Earthquaker Swiss Things

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marqueemoon
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Earthquaker Swiss Things

Post by marqueemoon » Sat Jan 12, 2019 8:45 am

Thoughts on this?

I like the concept. Seems best suited to medium sized boards. If the loops had a wet/dry blend I would be very tempted to buy one and consolidate most of my pedals onto a single board.

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Re: Earthquaker Swiss Things

Post by my bloody television » Sat Jan 12, 2019 9:45 am

i would buy this in an instant if it would allow for multiple instruments to plug into it. I switch between pedal steel and electric on the same board and I couldn't justify having an AB switch PLUS this thing.

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Re: Earthquaker Swiss Things

Post by fuzzjunkie » Sat Jan 12, 2019 9:56 am

This would have helped when I rebuilt my board a few years ago, but I found other solutions back then that are more versatile as a group, but having them in one box would have been nice.

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Re: Earthquaker Swiss Things

Post by marqueemoon » Sat Jan 12, 2019 1:06 pm

Impossible to please everyone with such a thing I suppose.

It’s gotten me thinking a little more about what I’d want from a looper/utility box, but I’m enjoying having a simple setup right now and there’s no musical need to change it at the moment.

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Re: Earthquaker Swiss Things

Post by Shadoweclipse13 » Sat Jan 12, 2019 4:43 pm

It's cool as hell, as typical for EQD. I've never cared for boxes that have switches on both the front and back though. The Flexi-switching thing is amazing, and to make a loop box with that is super cool. I just wish they made a single loop box (Swiss Thing Mini?) with just a single loop and trails.
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Re: Earthquaker Swiss Things

Post by Sid Nitzerglobin » Wed Jan 16, 2019 1:33 pm

I ordered one of them last Friday and it just came in today:
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The sizing and button placement seems kind of awkward for my setups but we'll see how it works in practice.

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Re: Earthquaker Swiss Things

Post by somanytoys » Wed Jan 16, 2019 2:37 pm

fuzzjunkie wrote:
Sat Jan 12, 2019 9:56 am
This would have helped when I rebuilt my board a few years ago, but I found other solutions back then that are more versatile as a group, but having them in one box would have been nice.
I completely agree with this. That is really nice, but for the most part, I've gone too far now for that to be anywhere near as useful as what I have now. But a couple of years ago, that would have been pretty awesome.

Now I use Decibel 11 Pedal Palettes to control the pedals for each effects loop. There are typically 4 pedals per loop, and I have 2 loops per pedalboard, and 2 pedalboards feeding 4 amps. I have another Pedal Palette that controls each of those 4, so that I can control all 4 loops with the 1 controller, and I program the patches to set up which pedals in each of the 4 loops go on and off with each patch, which is all controlled by choosing the patch on the main one. I don't remember how many patches are available, but there are far more patches available than I really need to bother to program, I think I've done maybe 8 or 12 patches so far. It took a while to get there, but it's a pretty nice setup, and I can split it if I want to bring just one pedalboard somewhere to play, and I can still use the single controller with either board.

It can also be used without patches, as a straight up looper, and that allows it to swap/reverse the order of the pedals in it just by pressing other footswitches. That might can also be done in the midi/patch mode, but I don't really bother with it. Still, it is a nice feature.
-David

It's a boost booster, to boost your boost - it makes your tone much muchier.

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Re: Earthquaker Swiss Things

Post by marqueemoon » Wed Jan 16, 2019 2:57 pm

Sid Nitzerglobin wrote:
Wed Jan 16, 2019 1:33 pm
I ordered one of them last Friday and it just came in today:
Image

The sizing and button placement seems kind of awkward for my setups but we'll see how it works in practice.
Interested to hear your thoughts.

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Re: Earthquaker Swiss Things

Post by Sid Nitzerglobin » Wed Jan 16, 2019 11:20 pm

marqueemoon wrote:
Wed Jan 16, 2019 2:57 pm
Interested to hear your thoughts.
I'm still playing Photoshop Tetris trying to figure out where I'm going to use it so it might be a minute, but I'll report back when I get to take it for a spin.

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Re: Earthquaker Swiss Things

Post by somanytoys » Fri Jan 18, 2019 12:06 pm

That's a smart way to do it.

It's such a pain doing it the analog way, but that's typically how I do it, although I have a pretty good idea of things going into it.

*edit: without any scale reference, that pedal looks to be about the same size as the VFE Klein Bottle. Things that size are definitely real estate soakers, but the functionality may make it totally worth it.
-David

It's a boost booster, to boost your boost - it makes your tone much muchier.

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Re: Earthquaker Swiss Things

Post by Sid Nitzerglobin » Fri Jan 18, 2019 1:46 pm

It's ~5.8" x 4.8". I think my main trepidation at this point has a lot to do w/ the boards I've got. Most of the setups sit on Pedaltrain Metro 24s w/ a couple of Jrs, a 2, and a Novo 24.

Putting this one on the upper right hand corner where it ought to go on a Metro rules out pretty much anything but the Zvex form factor pedals beneath it or a micro pedal turned sideways. On the deeper boards it seems like you wind up either needing place it on the first row for easy access to the switches and use some kind of junction box for the amp outs or you're in for a long reach for any of the stomp switches...

It seems like they nailed the circuit layout and features, it just might wind up a little difficult to fit for me. I'm go to try to at least give it test drive this weekend if I can't come up w/ an inspired way to integrate it into one of the current boards.

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Re: Earthquaker Swiss Things

Post by Sid Nitzerglobin » Fri Jan 25, 2019 8:59 am

Finally got this one plugged in on a board last night and initial impressions are good. Switching is totally noiseless, the buffers seem transparent, and the boost is nice. Seems like a solid box

Two missed opportunities/potential short comings from my perspective:
1) I haven't figured out a way to mute output. Using the volume or a kill switch on the guitar means no tuner input if you setit up as intended... I suppose this is less of an issue if you're using a volume pedal all the time.
2) This one is probably more of a niche thing and I'm not immediately coming up w/ a work around on the pedal side, but based on the board I set this all up on having its own jacks for I/O I went ahead and ran the TRS cable from the volume pedal jack on the Swiss Things to the TRS jack on the left side of the board. Without a pedal plugged in on the the TRS jack on the board it winds up cutting output by I'm guessing somewhere around 75%. I can just unplug the TRS going from the Swiss Things to the board jack halfway and all is well, but it would be cool if this wasn't necessary when I'm not running a volume pedal (maybe via a volume pedal bypass popup button or some such). I may just wire up a straight through TRS dongle to hookup to the board jack for the times when I won't be hooking up a volume pedal.

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Re: Earthquaker Swiss Things

Post by fuzzjunkie » Fri Jan 25, 2019 9:22 am

If they had a mini version with 2 loops and a boost I would replace my rig-hack with that.

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Re: Earthquaker Swiss Things

Post by Shadoweclipse13 » Fri Jan 25, 2019 11:45 am

fuzzjunkie wrote:
Fri Jan 25, 2019 9:22 am
If they had a mini version with 2 loops and a boost I would replace my rig-hack with that.
Exactly how I feel. Especially with how handy the flexi-switching is, I'd love to have one that's a single loop with tails...
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Re: Earthquaker Swiss Things

Post by Matmosphere » Sat Jan 26, 2019 4:52 am

The VFE Klien Bottle seems to be a much cooler solution to the same problem and it does way more.

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