Modeler & Multi FX memory lane

[JiveTurkey]

The first modeller I remember is the Roland VG8 my Dad had. "My guitar is a saxophone man, check it out!".

My first piece of guitar gear was a Zoom 707, particularly the step phaser, got me hooked on guitar. Having a tuner, metronome and headphone output made it absolutely critical to me actually practicing and progressing.

After that it was the Tascam CD GT which had the ability to slow down CDs AND had built in guitar FX. That taught me to transcribe and learn by ear, another critical phase in my burgeoning musical development.

I got a BOSS BR1600CD for Christmas when I was 16 and that really opened the doors for me - plug in, record tunes and burn them to a CD! Magical!

I used the free Eleven amp sim plugin for years when I moved to a computer based setup.

After that I got into amps,, racks and pedals and didn't own a modeller until I got an Axe-Fx Ultra in 2016.

There is something to be said about playing sax lines on your guitar and having it sound (sort of like) a sax. It's a strangely powerful experience

 

[metropolis_4]

Seeing them like that it's interesting to see the lineage. The POD HD500X almost looks like the bottom half of the Helix LT, and there's some HX Stomp-ish things going on with the screen.

I do miss when these things had some controls dedicated to e.g the amp.

I miss that too. I liked having the dedicated amp controls. It was really handy for a quick tweak at a gig!

You can almost categorize the history by the type of footswitches they used. I also had an M9 and M13 so lots of memories of that style with the chrome surround

 

[deadpool_25]

 

[ian_dissonance]

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I would go to the guitar shop and drool on one these, lol. So fucking gravy ( to move).

 

[Los-D]

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Same. This was my first official ”modeling” device. Rocked that way longer than I normally would now because of how good it sounded.

 

[laxu]

Yamaha DG and the H&K Zentera were way better than the Line6 stuff of that era. I feel like the blue Vox Valvetronix was the first true advancement in digital modeling.

 

[Los-D]

My first “AHA” moment with modelers, though, was this fellow. I still recall how blown away I was by a Mark Day preset.

 

[BROCKSTAR]

ZOOM 505 in the 90's is what me and my brother started on after getting a guitar and amp. My brother still has one lol.

 

[laxu]

My first “AHA” moment with modelers, though, was this fellow. I still recall how blown away I was by a Mark Day preset.

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Whoever decided to go with that Shift button idea deserves a pimp slap in the face. It is truly terrible UX design.

But man, I wish Fractal had kept those LED encoders, and used them for all fx types instead of just amp settings. Or let the user choose what they should control.

 

[OneEng]

Replaced the standard preamp 12ax7 tubes with JAN Phillips NOS.

There was a 3rd party MIDI app that had a GUI editor for this ahead-of-its-time routing capabilities. I actually ran over the foot controller on accident and it still worked fine .

Gigged this for about 7 years.

 

[paisleywookiee]

This was my first multi-effects unit. Got it from AMS when I was in high school.

Soon after, probably senior year, I got one of these, with the corresponding foot controller:

Great memories with shite tone. But they were both a lot of fun, and inspiring.

 

[FracKing]

First significant thing I ever played probably was a friend's Ibanez UE400 around 1981. Boy, was I jealous!

Only in the early 90ies did I play a friend's Roland GP-8 and GP-16, and another friend's cheesy old(?) Yamaha multi-fx kinda pedal...
Was impressed by another friend's Rocktron Chameleon.

First ones I got for myself were the GSP-2101 and later the original POD bean.
I also have a good as new GT-10 still (played <25 hours).

FAS only after that.

 

[Alex Kenivel]

Not my picture, but I got one of these for Christmas when I was maybe 12 or 13 years old.

A Digitech RP300 that I used the hell out of. I would either run it into my dad's Peavey Bandit Solo or into my desktop PC in my room.

By the time I was 16 I had cobbled together 12 or so songs into Cakewalk Guitar Tracks Pro using some of its drum loops, and of course building my own from single-hit drum samples ripped from the Pearl and Zildjian websites.
All the tracked "bass" was the Whammy effect on my guitar an octave down.
Any vocals were recorded using one of those long skinny chat room mics that were prevalent in the late 90s.
I burnt a few CDs and sold maybe a handful to some folks at school including a couple of teachers.
Oh, to be so young, ignorant, and free!

Then I got into different bands and all of that stuff went away for tubes and pedals until 2014 when I was recording guitars for my band at the time and wasn't getting the tone in my head out of my rig. I got into plugins and descovered IRs and TSE x50 which helped me immensely.

Of course I wanted to change my rig so I started to do research about the new era of digital devices and bought a Line 6 Pod HD500X. Also bought a used Korg Pandora as a travel rig.

I later upgraded to a Helix in 2016 and sold the Pod to a nice group of worship musicians in my area.

I'm sitting comfortably now with an Axe FX 3, Helix Floor, HX Stomp, Helix Native, Boss Katana, PG Spark GO, and a Nu-X Mighty Plug. The Pandora is sitting in a drawer somewhere.

 

[Digital Igloo]

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Great memories with shite tone. But they were both a lot of fun, and inspiring.

That Zoom 9000 series was used on so many legendary shoegaze and industrial albums. The 9030 and 9002 are all over The Downward Spiral. Of course you're not gonna get authentic chewy Dumble tones out of it, but boomer bend dad rock is boring anyway.

 

[GLiDE-BPM]

Here are a few I owned. Somewhere in a closet upstairs is a dusty old Vox Tonelab LE!

 

[GLiDE-BPM]

 

[JiveTurkey]

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Get some of that Z-Access action!

 

[ian_dissonance]

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I’m still gonna get one the next time one shows up nearby. Always wanted the z pedal and THE FASTEST SWITCHING (at the time).

 

[Dez]

First modeler thing was a Roland Cube 30x which was great for me in college. I sold that off and the next modeler I got was a Boss ME-25 - that thing wasn’t bad but compared to anything else I’ve gotten it’s at the bottom of the pile.

 

[itchyfingers]

Oh yeah, this was gateway to interfaces and plugins. Everyone seemed to have a pod but I had a guitarport.

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Rad! The GuitarPort was responsible for one of my first big level ups as a guitarist. I could play with headphones in my apartment for HOURS so I wasn't bothering anyone with my hacking. I could loop parts of songs and slow them down to learn tough sections. Learned a ton about iconic amps and different tones inherent to each amp. Understanding and chaining pedals together before I could even afford pedals. That fuzz was so wooly, but I loved the tye die theme, lol. It was a cool piece of kit!!!