What do you like on a keyboard effects pedalboard?

[Mighty Motif Max]

Hi all,

 

Wondering what y'all like to have for effects on your pedalboards for keys rigs. The resurgence in electromechanical boards like the Valente and Rhodes MK8 and the eternal battle of clonewheels has me thinking about what I would put on a dedicated keyboard effects pedalboard if I had enough of a use case. Right now for starters I'm thinking I'd want an EHX Small Stone, Neo Ventilator II, an Eventide H9, and a wah pedal of some sort plus an amp sim pedal. Maybe add delay, chorus, compressor, and trem pedals if space allowed.

 

Obviously this was fairly common once upon a time. So I'm curious what you all would put on a keys-focused pedalboard (keys including clonewheels, synths, and general-purpose keyboards as well as EP's, clavinet, etc).

[niacin]

I've tried a range of things over the years, tremolo, more than a few phasers, but the effects in keyboards are generally pretty good these days.  The only fx pedal I have now is a Strymon Timeline that has the Rhodes and Wurli in a GSI Gemini rack running through it.  Synths is a different kettle of fish, Strymon Big Sky is a popular option especially for ambient stuff.  Remember to consider mono v.s. stereo and keyboard line level v.s. guitar level signals when you're shopping for pedals.

[ProfD]

When it come to pedal FX...it's all about that envelope filter for me. 

 

Right now, I'm considering an Earthquaker Devices Spatial Delivery or a Line 6 Pod Go. 😎

[Doerfler]

Hey D', check out this one, it's the one Bernie used before his untimely passing. Unfortunately discontinued, need to find a used one. 

 

"it adds definite Funkaliciousness to your WOO stew."

 

https://www.pigtronix.com/pedals/envelope-phaser/

 

https://reverb.com/item/48700209-pigtronix-bernie-worrell-envelope-phaser-ii-signature-edition-purple

[ProfD]

4 hours ago, Doerfler said:

Hey D', check out this one, it's the one Bernie used before his untimely passing. Unfortunately discontinued, need to find a used one. 

 

"it adds definite Funkaliciousness to your WOO stew."

 

https://www.pigtronix.com/pedals/envelope-phaser/

Brotha Dave thanks for the recommendation. 👍🏿

 

Little known secret is that FX pedals and outboard processors are cheaper alternatives to buying new KBs in order to freshen up sounds. 😎

[nadroj]

Zoom MS-70CDR is a steal for the price. Focuses on chorus, delay and reverb. 70+ effects, 120+ with a firmware update. Some nice filtery things too. 
 

Can pick one up for £65 if you know where to look. There’s a few vids of it being used with keyboards on YouTube, definitely a go-to multi FX pedal for our type. Search for the one where it’s being used on a Rhodes - heavenly sounds.

[Art-0252]

This YT tour of JP30's pedal board has been a source of ideas to me, especially since he uses his for his Mk1 Rhodes with a Retroflyer ( and I already copied that 😁). Pricey, but super versatile and high quality.

 

 

[niacin]

Great video, at 6:45 he demonstrates the Timeline swell delay - mix set to 100% wet -  that turns the Rhodes into a pad monster.  Love that sound.  Big Sky is awesome too, but notice he says it's for the studio and great for soundtrack and TV scoring, I wouldn't buy a reverb for live playing.

[niacin]

 

 

[ProfD]

Thanks @niacin . I started to link that video ealier today. Very cool playing and FX demo.👍🏿

 

The Rhodes is just a sine wave but a lot of mileage can be extracted from it. 😁😎

[MAJUSCULE]

Delay and some sort of distortion/overdrive are usually my first instincts, then some sort of modulation (preferably something that can get a little wild). It's a lot of fun twisting the feedback and time on an analog delay, or sweeping through frequencies on a ring mod. A lot of fun. I've gone through a few configurations over the years, getting up to five or six pedals in one chain and often running two sets of effects for two boards. Usually just with the one experimental band, though.

 

I've mentioned it before, but I'm in the (slow) process of building a new gig board with sustain/expression fixed on the front tier and an elevated back row with a Line 6 HX Stomp, plus likely an MXR Carbon Copy and a Lounsberry Organ Grinder. I'll be looking to get a little switcher box made so that I can send either one of my keyboards to either the Stomp or the CC/OG pair, which will be separate lines. The Stomp is obviously a lot less spontaneous than having a bunch of different boxes to tweak, but it's a gigging board, and I'll be pre-programming sounds for specific tunes and bands.

 

The great thing about stompboxes is that there are usually plenty for sale in the local used market. As awesome as the J3PO board is, it's pretty expensive and you can get most of the way there with crappy old pedals off unsuspecting guitar players. Lots of cheap fun to be had, and not too hard to flip them back if it's not working.

