Re: m13 - m9

[Mark Hamburg <mark@grubmah.com>]

On Jan 23, 2011, at 10:23 AM, William Walker wrote:

 Mark said:

What's missing for me with the M13 relative to the AM8000R from a signal flow standpoint is if I want to get some straight signal in addition to the ambient effects. There are definitely interesting effects to get by cranking the mix to fully wet on the earlier effects and reprocessing with the later effects and this isn't really viable with the Line6 effects if you also want some dry signal since each effects section just feeds into the next. 

Maybe you are using a different effect than me???? There are a few dry thru delays on the M-9/13  that allow just what you are taking about, and then there are individual mix controls for every effect, which will do the same thing, So you are lamenting the lack of a wet and dry output?  Mark,  i can't wait to see the looper/multi effect you have on the design board. It will have every feature known to mankind!!!!

Here is what I'm doing with the AM8000R and I find it adds some really nice ambience behind the loops (note the emphasis on "behind the loops")...

Stepped Phaser -> Pitch Shifter with Feedback --> Delay/Reverb

(I think pretty much all of my sets other than Y2KX have had something along these lines sitting in the background.)

The feed through on those effects tends to be 100% wet from one to the next (or at least pretty heavily biased toward wet) but I can route the dry signal around them for an overall dry/wet mix that can let the ambience sink into the background. The individual effects on the M9/M13 tend to have mix controls but you can't say take 100% of the Particle Verb and feed it into the Obi-Wah and then feed that into a delay and then mix that all behind the initial dry signal. To do that, you either need a more complicated effect that folds the pieces all together or you need a mixer -- though it wouldn't need to be a terribly sophisticated mixer.

This comes up because I've been looking at eliminating my rack and comparing what the AM8000R lets me do with what the M13 lets me do and finding that I don't have quite as much flexibility (let alone missing the pitch shifter feedback effect). Not having actually used them, I don't know whether the Eventide boxes would handle this either since again it would depend on having an appropriate all-in-one effect for which one could then set a wet/dry mix. But for a floor-pedal only set up, I've definitely been tempted toward using two effects in the M13 on the signal out of my analog chain, then running out the effects loop into a looper, and then using two more effects post-looper. (Unfortunately, Line6 won't let me just stick their looper in the middle of the chain.) A pedal board friendly mixer and some splitting support would make this even more flexible and would resolve the above wet/dry issues.

 Regarding mix settings. Just recently I have been taking a closer look at the wah pedals on the M-9. Because my M-9 is placed after my compressor and guitar preamp, its not in an ideal place to put a wah pedal, as it sounds too peaky and over the top to be usefull. However because you can tweek any parameter of the wah including the mix, I have found I can create a very subtle yet effective wah sound that doesn't overload the midrange but still provides an expressive vocal quality. The ability to fine tune the wah's throw characteristics and its overall depth is really an outstanding feature. My favorites are the wah called throaty and the colorsound wah sim which makes me nostalgic for a color sound wah I owned briefly back in the day.

Cool. I may have to play more with the Line6 wah models since I'm finding my Weeping Demon to be a bit bulky on the pedal board.

Mark