[HeavyWeather77]

Hey SOTW! I do love pedals, it's no secret, and I finally made a demo of one of my very favorites in existence.

I've been using the "Transmisser" reverb pedal by EarthQuaker Devices for many months now, and it's used pretty heavily on the new Progger record. It works wonders with any signal you put through it, and while it basically does one thing, it does that thing VERY well: it makes long, moving, haunting, beautiful reverb trails that essentially make whatever your instrument is into a glorious synth pad machine.

I can't get enough of that nonsense. I love it. Here's the video.

https://youtu.be/0OAiRoY8A6g

While it does pretty much that one (awesome) thing, the timbre of the reverb trails is actually quite shapeable because of the resonant filter with a dedicated control knob on the face of the pedal. There's also an overall tone control ("Darkness," which acts as an oddly inverse "tone" pot) and a "Warp" function that lets you tune the reverb trails up or down in real time after they're in existence. It's very, VERY fun to play with.

I hope you enjoy the sounds and the demo! There will be more, rest assured.

 

[claxton]

That’s very cool stuff! I sold a Walrus Audio “Descent” pedal that had been collecting dust ever since I started devoting my time to sax and keyboards. A similar synthy ethereal quality to it. I have failed miserably at trying not to complicate things too much, but have had a whole bunch of fun doing so.

 

[HeavyWeather77]

Thanks, claxton! Walrus Audio makes amazing stuff, I've actually been meaning to check out some of their pedals for a long time and the "Descent" seems really interesting. Too bad you sold it already, I might have bought it off ya.

I've gone back and forth on the pedal thing for years... I'm a big guitar and keyboard nerd, too, and I have a serious pedal collecting habit, so it makes sense to incorporate them into my saxophone world, but I put them down for a long time exactly because of how complicated they made things. I really started getting back into sax-with-pedals sounds over the last two years because of some really good technological advancements in pedal implementation with horns and vocals, and it's been very rewarding! These days, if I only have to bring a saxophone to a gig (as opposed to lugging a keyboard rig as well), I'll pretty much always bring my wireless mic and pedals.

And for my own band, well, I bring ALL of em... sax, pedals, keyboard, pedals. Spaceship. Because why make it easy.

But as I've said in other threads, the real game-changer has been Radial's newish line of preamp/DI/effects loop boxes. It used to be really, really tough to control send and receive gain when using pedals with an XLR signal. Now it's relatively easy. And the preamps sound great, too, at least to my ears.

 

[littlewailer]

Dang son.

That was really cool. Indeed it's a very specific sound. But it's a cool one.

I sold all my pedals to fund my new loop station. An Rc-505. But what is really cool about the 505 is that you can have up to 3 effects at a time processing the input signal. So you can have octave, reverb, delay, there's a synth effect, as well as all the other common ones, a really really nice filter that can be high pass low pass or band pass. All with decently tweakable parameters.

So... I'm going to try using it as a live FX processor for some gigs soon.

 

[robbieg]

But as I've said in other threads, the real game-changer has been Radial's newish line of preamp/DI/effects loop boxes. It used to be really, really tough to control send and receive gain when using pedals with an XLR signal. Now it's relatively easy. And the preamps sound great, too, at least to my ears.

Which radial box are you using to go between your mic and the pedals? I have a Cusack Pedal Cracker that I've been using, but I'm not sure if I really like it.

 

[HeavyWeather77]

littlewailer -- thanks, man! Yeah, I love this little bad boy. I'm sure it isn't for everyone, but it's RIGHT up my alley. One of my favorite software plugins is the "Shimmer" reverb by Valhalla DSP, and the Transmisser is one of the few pedals I've heard that has a similar function (albeit a very different specific sound). I'm a huge sucker for lush, ambient reverb/delay texture. Is the RC-505 a Boss unit? It has those other effects built in? Sounds like a very handy and efficient solution to live effects.

robbieg -- I've been using the Radial VocoLoco for about a year and a half and it's been one of the best buys of my music career. It's not like it's a fun or exciting effects box, it's just so utterly useful, well designed, and completely sturdy (Radial doesn't mess around and there's a good reason why their DI boxes are at every top studio and venue in the world). I was turned onto it by the fine folks at Pigtronix in Canada after seeing a great demo video of a trumpet player using their Envelope Phaser. Which is another great box!

 

[littlewailer]

Is the RC-505 a Boss unit? It has those other effects built in? !

Yeah, it's the looper that DubFX helped create for them. You can record your input with FX and then once stuff is looping you can add track effects to the samples. Super powerful unit.