Pedalboard Switchers - Tell me about them

Kapo_Polenton

Kapo_Polenton

Well-known member
Steve's pedalboard thread is making me notice these 4 or 8 spot switchers. I'm wondering for you guys who use them, what is your main motivation for having them? Is it for real estate? Sometimes it does make sense to have pedals on their sides or in corners. I am thinking those are sometimes hard to reach. Another is tone suck. Sometimes there is that one pedal that sucks tone in bypass. OR, you just want less between you and the amp. Am I on point here? Anybody start with a switcher and then go back to old school pedalboard tap dancing? I notice this varies on pro rigs as well. Some guys just have them all lined up and they tap dance as needed. My motivation would be that I want more variety on my board for my home studio but i don't want 8 pedals in line.

So with that said, what is low profile and good? Is Joyo's switcher any good? I'd love something very slim that can hug the bottom of a pedal board.
 
It's definitely not for real estate, it's for activating or programming a series of effects for different tones live, for me.

As in, I'm playing a lead - I need to change channels on my amp, add a clean boost in the loop, turn on my strymon volante to the lead patch - so instead of stopping playing guitar for 40 seconds to do all that, I hit one button on the ES-5, lol
 
I use a MusicomLab EFX MK III eight loop switcher on my board. I came from the rack world. I like to hit one switch and have multiple things happen. I hate tap dancing on pedals. I like the ability to control my H90 and SDE3000EVH presets and functions with the tap of a switch. It allows me to have five different tones at instant reach on by board at any given time within the bank of presets that I have called up. It makes playing live easier.
 
I have been looking for something like this on and off for years now. Most likely will not be moving it around so the Joyo has been on my radar. Would love to have one of the fancier ones but I don't see the point in spending that kind of money when I just want to turn a few different combinations of boost on/off, delay on/off, chorus on/off to switch between clean, rhythm, and lead tones.
 
fek said:
I have been looking for something like this on and off for years now. Most likely will not be moving it around so the Joyo has been on my radar. Would love to have one of the fancier ones but I don't see the point in spending that kind of money when I just want to turn a few different combinations of boost on/off, delay on/off, chorus on/off to switch between clean, rhythm, and lead tones.
Click to expand...

Depending on what your amp is, IMO 300$ ish for a used es3 or es5 is well worth the extra dough :dunno: I've owned and used both

The phase switching, volume boosts on patches, midi control, and all of the extras on the boss, I found myself using as my rig evolved through the years
 
I’m using an RJM BPC6X and it’s all of the above. Keeps the signal cleaner, I can turn on/off multiple effects, send MIDI messages and change channels/settings on my amps all in one stomp. I’d have a hard time going back now lol
 
TX6Strings said:
I’m using an RJM BPC6X and it’s all of the above. Keeps the signal cleaner, I can turn on/off multiple effects, send MIDI messages and change channels/settings on my amps all in one stomp. I’d have a hard time going back now lol
Click to expand...

Yep the RJM is a great option too

griff10672 said:
I absolutely love my Boss ES-8 ..........
Click to expand...

Absolutely, you buy it for the loop switching, but it stays on the board because of all the crazy auxiliary features that you didn't realize you needed
 
DanTravis62 said:
Yep the RJM is a great option too



Absolutely, you buy it for the loop switching, but it stays on the board because of all the crazy auxiliary features that you didn't realize you needed
Click to expand...
It does so much shit ................ I probably only use a tenth of it's features
 
So I guess what you guys do for presets is have your always on in line but then you group something like an OD with a Boost pedal for a lead setting, but then maybe another OD or FUZZ on it's own with any other effect if you want just that one. In that scenario, don't you end up with a ton of duplication of types of pedals? I guess the pros probably just to clean/rythm/lead sort of deal a lot of the time. Steve Stevens seems to like to settings though.. oh, and Pete thorn too! That guy always has these monster boards. I'm assuming that the good switchers allow you to combine your loops via a "patch" that you name vs tapping across 8 loops on/off.
 
The ES-8 ( ES-5 etc ) does either one.... you can set it where you can store any combo of the loops under one preset .... or you can have it where you can switch loops on and off individually .

The cool thing about the Boss ( and some others ) you can switch around the order of the loops when storing a preset ...

you can also run loops in parallel ....

and you can assign the built in buffers too ... or turn them off
 
I use the ES-8 as the brain of my board.

Almost every pedal I run in front of my amp is in one of the loops. My amp itself is also in a loop, so I can switch from amp to ampless per patch.

Almost every pedal that comes after the amp - EQ-200, IR-200, SDE-3000D, Tricerachorus, RV-500, Parallelizer - is controlled through MIDI by the ES-8. My amp - DSL100HR - has MIDI channel switching so it handles that as well.

The ES-8 also sets the delay time for my DD-8 via tap tempo.

So with a single patch change I can 1) change the channel on my amp, 2) engage any of the eight pedals to go into that amp, in any order I want, 3) change patches on multiple effects pedals and 4) set the tempo of my DD-8 (which I set as tape delay) in ms.

I dedicate each bank to a certain sound and have the first three patches in the bank set for rhythm, clean and lead. The remainder of the switches can be set per patch to engage other effects (with either momentary or latching switch), change a tempo (either in ms or by tapping), send another MIDI command, or simply switch another patch outside of my core three.
 
