Pedalboard Build #2/NPD Catchup

BAAAAAAHHHHHHH NOW I REMEMBER WHY I WAS SO HAPPY TO SWITCH TO MODELING!!!!
Holy god do I feel seen. I am nowhere near as convoluted of a board as yours and I know that feeling you are having when everything should. Just. WORK. And it isn't. After quintuple checking the wiring/cabling and layout. Modelers are something special in those moments of insane frustration :cuss
 
Holy god do I feel seen. I am nowhere near as convoluted of a board as yours and I know that feeling you are having when everything should. Just. WORK. And it isn't. After quintuple checking the wiring/cabling and layout. Modelers are something special in those moments of insane frustration :cuss

It was VERY easy to romanticize amps/pedals again when used in basic configurations in controlled environments. I should have known from just my Fuzz Face experiences between the studio and my living room that buzzes and hums were about to be part of my life again!

The Freqout also isn’t sounding that great in the loop, I think it’s just sensitive enough that it won’t be quite as much fun to use in this configuration. I started looking at my other pedals I can swap it with and that damn VP4 really makes it hard to reason why I need another pedal. Maybe I’ll just slap the Decimator in there if it ever shows up…..USPS hasn’t given a solid update since it hit North Carolina, now it’s just “Moving to next facility, delivery running late” since Saturday.
 
It was VERY easy to romanticize amps/pedals again when used in basic configurations in controlled environments. I should have known from just my Fuzz Face experiences between the studio and my living room that buzzes and hums were about to be part of my life again!

The Freqout also isn’t sounding that great in the loop, I think it’s just sensitive enough that it won’t be quite as much fun to use in this configuration. I started looking at my other pedals I can swap it with and that damn VP4 really makes it hard to reason why I need another pedal. Maybe I’ll just slap the Decimator in there if it ever shows up…..USPS hasn’t given a solid update since it hit North Carolina, now it’s just “Moving to next facility, delivery running late” since Saturday.

What do you think of the VP4 so far Drew?
 
VP4 is fantastic. If I ever get this band out of the talk about playing stage and on a stage with amps; it will be indispensable. Mods, reverbs, delays, pitch all fantastic. Drives are great to my ears as well. Dead simple to use and if you approach the switching on it like you should instead of thinking you need to force it into Axe III:FX Only edition; also dead simple.
 
My other problem with most of the VP4 demos I've seen is people running them into other modellers. I'd like to see more videos where the vp4 has been integrated into a pedalboard with some different amps and pedals.
 
If you like the NOTADÜMBLE pedal, I recommend you look at the "Dumble and Dumbler" mod by Cosmodio Instruments.

I've been on the wait-list for this mod for months and received my invite a couple of days ago. I shipped the pedal to them yesterday.


I am getting the "deluxe" version which moves the internal presence trim pot to an external potentiometer.
 
I was hoping he'd flesh that out a bit.

Sorry brudda, it’s been a busy week!

I haven’t begun programming the board yet, which is where I’ll end up digging into the VP4 more than the surface level skimming I’ve done. I can definitely say the biggest thing I’m hyped on with it right now is how well it’s works with everything else. Getting to experience that “joy” of pedal interactions and how some shit’s noisy or a buffer screws with the signal or you need a buffer or whatever the case, it’s REALLY fucking great to just stick this where you want it, whether it’s in a loop or between some other pedals or at the end of a chain and it just works fucking great.

I haven’t even made internal adjustments outside of setting it to 4CM, whatever I/O levels it’s at are factory settings and everything else has been handled in the effects blocks. While I’ve got experience with Fractal stuff already, I’d have to think this is pretty natural for most guitarist who have dialed in effects before? Having the menu go right to the basic/actual-pedal knobs definitely helps in that regard and I haven’t dived into Expert Mode yet, that I’ll do when I start dialing in delays I’m sure.

One thing I really, really love is being able to recreate my end-of-chain setup that I developed after getting the AxeFX; I put either a ping-pong or 2290 delay (1/4t) in parallel, feeding a large plate reverb, then stick a reverse delay at the very end of the chain, set to 1/2t. While I might not have the Mix cranked above 25%, I crank the Feedback to 33%-35% and you just get this really awesome push/pull thing going with the delays that can sound like it’s own little orchestration depending on what you’re playing. Having that come out of an amp and not just studio monitors is SICK.

That was about 90% of the reasoning I went with it, as recreating that with individual pedals was getting costly, especially when you add in additional loops for the loop switcher and that doesn’t even cover chorus/phase/flange.

I’m very anxious to get to the Drives as I really haven’t spent a lot of time trying them in front of real amps and I don’t think I have at all since the last Drive update hit. Hopefully it’ll prevent me from buying more dirt pedals like it will mod/delays! And the compressors, man, I know my first night with that thing I immediately dug the Dynacomps more than my Keeley, so the VP4 will be handling all the front-of-amp comps and the Keeley is after the VP4 and not in a loop for now, I’m going to try using it post-distortion ala Gilmour and see how it fairs for me.

I have to solder the exp. pedal cable up and then I think I’m done? Once I’m finished I’ll make a video going over the pedalboard tones and likely spend a little extra time on the VP4 since it’ll be serving multiple purposes.
 
That was about 90% of the reasoning I went with it, as recreating that with individual pedals was getting costly, especially when you add in additional loops for the loop switcher and that doesn’t even cover chorus/phase/flange.

This is such an underrated perk of FAS, being able to recreate almost anything. When the Nocturne pedal came out, Kingman dropped the video the next day on recreating it with the Multi-Delay. I don’t know if it’s 80% there or 95% there to the actual pedal, but it was “sounds badass and saved me $250” there. :ROFLMAO:
 
@DrewJD82 FreqOut prefers to sit very early in the chain, I found it works even better after a boost or buffer of some kind. It might not be all too comfy in a loop.

For sure, it's one of my favorite pedals, for stuff outside traditional feedback sounds, but it's not likely it'll survive on this board due to needing to get the guitar signal immediately. Funnily, I've used it in a loop in my AxeFX and it's been fine, I kept it on a momentary switch and brought it in as needed, it was seamless.
 
@DrewJD82 Kudos to you man, persistence. I get confused just reading.

Well my persistence came to an end about 20 mins ago after I was soldering a Monoprice TRS cable that was surprisingly extremely well built, to the point I could not manipulate the wiring/jacks enough to solder properly…..but I sure as fuck tried for over an hour until a factory solder joint broke that I would not be able to get back and it all went in the trash.

Rockboard 12” TRS cable will be here tomorrow. That’s what I get for trying to save $15 on a fricken cable after blowing a stupid amount of money on pedals in a short amount of time.
 


I’m going to have to put a label on the Friedman stating not to turn the volume above unity gain, which was the issue causing that hum. I tell ya, I used to get annoyed with the hiss when I had all these pedals daisy chained, but if these things aren’t set just right in that looper, I can’t combine them the same way I did before without crazy squealing or hissing. Everything is working fine right now, but it feels very ‘delicate’ and not gig-ready, if you breathe on that Friedman volume knob it’ll start humming.

Add in the fact that I did not change anything in the settings between yesterday and today and that pedal was not doing that all, but today it showed up.
 
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