Another Shoegaze-in-a-Box?

[cestlamort]

I also think we've reached "peak pedalboard" (or close to it). I think the majority of pedal dollars spent are by non-professionals.

A couple of other factors to consider (in no particular order)

• many of today's guitar players probably collected something when younger (comic books, POGs, Beanie Babies, whatever) where the exchange value far outweighed the use value, plus a dose of (often artificial) scarcity.
• the internet (ebay, reverb, guitar forums) makes distance or scarcity not really factors in attainability. If someone is selling X or Y somewhere, you can buy it. (Corollary: record stores are less fun since there's a discogs)
• pedals are relatively standard (minimal variation between examples in the same model, except where the pink label is way better than the green label / the one with the horse is better than the blank one or whatever), so less worries about buying remotely
• pedals are easy to ship (and therefore flip)
• pedals are (relatively) cheap purchases (that are a "gateway" to more expensive ones, of course, as we become acclimated to the price... oh, a $200 chorus pedal... click "buy")
• pedals don't have the same opportunity cost as other musical instruments/tools--you can have three delays on your board, but bringing three guitars or three tube heads to a gig is not really practical. In fact, it's now absolutely normal to have a ton of pedals (often with a total cost of more than the guitar or amp, etc.).

I participate in it, too. Heck, I have something like 6 (or more?) analog delays, all with slight-to-zero differences from each other, especially in a band context. It's pleasurable to buy something, anticipate getting it, try out new sounds, (hopefully) get inspired. I'm also fully aware that, barring some total collapse of the effects economy, I won't really ever lose money on stuff. I just have a few hundred dollars sitting in the living room, a few more in the basement, more in the rehearsal space.

I do worry some about relying too much on certain pedals/sounds and that new effects may be too contemporary (therefore eventually too of the era). That said, there are some great guitar sounds on records these days that would have been out of reach for most people 20+ years ago. I'm sure we'll all look back on the 2010s with a similar view to gated reverb drum sounds in the 80s, etc. So be it.

[jorri]

I don't think it sounds that great. fuzz is quite fizzy, and to be shoegaze-in-a-box it needs to go after the verb! The black hole was good on its own i guess.
There's that Keeley Loveless thing (you mentioned the Pink Floyd thing!), which i hated only for the association (it sounds not a lot like MBV but a general 'post rock sounds' pedal i guess) but was quite a good pedal i'd never buy BECAUSE it had one of my favourite album covers on. As someone who sounds quite a bit like Kevin Shields, the Pink Floyd one piqued my interest more actually.

I like the idea of pedals.. Separate pedals! Its a modular system really. Multi-fx are useful if there's a lot of options, that's really what they are for, like when there is ten algorhythms for an effect to pick. I don't get stringing together two or more basic pedals you can't change later, or change the order of.

[somanytoys]

I have owned a couple of the Keeley Loomers (still own 1), they really are great pedals, whether you want/use them for the specific MBV ability or not.
(edit: the order of reverb/fuzz is also swappable)

I can get a very, very MBV sound, and a lot of other sounds of the genre/era, but I'm not typically trying to completely cop someone else's sound with them, I set them to how I like and go from there. I just didn't care for the muff side, so I sold 1 and bought his Realizers instead when they came out.

I don't know if I could get into a component type thing either, I swap my pedals in & out and around too much.

[panoramic]

Pedals were invented as a cheap, simple, portable, battery-powered way to expand the palette of the electric guitar-- often by approximaing, for low $$$, techniques that were originally accomplished through more-expensive or more inconvenient means (loud overdriven amps, tape delay, tape flanging/phasing, etc).

Except that in 2019, pedals no longer always quite so cheap. And we often-as-not assemble them into massive pedalboards that are not quite so portable. And then we require AC power, as batteries become too troublesome. And as evidenced by the pedal under discussion here, they're not always quite so simple individually, and certainly not in aggregate (when considering the average pedalboard rig).

At some point, it becomes difficult not to wonder whether the tail might not be wagging the dog a bit, in many cases.

I've really become cognizant of this lately, having gone back to a very small pedalboard rig.

Otherwise I'd seriously consider assembling a small rack system, or even exploring a single floor-based multi-effects unit. The latter is a compromise, but for most things, I've come to see pedals as a compromise. There are a few main exceptions: Volume (obviously), fuzz, boost/overdrive, and filter effects (wah, envelope follower, etc). I like pedals for those.

But there is no "delay pedal" that truly excites me compared to other means of achieving delay, for instance. Likewise for modulation effects. Almost everything else besides volume, fuzz, boost, and filters I prefer being accomplished through other means.

Interesting, I often wonder if the records I'm buying are the product of the mega boards and the latests pedal gadgets. Generally when I see someone live and remember to look I tend to see boards of tried and trusted pedals that are not too different than most folk had in the 80's. I'll qualify that by saying I tend to see smaller and poorer bands most of whom seem to use cheap and fairly generic everything. What tends to be different is the role of guitar and the makeup or even the deconstruction of the band.

I've often wondered where the guitar demo dude style feeds into actual music you can buy in a shop and I feel much the same about the NASA pedalboards, which I feel might well be confined to formless noodling on soundcloud and playing in church in the US.

I'm guessing here, so feel free to correct me but I get the feeling that pedal fetishism has moved beyond music making and into leisure or just collecting which is fine and all that I collect stuff too but it's interesting to me.

It could be that I just don't fish in the right waters but I don't see so many of the super hot topic pedals out and about while synth brands like Arturia seem to have had incredible impact on contemporary music.

