider, and I have two little kids, a house in desperate need of repair, and a mountain of student debt to claw my way out of. Just to get started, I'd have to sell my pedlols, which I'm not ready to do. If Moog were to release their MF-104M in a modular format, I think I might be able to do it, but I'm not ready to let it go yet. It's pretty clear that I'm headed in that direction, though. I could knock together a gnarly little board just for guitar, then sell all the fancy stuff to dangle my toes into the abyss...the Mother 32 is calling me suckle at her honeyed bosom. Sounds super fun. That, some Mutable Instruments stuff...

There's no way I can afford an MP-201 right now, not at current going rates. Still, a PM is welcome if you have info. So that I can dream.

Heck, if you want somebody to talk you out of something...I am the wrong guy haha. I'm going to over complicated and try to find something trick (would rather have a 1600hp Pontiac Tempest street car that gets 1 mph than a Tesla).

Ill be the one to talk you out of this. It will be a ridiculous hardware hassle with all the cables and jacks, which means a massive amount of possible failure points that are very hard to find when you do have a problem. Also, the perceived advantage of being able to reroute your board with a bunch of tiny patch cables seems like a ridiculous solution when you could just move the actual cables between pedals and have fewer contact points for signal loss in your chain. So right off the bat its an overkill solution for what you really want, which is signal routing flexibility.

In terms of effects routing, there aren't usually really dramatic differences in effects order. Mostly its where gain is relative to other things. So instead of building a complex routing system, just get another dirt pedal or two and put them after the effects you normally use with dirt and then you'll have those sound variations covered.

something like this would prob get you 98% of the way there.
http://artproaudio.com/artcessories/aud ... ct/tpatch/

i have a patch bay too and its actually not that cool to have everything plugged in on a 1:1 basis.
it sounded cool in my head… ULTIMATE FLEXIBILITY!.. but in reality it didn't really do that much for me, and became more of a headache than what it was supposed to do which is make things more convenient.

at least for me, it works a lot better when u combine things or get funky w/ the routing/patch cables in the back so you don't actually need to plug each item into its own in and out.
like you can make a chain that flows down the patch bay so you have a standard setup, from in to out with all thats in between. then u can patch things around and move them and it will all still line up in the end.

i also understand that sometimes making something is way cooler than just buying it. but its also an inexpensive way to try it out and see if its really worth pursuing your idea further.

Yea, you've got to be running something of insane levels to warrant a patchbay fulltime.

As much as I love mine, it sits in "normal" configuration the vast majority of the time - the big thing is it lets me just go straight to a rack unit if I want to bypass the rest of the chain or insert something temporarily inline versus massive crazy order-switching.

And I'm running three amps, seven rack devices, and some outboard gear plus the pedals.

The big, big, big thing for me is the ability to switch which chain goes to which amp on the fly. That's its main significant alteration feature, and even that's used once a week or less.

I had a lot of rack gear and using a patch bay was revolutionary to me. I was able to patch my rack units in any order, including using a mixer to do things in parallel also. So yes, I say go for it. I would use a rack mount patch bay.

You could buy a pedal that reverses the order of your effects, that will get you as far as I would ever want to go with hardware for changing pedal order.

whoismarykelly wrote:Ill be the one to talk you out of this. It will be a ridiculous hardware hassle with all the cables and jacks, which means a massive amount of possible failure points that are very hard to find when you do have a problem. Also, the perceived advantage of being able to reroute your board with a bunch of tiny patch cables seems like a ridiculous solution when you could just move the actual cables between pedals and have fewer contact points for signal loss in your chain. So right off the bat its an overkill solution for what you really want, which is signal routing flexibility.

In terms of effects routing, there aren't usually really dramatic differences in effects order. Mostly its where gain is relative to other things. So instead of building a complex routing system, just get another dirt pedal or two and put them after the effects you normally use with dirt and then you'll have those sound variations covered.

You're right about the first part (the potential for failure). It'd be a massive pain in the ass to troubleshoot. As for changing the signal chain, I'll have to respectfully disagree, as Pitchfactor's harpeggiator algorithm before a low pass filter is very different than the reverse--especially when the filter is cranked into oscillation. Ditto for having the looper effected by pedals rather than putting it at the end of the chain. Oh, and moving the actual cables isn't really feasible in this particular setup--not when they're set up in a pedalboard with no room to move things. If it were all just on the floor, that'd be no issue.

ChetMagongalo wrote:You could buy a pedal that reverses the order of your effects, that will get you as far as I would ever want to go with hardware for changing pedal order.

Yep, that was the initial plan, but it would have gotten ridiculously complicated--more so even than my half-cocked idea--and prohibitively expensive. If it were to just swap the order of two chains, it would have been cool, but I wanted to be able to do more than that.

I don't think it would be expensive or complicated at all. I've seen a single pedal sold where you just plug the in and out of your pedals into the send and return, and then your guitar and amp go to the in and out on the pedal. Then you can run your pedals in one direction, or in reverse order. I want to say Dan W. was selling/made one?

No, I undertand you. Those can be had for $50 or $60, and I've bought and built them. I (was) looking for a thing that'd allow me a lot more flexibility than that--like having four or five send/return loops, all configurable with a stomp. Basically, a smaller, less expensive Octaswitch (or whatever that thing's called). It can be done, but it'd be big, still require lots of re-wiring, and expensive. Hence my idea to just build a patchbay.

But, now that I have to sell most of my pedals anyway, I figure I'll just wait until the opportunity arises to start a modular synth setup...maybe with the Pittsburgh Patchbox as an exploratory feel-it-up/groping session.

Grrr..

http://www.boredbrainmusic.com/

Was just about to post that here for you.

It's not footswitchable, though.

Just saw this pop up on TGP of all places... not usually where I'd expect. Looks pretty fucking cool though.

http://www.boredbrainmusic.com/patchulator8000

Whoops, already covered in another thread...