Is downsizing a trend?

[retinal orbita]

It’s not like Sonic Youth use that many effects anyway amirite fellas?

[fuzzonaut]

It’s not like Sonic Youth use that many effects anyway amirite fellas?

Yeah, they are just out of tune and don't know any chords, which is a good thing.

There are enough bands that know the fundamentals and never miss any (boring) note.

[Gone Fission]

My version of simplifying is still a "more is more" sort of thing. I am honing in on completing the connective bits of a rack rig with absurd stereo effects power to take care of most of my reverb, delay, pitch, modulation needs and beyond, along with switching, splitting, routing, and mixing that should do just absurd things. Won't be a small rack, but the deeper I get into using it, the more GAS it should kill. Some of my rack effects won't be part of this rig because they are a bit too specialized or specific, or they don't play nice with MIDI, so this will not be some 80s refrigerator rig with one sound per effect unit.

That should leave my 8-ish spot board free for dirt and a few special tricks (Freq Out, Freeze, and DigiDelay glitches come to mind). I'm still going to have to pick what I want and need to set up out of an assortment of pedals I won't part with, but the pedalboard will be a more enforced exercise in deliberately curating the sounds I need for the current musical intention. Compared to the rack, this will be pretty much one-pedal-one-sound apart from stacking.

(If I hit the lottery, the rack would be close to where it's headed, but I might do a MIDI-curated pedalboard, too, with preset-capable pedals, ordering/routing control, and stored "scenes" to suit. But I don't know, the low-tech way might scratch itches that the rack wouldn't--changing things out for novelty, rotating in pedals based on mood, intentionally throwing in a wild card to throw myself off balance.)

[spacelordmother]

I like the cut of your jib.

[comesect2.0]

I feel like this thread is chastising the bst thread...or it could be, I'm just gonna blame this thread for lack of sales.

[Ugly Nora]

He said, randomly hitting pots and pans into a looper and a delay.

Sorry, I let him have the iPad in the afternoons, it calms him down.

Wait, is your comment directed at me? If so, i dunno why you would be sorry.

[spacelordmother]

Pedal game is insane these days. Think people are just getting overloaded/burnt out. It ebbs, it flows.

Maybe now we can start talking about $100 fuzz pedals again?

[DRodriguez]

Even though I have massive amounts of pedals, I usually just stick to a few at a time. You really don't need a lot to get a complex sound.

But downsizing is definitely a trend right now. Pedal overload. flipper backlash and just an abundance of choice. Before you had to get a pedal because it was the only thing that could get that sound. These days there are 20 pedals that can do similar things. There's no rush unless you want to be an instastar.

[Paul_C]

Lack of spare funds means I've stopped* buying for a while, and I've sold one of my BitQuests and put one (or the other) of my CT5s up for sale.

*I did buy a Pigtronix Quantum with some of the money from the BitQuest sale.

However I do still have 32 pedals hooked up at the moment, and the decision to leave it at that for a while means that I'm:

1) Spending the time I would spend on looking at YouTube demos on playing, recording and making tracks to put online.

2) Exploring what noises different combinations and pedal order makes, which leads to yet more recording and YouTube tracks.

So no downsizing for me

[Ugly Nora]

I recently lost 3 forks. This is a big issue since I only had 6 to begin with. Maybe I should check my studio now that you mention it.

[DRodriguez]

Try the kitchen?

[Paul_C]

If you have teenagers then forks, plates, mugs etc. are usually under the bed, approach with caution though.

[BitchPudding]

I used to have my pedaltrain pro completely filled until recently, now Its got about 8 pedals if you count the effects loop.

For me it boiled down to a few things: Having a massive board with tons of options wasnt working for me live. Too much could and did go wrong too frequently. Another issue I ran into was I was spending more time making sure that my gear sounded right than I did writing actual music. I would dedicate an afternoon to recording, and instead end up fussing with my board for a few hours until I was burnt out on anything music for the day. Thats something I didnt like.

On top of all that, at the end of the day im a pretty basic bitch. My main focus is drives, some type of delay, and a wah. Everything else is secondary stans tuner. So while some people here love to get weird and have some crazy oscillating noise beast, I dont have a use for any of that. Doesn't do anything for me.

[Jwar]

I'm getting a part time job starting the end of August. After I pay my debt, it's back to collecting like a motherfucker. Just smarter this time and more calculated towards what I'd use to record with.

[codetocontra]

Downsizing is a lifestyle choice. No really, it started as an idea like 10 years ago and has plagued me ever since. I go through periods of gathering a bunch of stuff only to massively purge later. Funny how selling feels more exhilarating than buying anymore. It spreads from gear to other possessions. Having a collection of anything for the sake of collecting is boring. Owning too much is distracting. Eventually your possessions own you. Feeling an impulse to purge now.