FX pedals

Hi folks

I'm planning on buying some FX pedals in the future like analog delays, phaser, chorus, wah wah and such for altering sounds. I think they might work brilliantly with synths and I really wanna try what they can do to samples.

Does anyone of you already use guitar fx pedals with their synths, keyboards or MPC? I know most of the stuff can be done with plug ins, but that's not the point here. Any experience?

i use these pedals with the microkorg, with the soft-synths, with the sp1200 and with the s950 (it depends what kind of sound i want to obtain):

boss super chorus (this is good for both synths and samples, but got a annoying background noise i got to adjust the volume of the effect to denoise it)

boss digital delay (this is also good for synths and samples, but it's a bit noisy)

dunlop fuzz unit -jimi hendrix system- (i use this mainly for synths sounds, but sometimes also to distort some drum breaks)

crybaby wha-wha (mainly for synths)

vox valve tone overdrive (mainly for synths)

maybe i have to get a noise gate pedal also
there's some pedals (i.e. the big muff) that got an internal noise gate

Back when I was in a band my homeboy would run his keyboard thru guitar pedals.

i've built a few pedals. i have a chorus (small stone clone), phaser (ross clone), delay, tremelo, various distortion units, and an auto-wah (dr q clone).
i also have an ibanez chorus, delay, and compressor.

they work great with synths and the mpc. it's very easy and quick to use the individual outs to add efffects and resample. the sound is great, rich, thick and anlaogue.

i'd say chorus, phaser and delay are the most useful.

I have a few pedals:

RAT distortion (the best distortion I have used)
Boss Digital Delay (I would prefer the MoogerFooger delay)
Electro Harmonix Clone Theory & Nano...noisy bastards. They sound good on my Bass for that Cure/New Order sound
Boss Fuzz
MXR Phaser 90

I mostly use these pedals for my synths.

Try routing through pedals & into a guitar amp.

yes i use a bass amp sometimes with the microkorg and the fx pedals
i also have a boss rc-20xl loop station that i use if i want to do some loops on the fly or when i want to take a stereo sound and convert it to mono (to record L+R in my mono samplers)

what's the best way to connect my mpc and keyboard to an effects pedal?

mono jack cable is the best (also for the signal, no loss), this kind of pedals are made for electric guitars

thx wrote:mono jack cable is the best (also for the signal, no loss), this kind of pedals are made for electric guitars

awesome, this helped a lot!

which kind of pedals do you use?

i was looking to use a distortion pedal, one that i was using for my guitar to get a really chuggy heavy metal effect.

I wanted to plug these pedals into my mixers inserts cause I have all my gear neatly connected. That should work or do I have a completely stupid idea there?

i don't know, never tried that

NguoiDuc wrote:I wanted to plug these pedals into my mixers inserts cause I have all my gear neatly connected. That should work or do I have a completely stupid idea there?

my memory might be a bit faulty here, but i was using the inserts on my mackie onyx, and sometimes the level was too high and it distorted.

but this was with homemade pedals, i just changed resistors till the impedance suited my set up. with commercial units, just check if they are fine with the level coming from your inserts, which is line level, right?

beach_break wrote:

NguoiDuc wrote:I wanted to plug these pedals into my mixers inserts cause I have all my gear neatly connected. That should work or do I have a completely stupid idea there?

sometimes the level was too high and it distorted.
with commercial units, just check if they are fine with the level coming from your inserts, which is line level, right?

i think that it could damage your mixer channels (if the signal input is too high)
the fx pedals are not made for that purpose
they are made to play thru a guitar (or bass) amp cone which is more resistant to high signals coming from the fx
but i think that if you dont crank the gain too loud it could work, dont' know... this could be a false statement
be careful
please correct me if i'm wrong