[David R]

Funny that this topic would come up as I’m giving serious thought of building out a pedalboard. I love J3PO’s setup but it’s kind of overkill for me at the moment. I’m a sucker for delay, especially Roland Space Echo-type, and I’m very happy with my Strymon Volante. I’m lusting after a Keeley Hydra that does both harmonic & amplitude tremolo, as well as reverb. I think harmonic trem could replace/substitute phaser as my go-to modulation choice and I find the built in tremolo of the Nord drops the volume too much. I would also want to have a glitch/micro-looper in the mix and I’ve been so impressed by everything I’ve heard of the Hologram Microcosm. If money and size were of no object I’d add the Strymon Zelzah and a stereo preamp boost (maybe a Vent?) to the mix.

[brenner13]

Poly Effects Beebo, Ventilator( that I’m still pining for), and five Digitech iStomps that run Red Corral Detuner (a wicked chorus), Phaser Beam, Vanishing Point (modulating delay), Continuum Reverb, and a spare one that is Magic Fingers Vibrato right now but often changes to Snake Charmer Tremelo, Double Cross Delay, Jet Flanger, or Angelic Choir which is a shimmer effect reverb. Every now and then it will do Spring Tank reverb or Envelope Filter, and when the mood is right: XUL which is a massive Fuzz effect with an Octave Down assigned to the third knob. That one is a BEASTIE!

Hmmm…maybe I really DO need seven more iStomps…

[benj2017]

This is a timely thread for me as I am about to expand a third tier pedal board I made last year as proof of concept into something better suited for the studio and for live use.

 

(Personally I hate trying to be creative with my plugins and soft synths after being on my laptop all day for my day job so I am leaning more towards hardware now)

 

I'll be replacing the moxf6 with a prophet rev2 and routing it and the Nord through three separate FX chains.  Currently the iPad uses Band Helper to do patch changes on the  Yamaha which then runs through a midi solutions box to send program changes to the Nord and H9s.  I send the Nord organ through the top row pedals and the Nord synths and EPs/clavs through the bottom row.

 

The ipad has an app that can also edit the H9s via bluetooth which is very handy.

 

More to follow...

[drohm]

Strymon Timeline is still a winner in my book. The newer Strymon Zelzah is also pretty amazing with both keys and guitar. 

[benj2017]

3 minutes ago, drohm said:

Strymon Timeline is still a winner in my book. The newer Strymon Zelzah is also pretty amazing with both keys and guitar. 

 Yeah, I am definitely going to be trying out some Strymon pedals. That Zelzah looks sweet and it has midi capability to bypass or do presets which is key. Do you know if the Mobius can duplicate those modulation FX that are on the Zelzah?

[drohm]

6 hours ago, benj2017 said:

 Yeah, I am definitely going to be trying out some Strymon pedals. That Zelzah looks sweet and it has midi capability to bypass or do presets which is key. Do you know if the Mobius can duplicate those modulation FX that are on the Zelzah?

I'm not sure about the Mobius replicating those sounds. I don't think so, but not sure. The Zelzah is the best phasor fx unit I have ever heard. It is super fun. 

 

[ElmerJFudd]

Strymon Big Sky on various keyboard favs like wurly, juno, dx, etc. 

 

 

[benj2017]

So here are some samples of the Nord organ going through the tall & fat and vent and then through the tall & fat, organ grinder, HOF mini, and vent

[benj2017]

Here is the Nord rhodes going through the H9 with various FX

 

1. Nord Nefertiti to H9 Polymodelicious to H9 Mod Delay

 

 

2. Nord Nefertiti to H9 Funk Phase  to H9 70s guitar chorus 

 

 

3. Nord Nefertiti  & Amped Tines Layer  to H9 Micropitch to H9 Space Time

 

 

 

Here is the Nord Wurly going through the H9 with some dirt

 

1. Nord Wurly to H9 Tremolo Pan to H9 Crushstation

 

 

 

 

[benj2017]

 

 

 Here is the Nord Clav going through some H9 FX (I added some of the nord delay as like a slapback and some compression before the it hit the H9)

 

1. Nord Clav w/ fast delay & compression to H9 EQ Compressor  to H9 Flanger

 

 

 

2. Nord Clav w/ fast delay & compression to H9 Q-wah ASDR  to H9 EQ Compressor

 

 

 

Here are a couple Nord synths going through some H9 FX

 

1. Nord Unisaw to H9 Tricerachorus  to H9 Tape Echo

 

 

 

2. Nord detuning saws to H9 Tricerachorus  to H9 Shimmer verb

 

 

 

[RedKey]

This was a rig I built about 10 years ago. 

I believe it was:

Nord Stage (or 2) main out to Rolls stereo channel 1 

Nord Stage (or 2) 3 (organ) out to ventilator to rolls stereo channel 2

Voyager, Clav, other into a Vox wah to OCD to ElCap to BlueSky to rolls stereo channel 3.

