Honest question about guitar products in general:
Would you say knowing there are secondary functions and hidden controls is a point of friction? For example, would your experience be better if you didn't know they were there? Say, they're easter egg functions for when someone online complains that the pedal can't do something (or requires an editor to access it). Someone could reply with "Oh yeah. If you hold [button] and turn [knob] you can actually adjust that."
Or would it be better if those secondary functions didn't exist at all and the product is what it is?
Or is it more "if that function is important, give it a dedicated button/knob/LCD menu item, even if that makes it bigger, more intimidating, and more expensive"?
If I'm sitting at home working on sounds, then I'll really dig down into a product. Get the manual/ cheat sheet in front of me, take advantage of secondary functions / hidden settings. Because there's time and space to have an organised mind about it, get lost in diversions when you find out the pedal can also do X or Y, and you can hear what's going on nice and clearly.
The counterpoint:
I'm standing on a stage. There's a light show, my feet are lost in shadow and I'm being dazzled by flashing LEDs. My amp is 6 feet to my left, and pointing away from me, and I'm hearing it through a terrible blend of off axis direct sound, and a fizzy poorly EQ'd monitor sound blasting up at my head from the wedge in front of me. These sources are out of phase, the stage has nasty, clattery hard walls, ceiling and floor and a strange resonance underfoot. In short, judging the sound I'm actually making is going to be hard. I've been singing backing vocals at the top of my lungs, need to tune and get my breath back before the drummer counts in to the next song. There's a guy in the audience who looks like he's causing trouble too, need to keep an eye on him.
Something felt off in the last song's middle 8. It sounded too washy. Was it the room, the terrible monitor mix, or have I knocked a setting on my board? I look down, and have about 3 seconds to check before the f***ing drummer just ploughs on into the next song.
In that situation, I do not want secondary functions or hidden controls because there just isn't time to think about them. And if there was time, I still wouldn't want to think about them because I should be thinking about the next guitar part, making eye contact with the audience, how I'm standing... all the performance stuff. So I want to be able to glance at the pedal and just know where it's at.
Equally, if a pedal needs secondary functions (press the footswitch and turn a knob, flick a switch and a knob adjusts a different parameter, press both pedals together for 3 seconds etc etc)... If I don't use the pedal constantly as a key component of my sound, I'll forget without a clear visual reference. Maybe the band will have a time off, or I'll go on holiday or just not think about it for 3 months. The next time I want to use the pedal, I'm not gonna stop a practice or jam to get down on my knees and turn it into pedalboard happy hour because that disrupts everyone else's flow - it's a team sport.
Presets do help, of course! But what I find is, 6 months later I want to slightly edit a preset's secondary functions - maybe slightly more brightness in a feedback loop or whatever - to account for a change of opinion, taste, a different rig or whatever, and because the secondary functions don't have their own physical controls, I just can't remember how they were set when I pressed save, so I need to try to recreate what I liked *and* then try to adjust it in the direction I want. And if I last used a physical control to adjust a secondary function, it'll be in a different place to where the primary function is set and that kind of visual disconnect can be confusing in the above situation.
I know it's a balancing act designing a pedal when there are far too many parameters under the hood to do one knob per function. And I think the DL4 is a really cool pedal. I just know that if I had one, I would *never* use the reverb functions for the above reasons. I'd have a reverb pedal next to it that I could stamp on and glance at, because when I'm performing I want to be able to control my rig with my caveman brain.
Basically, I know I'm an idiot and I've written too long a reply, please accept my apologies and DO NOT take any of the above into account in designing new products because you obviously know what you're doing as a company!
