efx racks..and vintage amps..

[Moonfish]

Hi, anybody knows how guitarist like the edge... can use several efx racks and stomps and use it with vintage amps (like vox,twin..)with no send/return...

Is any chance to use my tc electronics/eventide racks,delays...into my vintage amps, combined with distorsion/overdrive pedals in input??? How can I keep good soud without s/r????

I think people like Bob Bradshaw knows how it can do.

[BillWelcome Home Studios]

In my experience, after you go through all that crap, it no longer matters what guitar you use, nor what amp you use. That amount of electronics just puts a veil over the sound.

 

U2 makes me sleepy... like Pink Floyd. Only "the Edge" has no edge that I can discern and to me is one of the most boring guitar players on the planet.

 

[Gabriel E.]

In my experience, after you go through all that crap, it no longer matters what guitar you use, nor what amp you use. That amount of electronics just puts a veil over the sound.

 

U2 makes me sleepy... like Pink Floyd. Only "the Edge" has no edge that I can discern and to me is one of the most boring guitar players on the planet.

 

OUCH!!!

[anderz]

pwned.

 

I don't really think it's an amazing idea, but see if you can search on youtube how the edge may make those settings, or Bob Bradshaw. Try doing some searches, you might find something.

[Gifthorse]

I would say he is probably using a pretty sophisticated rack where the amp signals are being effected after the fact. Dunno, thats what I would do with delays and reverbs if my first name were 'The'.

 

But I doubt he runs racks through the front ends of vintage amps.

 

When I think of The Egde (heh), I start to have echoes in my thoughts of the Big Bang. Only kidding, mostly I always have my brain echo at around 300 ms with 2 repeats.

 

 

[Caevan O’Shite]

Some players send a miced signal from the amp's speakers through various effects processors, and then to either an outboard power-amp and speakers, the PA, or recording-console. IIRC, Larry Carlton does this on stage, using a mic, a stereo digital reverb/delay unit, a stereo power-amp, and two additional speaker-cabs on either side of his amp.

 

Or, some use a device like a GT Electronics Speaker Emulator or Palmer Speaker Simulator, which connect just like a speaker- alone, or in parallel or series with real speakers- to provide a reactive-loaded line-level signal to send through any outboard processing, and on to an amp or mixer. I have a GT E Sp Emu and love it; Myles Rose also has some of these. And a friend who used to post here a lot- James_Italy- has a Palmer Sp Sim, and loves it.

 

A simple and very cost-effective (MUCH cheaper!) alternative to reactive-load devices like the GT E and Palmer units is a passive speaker-through direct-box like the Hughes & Kettner Red Box and the Radial JDX Reactor, which connects between the amp's output and the speaker; the speaker still provides the reactive load, like always, but the through-box taps off and compensates a line-level signal to be passed along wherever you want to send it. Years ago I benefited from a particularly sharp sound-guy who had built his own home-made devices like the H&K and Radial units, mixing the direct-box signal with a mic on one of the amp's speakers; it sounded fantastic!

[p90jr]

I think guys like The Edge and Andy Summers have "dry" signals and "wet" signals...

 

meaning some of the amps are playing the effected sounds and some are playing straight. I've known people who did this with a Roland JC 120 handling the delay and effects and a tube amps handling distorted sounds.

 

I do this sometimes - recently when I played a night of Prince songs with a band - and I'll have, say, a Twin set clean with the delay and chorus and whatever going into it and an AC30 or something similar with a little more grit and distortion pedals.

 

I would imagine the Edge might have some direct signals coming off of all that stuff he has...

 

http://i576.photobucket.com/albums/ss205/voxguy64/edgerig.jpg

[p90jr]

I think these discussion/demonstrations with him in his practice room seem to imply he just plays all that stuff through the amp... I don't think he's concerned with preserving the tone of the vintage amps.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nkg_H2wMiSE

[Gabriel E.]

I agree that it would make more sense to take a signal off the amp (either from a mic or a speaker emulator/attenuator) and run that through your fx than put the fx in front. The Weber MASS speaker attenuator has a line out with a switchable tone stack. And you can use it to lower the volume without altering your amp's tone that much.

 

Weber MASS

 

Of course you'd still need to amplify the effected signal(s) with a PA.

[p90jr]

In that vid there's a Marshall stack next to the above setup that isn't visible on stage (and there doesn't seem to be a PA set up... but might be), and I saw that someplace else listed amps that are set up behind that rig and mic'ed onstage... he might have amps with higher headroom carrying the effect signals. I remember him having a Roland JC 120 next to the Vox AC30s in the early days of U2.

[p90jr]

The Edge's tech takes you through his set up...

 

there's a couple of PODs in that rack staring us in the face (duh) that send a signal to the PA, there's an isolated amp in a box backstage that sends a mic'ed signal to the PA (which is always the same, unaffected by the ambient differences in venues) and then the amps onstage. He talks about having some amps dedicated to delays in the past...

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGHqoUOT_z4

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_2Q7DYujEI

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_2Q7DYujEI

[p90jr]

A look at the understage guitar tech area as well as they guy who monitors and mixes The Edge's sounds and the midi/sequenced stuff.

 

[Mudcat]

I really like the Edge. I think he is one of the most creative guitarists of the last 30 years.

 

That's a pretty impressive rig he runs through.

[p90jr]

I think he just has a backup for every piece of rack gear, most guys at that level do (why not back up stompboxes?) and he always uses two of whatever delays he used at the time together (EH Memory Men, Korgs, whatever...) so there'd be four of them in the rack.

 

I love his playing, too. The Boy record turned my head around as a kid, really fresh and made music seem so full of possibilities. He and the band are definitely some of the greats.

[p90jr]

As regards the question that started the thread, I don't The Edge worries about preserving the "vintage tone" of the amps, his tech says "nasty seems to be the word that gets him excited..." I don't think (obviously) he's precious about the vintage amps sounding like vintage amps, he just wants them to sound like him.

[BillWelcome Home Studios]

The thing is, when he got famous he wasn't using a lot of vintage equipment, he had large tall racks full of rack-mounted PA-quality devices feeding more modern amps. So whatever he uses now, there has been several major changes in that setup.

 

Andy Summers, when I saw him at Byrdland a couple of years ago doing his own thing, had a very simple setup. Just an amp, and a couple of floor pedals. So what we see on tour may not be what he prefers, just what makes it easier for him to sound as we expect him to.

[Mudcat]

I belive he has always used Vox amps. I know he originally used EH Memoryman Deluxe pedals for echo but switched to rack mount units around 1985. This was about the time that his pedalboard/rack system started getting complicated.

 

If you listen to the Under a Blood Red Sky: Live at Red Rocks album it's pretty obviouus he is running a much more basic rig. I'm thinking it was something like OD/Boost pedal>Memory Man>Vox AC30.

 

He has so many different sounds he uses now and a bunch of the tones are Line 6 generated. In the YouTube videos they show the Pod Pros in his rack. I don't if he still uses those but I know that for the How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb Tour he had Line 6 build a bunch of custom rack versions of their distortion modeling pedal for him.