 

Headphone out to in ears.

Radial mono out to FOH.

 

Redco snake to the boards (still using the same snake today).  Single power to wall with two IEC to boards.

[RedKey]

Couple close ups on the patch work.

[John Salazar]

This is the current setup I'm using right now. 

 

I got the Mobius for cheap to begin with and just stuck with it.  Sometimes I wonder if there are stand alone pedals that would beat out the individual effects on the Mobius, but honestly they all sound really good to me and the form factor is definitely a plus.  The effects on there beat out the ones on the Nord pretty handily, especially the vibe for me.

 

The Iridium might be a little overkill considering the price, but "amping" the EPs through it gives the extra guts that were missing sometimes - and I wasn't about to get a whole new amp/mic setup to lug around with me to rehearsals and gigs.  

 

I don't even know if I want to talk about the Deco.  Just buy it lol.  The tape saturation is that good.  I'm also considering whether or not I have to get a delay pedal as I'm not really a delay guy and the tape echo on the Deco + digital delay on the Nord seems like it would be the extent of what I need.

 

I mainly got the Red Panda Context 2 for the cathedral reverb and form factor.  Honestly I can barely hear the difference between a plate and hall reverb, so I wasn't that picky.  Had a Bigsky but just couldn't play well with the bigger sounding verbs and the smaller verbs sounded a little too artificial to me.

 

Still have a decent amount of space left on the board.  Probably gonna get a bitcrusher (Red Panda Bitmap 2) for some weirder sounds.  Maybe a delay pedal if I ever get the need to figure out how to use delays properly.  Not sure what else would be useful to me though but maybe I'll get some more ideas from this thread.

[benj2017]

1 hour ago, John Salazar said:

 

The Iridium might be a little overkill considering the price, but "amping" the EPs through it gives the extra guts that were missing sometimes - and I wasn't about to get a whole new amp/mic setup to lug around with me to rehearsals and gigs.  

 

I don't even know if I want to talk about the Deco.  Just buy it lol.  The tape saturation is that good.  I'm also considering whether or not I have to get a delay pedal as I'm not really a delay guy and the tape echo on the Deco + digital delay on the Nord seems like it would be the extent of what I need.

Yeah, the overdrive on the Nord stage three is surprisingly good if you use it in moderation, so much so that I stopped using the Wurly grinder.

 

The H9 has some pretty good tape delays and saturation effects, but I am thinking I’m gonna spring for that new boss RE – 202 space Echo pedal that just came out which basically covers both those bases.
 

The delay on the Nord stage three is pretty good as well.  But as you said, once you get into dedicated effects pedals, the quality just goes up.

[benj2017]

21 hours ago, drohm said:

I'm not sure about the Mobius replicating those sounds. I don't think so, but not sure. The Zelzah is the best phasor fx unit I have ever heard. It is super fun. 

 

 
Here is a video demonstrating the Zelzah fx on vintage keys, and they sound amazing.

This is definitely going on my list.

[Mighty Motif Max]

Good discussion! Keep it coming, especially since we have a second thread about pedalboard setup currently.
 

On 4/15/2022 at 2:47 AM, niacin said:

I've tried a range of things over the years, tremolo, more than a few phasers, but the effects in keyboards are generally pretty good these days.

...

Remember to consider mono v.s. stereo and keyboard line level v.s. guitar level signals when you're shopping for pedals.

I am generally pretty happy with the built-in effects on my keyboards, but the idea of something more tangible is nice. Plus having great Rhodes, EP, and clav sounds like the Purgatory Creek patches in my PC4 (and the rather anemic sounds in my Fantom) have me interested in going the old route. Especially with the FX limitations (Fantom) and/or less-straightforward fx implementation (PC4, PC3) of those boards and the fact that I also have some old rack modules and a YS200 with pretty bad effects. I figure if I decide to get a Vent I might as well have a pedalboard with other goodies. 😉

 

I am aware of mono vs stereo capabilities on pedals usually intended for guitar. My thinking would be to have an A/B/Y pedal or similar at the front to switch effects chains from mono pedals to stereo pedals as needed. Line level vs guitar level is fun...

On 4/15/2022 at 12:32 AM, Mighty Motif Max said:

Right now for starters I'm thinking I'd want an EHX Small Stone, Neo Ventilator II, an Eventide H9, and a wah pedal of some sort plus an amp sim pedal. Maybe add delay, chorus, compressor, and trem pedals if space allowed.

I forgot to add that I already own a Line6 M13 that can handle modulation duties and other random effects. Now I’m thinking I’d add a Big Sky to this list as well, and a Tall & Fat. Maybe an Organ Grinder but not sure if that’s really needed for me.