Changing Things Up

Pedalboards are always changing. At least they always change for me.

I was not enjoying the tones I was getting from the Strymon Iridium. I was thinking about going back to amps as I missed the feel of playing through an amp. The Iridium was fine but not great.

The thought of hauling heads and cabs out to gigs is not very appealing. Especially at my age. What should I do? And then along came IK Multimedia’s big announcement, the Tonex Pedal.

Admittedly, I doubt that the Tonex Pedal will change the world. I ordered one of the first ones to arrive at Sweetwater. And I love the tones coming out of that box.

I am travelling right now so I can’t update my pedalboard as it is back home. I have been playing through a virtual rig on the laptop using Neural DSP’s plugins. Those plugins sound great. As do the Tonex models. I’m now running Amplitube with Tonex as my virtual rig until I get home.

To add Tonex to the pedalboard means making a few changes. I used one of the online pedalboard designers to craft the new board.

A few changes. I had added the Eventide H90 to the board which kicked the BigSky off but I miss the BigSky. As the H90 can easily cover pitch and chorus, I will kick off the Pog and the Julia and bring back the BigSky.

The Tonex will displace the Strymon Iridium. And, sadly, I have to kick off the Timmy and I need to replace the Deep Six compressor with a smaller form factor pedal. I have a few compressors in the studio and I might just throw the Keeley compressor on the board.

With the RJM Mastermind, I don’t have to worry too much about pedal order and cabling as I can readily rearrange pedal order in the Mastermind. I will have a fair amount of re-wiring to do on the board which might involve a day or two of effort.

After which I will likely spend a fair amount of time dialing in the new tones.

Until I decide to change the board again.