Insight/Advice Needed on Choosing Pedals
Posted: Sat May 05, 2018 5:10 pm
Total pedal newbie, here. Eagerly awaiting my MEiO, which was shipped to Canada on March 23.
In the meantime, been thinking about which pedals to get. Part of the difficulty is that my use case isn’t set in stone. But it’s also about not knowing what features should matter the most. So, when you shop for pedals, what do you compare? What makes a good pedal? Don’t want to spend too much (at least at first).
My main setup for use with the MEiO is based around a Yamaha WX11 wind controller (DIN5 coming out of a battery pack). Sound generation might be on macOS, iOS, or MODEP (MOD Emulation for Pisound, a Raspberry Pi working as the equivalent of the MOD Duo box, with all sorts of synth and effects plugins).
My sense is that it’ll be useful to have some diversity of pedals, even if they’re not all used at the same time. Just ordered two footswitches (two-button Fender PEDL90010, on sale for $10 (CAD) at Cosmo Music). These should be useful to toggle effects and maybe for basic “transport” (play/pause on some clips?).
Will probably get a sustain pedal. Should be useful for use with a software looper, no? The big thing for me is about timing loops properly, without using a hand, so that’s pretty much a core use case for a pedal.
Not sure how to choose one of those sustain pedals, what the differences are between the cheap ones and the more expensive ones.
Also been thinking about an expression pedal. My WX11 already allows me to use my breath for expression. Been using that mostly to control the cutoff frequency of a lowpass filter, in most of my patches. But it could be a whole lot of fun to have an additional expressive effect run in parallel. Like adding some distortion or ring modulation while closing the filter or making a cleaner sound while increasing volume.
Then, there’s the idea of having a dual pedal to “navigate” patches up and down.
Still pretty unclear as to how different pedals work. Can understand some of these differences in the abstract, but wonder how they all work in practice. Chances are that my lack of experience means that some considerations escape me completely.
Anyone has insight or advice for me?
Thanks!
– Alex
In the meantime, been thinking about which pedals to get. Part of the difficulty is that my use case isn’t set in stone. But it’s also about not knowing what features should matter the most. So, when you shop for pedals, what do you compare? What makes a good pedal? Don’t want to spend too much (at least at first).
My main setup for use with the MEiO is based around a Yamaha WX11 wind controller (DIN5 coming out of a battery pack). Sound generation might be on macOS, iOS, or MODEP (MOD Emulation for Pisound, a Raspberry Pi working as the equivalent of the MOD Duo box, with all sorts of synth and effects plugins).
My sense is that it’ll be useful to have some diversity of pedals, even if they’re not all used at the same time. Just ordered two footswitches (two-button Fender PEDL90010, on sale for $10 (CAD) at Cosmo Music). These should be useful to toggle effects and maybe for basic “transport” (play/pause on some clips?).
Will probably get a sustain pedal. Should be useful for use with a software looper, no? The big thing for me is about timing loops properly, without using a hand, so that’s pretty much a core use case for a pedal.
Not sure how to choose one of those sustain pedals, what the differences are between the cheap ones and the more expensive ones.
Also been thinking about an expression pedal. My WX11 already allows me to use my breath for expression. Been using that mostly to control the cutoff frequency of a lowpass filter, in most of my patches. But it could be a whole lot of fun to have an additional expressive effect run in parallel. Like adding some distortion or ring modulation while closing the filter or making a cleaner sound while increasing volume.
Then, there’s the idea of having a dual pedal to “navigate” patches up and down.
Still pretty unclear as to how different pedals work. Can understand some of these differences in the abstract, but wonder how they all work in practice. Chances are that my lack of experience means that some considerations escape me completely.
Anyone has insight or advice for me?
Thanks!
– Alex