strymon advice

[lsj]

need some advice and opinions on either strymon night sky or blue sky.  I heard big sky is better for guitars rather than keyboards.   I would be using the pedal for all my synths, which I have thirteen of them.    also, what would be the best way to have the pedal set for all the keyboards.  all the keyboards are going into my mixer. I'm guessing just use aux send and return on my mixer.  never done this before so asking for advice.  thanx.

[Stokely]

Live or in a studio?  I guess either way I'd recommend what you said, using an aux send and return.  If you are doing multiple keyboards with fx at once (live or during a mix) then there's really no other way to go.  If you were recording one at a time and wanted to print the fx each time then you could go directly from synth to fx unit (especially if you had a patch bay to make it easier).  With the aux you set the wet/dry mix to 100% wet, with the direct method you'd adjust to taste.

[mynameisdanno]

I haven't had any hands-on time with the Night Sky but I would strongly disagree with the statement "BigSky is better for guitars rather than keyboards."  My BigSky is in near constant use in the studio on synths, Hammond (pre-Leslie), really just about anything/everything.  They are so de rigueur in the synth world these days that it's almost become a meme.

 

With that many synths, having it on an aux send/return at your mixer (with the BigSky set 100% wet) seems like the most logical move on the surface, but if you want to be "playing" the pedal as part of a sound on one particular instrument at a time, you might find it better to just set it on top of whatever instrument you're playing at the time and patch directly through it, so it'll be easy to reach while playing.  I usually have mine sitting up on top of the instrument I'm playing so I can tweak decay times, etc. as I go.