I'll also say that instinctively the very idea of any X in a box user quite unappetising and I'd probably not even bother checking out their music if I know in advance. I might be overthinking this but I generally feel the misusers are more interesting than the users, the people who took equipment and used it in a way the designer never really intended.

D

I agree with most of this and yes in most cases the bands i am seeing will have the tried and true 80's/70's stuff but with a fw boutique bits mixed but never more than a couple. Of the people i know in active bands (plenty) i own more boutique pedals than most of them and i only own like 3.

the idea of "shoegaze in a box" i mean can't you do that with a memory man and a reverb pedal?

[somanytoys]

Yes, you can. But this one goes to eleven.

I own many. Not sure if how many are exactly "boutique", but I do have some, and a lot that are not-Boss & not-EHX pedals. Well, I do have about 4 Boss pedals, but 2 are modded. And actually, only about 6 Digitech pedals. What are other "normal" brands?

Doesn't matter, most of mine probably don't qualify anyway.

[Plumerai]

Any chance multi-effect rack systems make a comeback? Felt every gothteau twins band from the 90’s went with the rack setup instead of elaborate pedalboards. No wasting 15 minutes of their set trying to find the bad patch cable.

[marqueemoon]

Any chance multi-effect rack systems make a comeback? Felt every gothteau twins band from the 90’s went with the rack setup instead of elaborate pedalboards. No wasting 15 minutes of their set trying to find the bad patch cable.

I think there’s been a slight resurgence in interest in rack gear, but modeling has gotten so good I don’t think most people want to spend time scrolling through menus on old rack gear.

[601210]

On one hand a lot of pedals are getting just as deep and hi-fi as rack effects, on the other hand, rack effects from the 80s and 90s are getting hella cheap these days. I bet we'll see an uptick when people realize how cheap they're getting, followed by prices going nuts when supply runs out, but I don't think we'll see a resurgence in terms of new effects going back to that format. It is kind of funny how expensive "Kevin Shields in a Box" pedals are when you can probably score an SPX90 or MidiVerb for a hundred bucks or less.

Also I think being concerned about filling your board with just "normal" pedals is just as lame as being concerned about filling your board with just boutique pedals.

[cestlamort]

On one hand a lot of pedals are getting just as deep and hi-fi as rack effects, on the other hand, rack effects from the 80s and 90s are getting hella cheap these days. I bet we'll see an uptick when people realize how cheap they're getting, followed by prices going nuts when supply runs out, but I don't think we'll see a resurgence in terms of new effects going back to that format. It is kind of funny how expensive "Kevin Shields in a Box" pedals are when you can probably score an SPX90 or MidiVerb for a hundred bucks or less.

Also I think being concerned about filling your board with just "normal" pedals is just as lame as being concerned about filling your board with just boutique pedals.

There might be an uptick with the realization that the cheapest way to Kevin Shields in a box is with a very big box (6u rack full of stuff)

Some rack stuff has already gotten scarce / not cheap, such as the FX500. (Still waaaaay cheaper than the Kelley pedal however)

[panoramic]

yeah those Keeley pedals are PRICEY, i bought that OBNE Rever pedal and it was like $250, the red panda context for like $180 feck what do i know? I keep buying $200 ish pedals. I guess i own like 5 of them now, all that at a point in life where I have cut back on my interest in playing music with other people like almost down to none.

[somanytoys]

Yeah, I bought a couple of SPX 90 II's in the last year or 2 just to have them, because the prices were pretty good and because they're just cool boxes to have. I wouldn't mind a couple of other rackmounts, but I'm not doing any serious chasing, although the FX500 would probably be a candidate. Not sure if I'll ever end up going rackmount live, when I do start playing live again, I guess it would depend on how I would use it & program it, but I do have a midi controller to dedicate to it. The Keeley Realizer is $199, if you don't want the muff (which I didn't care for anyway), so that's $100 less than the Loomer. Not "everything you need in one box" anymore, but then, neither is the SPX 90.

To be honest, the only pedals that I've bought lately, that weren't at least $180, were the Barber pedals (which I do like a lot). Jext Telez, Analog Mike, Fromel, Meris, Keeley - hell, even the Boss DC-2w was $220. But they are all great pedals.

My problem with not playing with many people anymore isn't interest as much as time. Never know, maybe my interest will wane when I do get the time, and realize I had more fun playing by myself, with a looper and a drum machine.

I don't have any real criteria (boutique vs non-boutique) for what I buy, just as long as it seems like it does what I want. I think a lot of my stuff is pretty recognizable, just maybe not all super common. It's just that most of those kinds of pedals have been built by smaller companies for the past few years (or longer). I have to say, except for a BD-2 I bought to have modded, the DC-2w is the first Boss pedal I've bought in a long time, and if I hadn't gotten that BD-2 to mod, I'd probably have bought a BD-2w when those came out. The last Boss I bought previously was an RC-2 looper, I think. I liked it okay, but then it went and died on me (strange for a Boss), and then I spent an arm and a leg on a cool midi controlled drum machine and looper. I would like to rescue the loops off of the RC-2, if not get it working again.

[jorri]

Its funny because i have a sampler and did have a multitrack that has the same FX500 effects, but in better quality, which is perhaps not what's wanted, even though its essentially the same early reflection/reverse gate with the addition of highly usable pitch shift, and a ton of weird options. I haven't bothered selling the sampler because its so cheap, but I guess its less suited for guitar amps.