Bless God

I mixed Bless God yesterday and quite happy with how it turned out. This was our first Sunday with the new stage layout. The drums were no longer caged and I wasn’t sure how the mics would capture the kit. Turns out the drums sounded just fine. I do add samples to the kick, snare and toms when I do the post production mix to give the drums just a bit more of a sound. Church drums are generally not in the best condition and the drums are often not well tuned.

This was also the first Sunday this year that I used my old pedalboard.

Since last year I have been playing exclusively with my Fractal FM9.

The tones are great. The workflow to craft parts is very efficient. So quick and easy to dial in delays, verbs and other effects as needed. And it is an easy unit to take to a gig. I have a custom case from Studio Slips and I usually just need my Mono guitar case and the Fractal case and I am good to go.

For reasons unknown I decided that I wanted to use my old pedalboard. Now don’t get me wrong. I love that pedalboard. I have spent untold hours not only putting it together but learning how to get the most out of it.

I almost gave up using it for this Sunday. The workflow is archaic by comparison to the Fractal. A bit like using a terminal app to run Linux commands. What I wound up doing was crafting the tones I needed in the Fractal first and then using those crafted tones as a basis for configuring the old pedalboard. And that worked fine as a one-time effort. I would not want to be doing that every week.

This is the old pedalboard. Certainly a work of art. And I did thoroughly enjoy using it on Sunday. Did anyone notice a dramatic difference in tone? No. These days, modelers are really good. Hard to distinguish from a mic’d physical amp.