I've gone pedal mental again! This time I obsessed about the tunes we have where I need a univibe and reverb one minute, and a dry but distorted sound the next. Or chorus and clean to crunch and delay and back again. Too much turning off of stuff and turning other things on in very little time, so I decided to justify to myself a Carl Martin Octaswitch. It's an eight input, eight channel pedal loop system.
So the pedals are all on and all feed into the Octaswitch. Then each of the eight channels has an eight-switch dipswitch, so you can tell it which effects you want on when you hit that switch. It's not an on/off system, as one channel is always on, so I have one set to clean.
So far it's been great - and (for once) just what I needed. The only problems (apart from actually fitting it in place is that I need twice as many patch cables! (The board is shown with the top deck removed while I was sorting out all the power and patch leads... Patch leads will be upgraded when I get time and money too)
Here's how I have it set:
1: Clean (or with long delay, which I'll manually switch in)
2. BOSS AC2 Acoustic Simulator + (extra) Reverb
3. AC2 with Modulation (I have all three modulation pedals on one patch as it's rare that I'll want them all on at once - so there's a choice of TC Vibrato, EHX Electric Mistress (set for Flange) and the Love Pedal Pickle Vibe.
4. Clean with Modulation
5. Crunch
6. Proctavia octaver
7. Rock! HBE Power Screamer + extra reverb
8. Guitar Hero - HBE + Reverb + Analogue Delay
Phew!
And now I reckon I want a TC Electronic G System!
I also am going to build a second pedalboard, with all my spare pedals, to be my blues board. Just an overdrive, delay, boost and reverb perhaps.