Re: [Harp-L] To pedal or not to pedal, that is the question



Let me grab this ball a while.
  First, once again I´d like to thank those here on the list that insisted that I should not throw my RP150 out of the window after a disturbing session with it, but go ahead and buy Richard Hunter´s patches.
  That was a good decision.
  
But what I´ve found this far -- and that´s just a couple of hours fiddling around with a friends PA -- is that the distorted sounds are considerably less appealing than the delay/reverb settings.
  This didn´t shock me -- non-tube distortion always tend to sound a little bit "electric" in my experience -- and I´m more into "clean and warm" than distorted, so not any bigger issue.
  The delay/reverb patches OTOH, are sensationally good and I immediately retired my former reverb unit. 
  Also, the octave doubling effect makes me happy that I sold my Boss pedal: this sounds better; and the freakish sounds ("S/F movies from the 50´s") are great fun to be able to throw in, as well as the organ imitations.
 
But now I read that Neil finds the blues sounds superior in his box, and that interests me.
   
Two questions (to Richard or anyone with an interest) : Is there a considerable difference between the newer/higher RPs and the 150 in the distortion respect? (That could possibly put a 355 on my wish list for the future.)
  
Also, if I´m using my parametric EQ pedal, what´s the recommended place in the chain for this?(Honestly found it a bit hard to hear any difference ...)
 
All in all, this far I´m very happy with my pedal, that I really got for a song.
 
Cheers,
Martin
 
 
Richard Hunter wrote:
Neil Warren wrote:
<Well, I just bought the DigiTech RP355 plus the patches from Richard Hunter, and I got to say <I'm impressed. Some great blues tones from the amp models, plus some very nice reverb and delay <effects for chromatic. 
<I actually bought the pedal for the express purpose of improving the tone of the chromatic, which <it does quite nicely, but it's the diatonic blues that is really served well by the pedal. 
<Only a few months back I invested quite a lot in a not inexpensive small tube amp. Now I'm <thinking the pedal sounds better! (going through my clean Roland AC60). 
<The real advantage of the pedal is the versatility it offers. At the press of a button you can get <a new sound. With a tube amp you pretty much get the same sound. 
<So the question is: can effects pedals really replace the sound of the tube amp?

It has for me.  At least 80% of the gigs I've done over the last ten years have been done with an RP and no amp except for a PA.  Most of the rest were done with an RP and a keyboard amp, which is basically a self-contained PA.  I've done only two or three gigs in the last ten years with a traditional tube amp setup.  (And I liked it, by the way.  Tube amp technology still sounds good, dunnit?  But the RP is a lot easier to drag around and set up, and it sounds just as good.)

If you listen to the numerous clips and videos of RPs made by myself and players like Marcos Coll that I've posted to my website at http://hunterharp.com, it should be pretty obvious that an RP with my patches in it sounds as good or better than most of the tube amp + FX setups out there.  And of course, an RP is much more portable, much less expensive, and much more versatile than even a small tube amp with one or two FX pedals. 


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