The Steel Guitar Forum

just wondering what would be a good EFX unit to buy for Steel and Elec Guitar thats not overly expensive? New Zealand Member here...

I would look at a TC M-One, full dual-engine processing and routing and professional versatility. About $250 to $300.

But that's just me...

...Just the plain old Boss pedals seem to work the best. Profex 2 is noisy. Other brand name pedals break up & distort...If you're into multi effects, I would again stick to Boss...for rackmount, check out Alesis, Lexicon, or TC electronics...I have the Alesis Midiverb4...I recently bought a TC Electronics pedal called the NOVA REPEATER with delay & chorus. It too is awesome.I have it for sale right now in the "For Sale" section. I can't keep them all...check these out in Youtube...Good Luck!

The DigiTech RP-150 is a great unit for the price.
(under $100)

What Bob said. Has nice Lexicon reverbs and decent overdrives. For the price, great!

The "next generation". Got mine on order (at 10% off) > > >

I have an older POD XT. The X3 and new HD do more things, but the XT does what I want. My default setting is the Marshall Plexi 100 amp head with a four 10" speaker cabinet simulator, the tiniest bit of compression (Thanks to Rick Schmidt, who figured out the proper settings) and a very small amount of stereo chorusing between the 2 amps. Both the compression and the chorusing are so subtle that you don't notice them unless I turn them off, but they add a great deal of presence to the sound.

Since the POD is after the volume pedal, I also use a Pro Co Rat in front of the volume pedal for distortion.

Mike Perlowin wrote:I have an older POD XT.
The X3 and new HD do more things, but the XT does what I want.

Yeah, I've been using the XT for years since it came out back in the late '50's
...but whereas the X3 was basically an XT with more bells & whistles, I passed on that.
The new HD is supposedly new as far as the actual tone modeling...from the ground up (more realistic and "organic").
I wasn't going to jump on it but there was a limited $40 off sale so I figured I'd check it out. They give you a month or so to mess with it.

Has anybody heard Huss Hicks and Beck Grantham on Youtube doing A Way to Survive .Awsome sound ,what type of Effects and amp are they using?

Hi Dessie .. I assume you mean the rack mount variety ?? I am using the TC Electronics M300 which is a twin engine job - you can dial in delay and reverb together and also other efx like phaser, chorus etc ... these can be picked up on the forum reasonably cheaply and they self seek the voltage so you don't need a special 230 volt version. Just plug in a kiwi IEC computer lead.
The Lexicon MPX 1 seems fairly popular too.
For non-rack mount the POD-XT has some favour as well - especially since you double on guitar.

I have three of the Lexicon MPX1 units and, although it's a little bit of a challenge to program (although there are pre-programmed settings you can use) it is very reliable and has really nice effects.

I sold my PODs when I got the Digitech RP250, it just sounds more musical somehow. You do have to go deep into tweaks... fortunately I also have a Boss VF-1 that's ALL menus, practically. I like the way it sounds, but jeesh it's not easy to change up fast if you discover you had too much reverb or something. To get the most out of the RP250, you have to go into the computer USB stuff and lower the midpoints of the midrange and treble knobs. Digitech's engineers set the treble on some models at 3600Hz and the mids at 2200 on some of the amp sims, and I knock 'em down to 2400 and 800.

I like some of the bigger amp simulations, like Mike. If you automatically go for "TWIN REVERB" your looking at a model of an 85 watt tube amp, and past 6 or so it's really overloaded. Try the 100 watt models, like the big Marshall or my fave, the Hiwatt. Run at about "3" or so. I don't mean to mirror Perlowin but you can dial in effects at a very subtle level; when you've got a stompbox chorus or delay it's either full-on or full off, and the only way to put a slight amount in is to split your signal into "clean" and "effects" channels. With one of these, you can put delay on at 25 out of 100, and it become more like a echo than a machine-like whap-whap-whap.

There are a lot of Digitech units, but the RP 150, 250, 350, and the newer 155, 255, 355, 500 all have the same chip and there's a rack mount unit called the GSP1101. The more money you spend the bigger they get with more models added, but you can pick up the basic 150 now for way under $100. DON'T get a 100, 200, 300 series, it has a different, earlier chip.

I'm working on a rack setup incorporating this unit from Line 6.
I think it would work great for a steel and regular guitar player as there are two distinct paths that can be set up with this unit.

Erv, the picture is too small. We can't tell what that line 6 unit is.

Please tell us.

Mike,
I put up a larger picture.
It is the Line 6 Pod X-3 Pro.

Thanks for all you help guys, looks like im going to have to try some of these out and decide,

Don't under estimate the Peavey profexII. It is available usually priced right. They are very flexable and easy to program. If it is noisey it is likley the gain setting program is to high. They are still one of the best units around. JMO
Fred

If you want somthing easy to carry and small,Get on ebay and find a Boss RV-3 pedal.It has Rev and Delay.I have 3 of them and use them everyday.You can usally get one for around 100.00 bucks.