I’m building a new pedal board to go with the Boogie Mk 5. The best amp sound seems to come with the Boogie’s FX loop turned off, so the board fx comes before the preamp, on a true bypass looping Musicom EFX 2 controller (which also sends midi patch changes to the Eventides).
My new band has turned out pretty rocky, and I’ve always liked psychedelic-sounding music. Being the singer, I don’t have time to do shoe-gazy hesitations or stomp box tap dancing. Everything’s got to be just the one click away – so the complication of midi is required. But it’s not that complicated, and this rig (unlike my last which had drum machines, loopers and switchable stereo outputs), is dead simple.
When I’ve worked out all the sounds for the songs, I’ll program the controller also to change the amp channels as part of the patch changes,. This will allow me to leave the Boogie 8-switch stomp box at home. Four patches per bank, so one bank = one song, with potentially four different patches per song.
The point is to minimise the number of effects in the chain – only those actually in use, and otherwise a hard wire type of run from guitar to amp. The fx are only modulations and delays, as the Boogie makes great sounds on its own.
The eagle-eyed will however have spotted the EHX Big Muff… This is purely to aid and abet the POG, which makes some really mental sounds when set up right. I might have to add a small Boss compressor, as POGs really like a bit of signal pressure (hence the Big Muff).There’s a Cry Baby on the right, and the Boss expression pedal alters the delays on the Eventide.
Once I’ve got the sounds for each song of our set sorted out, I’ll program the Musicom to bring in each effect unit, change the patches on the Eventides, and the channels on the Boogie. This will be one patch per sound, potentially four per song (4 patches = one bank.).
I could use the HighWire buffer for a solo volume booster. The Solo facility is part of the Mk5 effects loops which I’ve hardwired off.
But actually I’m planning to go Old School on this, and use the volume controls on my guitars. The Boogie responds beautifully to increased input gain.
The next plan is to use the Boogie for Dry, and taking a mono feed from its Slave output, use my Axe FX for stereo Wet channels left and right. This sounds outrageous, especially on a big PA or at a festival. We’ll be a three-piece guitar band, so this sort of sonic extravagance works really well.