Imagine you're a fiddle player who primarily plays without effects,
but would occasionally like to be able to play with them. What can
you do?
One option is to put a pickup on the fiddle and run that into guitar
pedals. This will work, but pickups generally sound much worse than
clip-on mics like the ubiquitous AT
PRO-35. Since you're mostly playing uneffected, you don't want to
give that up.
Another option is to get a vocal effects processor. For example, I
have a VoiceTone
D1. These take balanced XLR from the mic, send balanced XLR to
the board, and provide phantom power, so they make a lot of sense
technically. Unfortunately, since they are designed for a vocal signal
I've found they sound pretty crummy when applied to fiddle or
mandolin.
A mixer should work here, but it seems like both overkill and a hack?
Get a small mixer with phantom power, run the output of the mixer into
a guitar pedal, run the output of the guitar pedal into another
channel on the mixer. For example, with a cheap mixer like the Behringer
Xenyx 502 you would:
run the mic into channel one, which provides phantom power
pan channel one hard right
run the right main output into the guitar pedal
run the guitar's pedal's output into channel 2 (left)
set the 2/3 balance to hard left
run the left main output (balanced) to the mixer
A slightly less cheap mixer (ex: the
Soundcraft
Notepad-5, which I have) lets you do this with a monitor channel
instead of panning, but it's still not ideal.
You're also in a funny place impedance-wise, where the guitar pedal
may be expecting a high impedance input or to be driving a high
impedance output. If you need that you could add a reamper (ex)
before the pedal and a DI (ex)
after. I'm not sure whether this is something pedals tend to care about?
All of this seems like a mess to me. It seems like maybe a bunch of
people would want a box with:
XLR input with phantom power
A good quality pre-amp with gain control
High-impedance 1/4" output to the pedal
High-impedance 1/4" input from the pedal
XLR output
Maybe a second dry-only XLR output
Does a box like this exist? Alternatively, are there pedals in the
same form factor as the vocal effects processors, but that are
designed for instruments?
Imagine you're a fiddle player who primarily plays without effects, but would occasionally like to be able to play with them. What can you do?
One option is to put a pickup on the fiddle and run that into guitar pedals. This will work, but pickups generally sound much worse than clip-on mics like the ubiquitous AT PRO-35. Since you're mostly playing uneffected, you don't want to give that up.
Another option is to get a vocal effects processor. For example, I have a VoiceTone D1. These take balanced XLR from the mic, send balanced XLR to the board, and provide phantom power, so they make a lot of sense technically. Unfortunately, since they are designed for a vocal signal I've found they sound pretty crummy when applied to fiddle or mandolin.
A mixer should work here, but it seems like both overkill and a hack? Get a small mixer with phantom power, run the output of the mixer into a guitar pedal, run the output of the guitar pedal into another channel on the mixer. For example, with a cheap mixer like the Behringer Xenyx 502 you would:
- run the mic into channel one, which provides phantom power
- pan channel one hard right
- run the right main output into the guitar pedal
- run the guitar's pedal's output into channel 2 (left)
- set the 2/3 balance to hard left
- run the left main output (balanced) to the mixer
A slightly less cheap mixer (ex: the Soundcraft Notepad-5, which I have) lets you do this with a monitor channel instead of panning, but it's still not ideal.You're also in a funny place impedance-wise, where the guitar pedal may be expecting a high impedance input or to be driving a high impedance output. If you need that you could add a reamper (ex) before the pedal and a DI (ex) after. I'm not sure whether this is something pedals tend to care about?
All of this seems like a mess to me. It seems like maybe a bunch of people would want a box with:
- XLR input with phantom power
- A good quality pre-amp with gain control
- High-impedance 1/4" output to the pedal
- High-impedance 1/4" input from the pedal
- XLR output
- Maybe a second dry-only XLR output
Does a box like this exist? Alternatively, are there pedals in the same form factor as the vocal effects processors, but that are designed for instruments?Comment via: facebook