GreatRedDragon said:
I use the ES-8 as the brain of my board.

Almost every pedal I run in front of my amp is in one of the loops. My amp itself is also in a loop, so I can switch from amp to ampless per patch.

Almost every pedal that comes after the amp - EQ-200, IR-200, SDE-3000D, Tricerachorus, RV-500, Parallelizer - is controlled through MIDI by the ES-8. My amp - DSL100HR - has MIDI channel switching so it handles that as well.

The ES-8 also sets the delay time for my DD-8 via tap tempo.

So with a single patch change I can 1) change the channel on my amp, 2) engage any of the eight pedals to go into that amp, in any order I want, 3) change patches on multiple effects pedals and 4) set the tempo of my DD-8 (which I set as tape delay) in ms.

I dedicate each bank to a certain sound and have the first three patches in the bank set for rhythm, clean and lead. The remainder of the switches can be set per patch to engage other effects (with either momentary or latching switch), change a tempo (either in ms or by tapping), send another MIDI command, or simply switch another patch outside of my core three.
Click to expand...
no that's someone using it's features .....
 
DanTravis62 said:
Depending on what your amp is, IMO 300$ ish for a used es3 or es5 is well worth the extra dough :dunno: I've owned and used both

The phase switching, volume boosts on patches, midi control, and all of the extras on the boss, I found myself using as my rig evolved through the years
Click to expand...

I like the looks of the Boss units for sure! Just have never come across one at a decent price.
 
griff10672 said:
no that's someone using it's features .....
Click to expand...
Like you said, so many features become apparent after you buy it. And I still feel like there's more I can do to take advantage of it.

Just the fact that you can take an ordinary Boss DD pedal and set exact delay time, in ms, per patch, is a feature I initially overlooked and now see it as a selling point. So simple but so empowering.

The one thing I would change is having to use MIDI-to-USB to use the editor. That sucks.
 
PBC6X is probably my favorite switcher out there. Feature packed, awesome desktop app, and their support service is better than about anyone else in the industry. I'll give you a rundown of what I do with my RJM PBC6X so you can kinda get an idea of workflow:

Page 1 - Mesa JP2C
Button 1 (Clean: ) Change JP2C to CH1, turn JP2C EQ1 off, turn JP2c EQ2 off, turn JP2C reverb on (on its own IA button if I want to toggle it), turn JP2C FX loop on, turn Ego compressor on and order it in the front of the chain, turn the H90 on and order it in the FX loop with two algorithms in that path for my clean (micropitch and delay), turn on the Boss DC-2W and order it in the loop before the H90. This gives me a compressor, chorus, micropitch (subtle widening), delay, and reverb
Button 2 (Crunch: ) Change JP2C to CH2, turn JP2C EQ1 on, turn JP2C reverb off, turn JP2C FX loop on, turn off shred mode (on its own IA button if I want to toggle it), enable noise gate fed via tuner out for the trigger but order the actual loop to be the first in the FX loop chain, turn on boost 1 ordered in front of the amp, bypass H90 (important for spillover)
Button 3 (Heavy rhythm: ) Change JP2C to CH3, turn JP2C EQ1 on, turn JP2C reverb off, turn JP2C FX loop on, turn off shred mode (on its own IA button if I want to toggle it), enable noise gate fed via tuner out from the trigger but order the actual loop to be first in the FX loop chain, turn on boost 2 ordered in front of the amp, bypass H90 (important for spillover)
Button 4 (Lead: ) Change JP2C to CH3, turn JP2C EQ2 on, turn JP2C reverb off, turn JP2C FX loop on, turn on shred mode (on its own IA button if I want to toggle it), enable my H90 ordered in the FX loop with my delay preset

This kinda stuff is all done at one button press. I have other ones programmed to enable a whammy or wah pedal, ones for different amps I have configured (Savage 120 Mk 2, JVM 410H, etc). Each page I have custom amp setups for custom routings and sounds. I also still have the hold function for the built-in tuner, too.

Did I mention I love my PBC6X? :D Best of all, if I ever run into any issues, they respond in less than 24 hours to help me with my rig. Hard to beat that IMO. Great forum support, too.
 
I first started with a BOSS ES-8, which got me hooked. Then I wanted to move the pedalboard off the floor and into a rack, with just a foot controller on the ground. So I switched to RJM with the Rack Gizmo and Mastermind LT foot controller.

I will never go back to a non-switcher pedalboard.

To me its power goes way beyond pedals. It’s being able to adapt to your current and future gear. With a really simple setup, it can just handle loop combination presets. If I’m running multiple amp heads, it can control the head switcher as well. Pedals or rack gear with their own presets? No problem, can switch those too. I got back into the Synergy preamp system with a SYN2, and can move between the 4 preamp channels with MIDI. I have a Torpedo Live unit, and I’ve used MIDI to switch the IR preset so I have different cab options. I even had one page/bank on the foot controller dedicated to switching between different mix levels on one of my Lexicon units so that I didn’t have to keep adjusting the channel level on my line mixer.

You don’t have to use all those functions. But it does open some doors.
 
Fine. I am back on the hunt for one of these types of units. Used of course. I am a "m-idiot" though so hopefully I don't get pissed off and break stuff trying to incorporate the thing onto my board.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top