Problem solving vs. Creative gear

[John Matrix]

I just bought a cheap noise gate pedal and it was one of the most unexciting gear purchases I've made outside of new strings. It got me thinking about which percentage of the gear I buy is to solve some kind of problem vs stuff that actually gets the creative juices flowing. I would think if things like noise gates, fx loop switchers, buffers, signal splitters, attenuators and stuff like that as problem solving. There are some things that could live in a grey area I suppose. Like an overdrive or EQ that is cool but was only purchased because it was solving a problem like...not being heard in the mix during a certain part or whatever. Anyway, just a thought I don't know where I'm going with this haha.

[retinal orbita]

I’ve bought a power supply, a pedal board/case, an EQ pedal (which I actually really like on all the time), a clip on tuner, a mixer and some velcro for the bottom of my pedals and every time it’s like physical torture spending money on stuff like that rather than a cool fuzz pedal that will inevitably sit in a plastic tub because I spend too much money on distortion pedals and can’t fit them on my board....

What else is utilitarian? Patch cables? Speaker cables?

[ognoy]

Spending money on power supplies, pedalboards/cases/softbags, cables, etc are very unexciting when I hit the "Buy"-button,
but the feeling of knowing that all your power requirements are met(without unwanted noise), having an easy way to pack and transport your board and not crossing your fingers for that one halfbad cable to ruin your gig is priceless.

[qersty]

I think noise gates are fun. Back when I failed at making breakcore I slapped really aggressive gates on everything to make annoying jittery noises; something like delay->trem->gate could have alot of potential for fucked up glitchysounds.

I agree ognoy, buying boring stuff is fun too because you get to make music but with less anxiety that stuff will fail or sound bad and making music is the most fun

[goroth]

you get to make music but with less anxiety that stuff will fail or sound bad and making music is the most fun

So much this.

This started for me when I had my PT-Pro. There is no fucking way to troubleshoot one of those things in a gig. So I made sure there were zero problems. Cabling as good as I could (which isn't great). Power supply as quiet as possible (spent plenty of time and money A/B-ing power supplies) etc. I guess now it's just a habit/OCD - all of that functional stuff is worth getting nerdy over so that when I'm actually playing I don't have to give a shit about it.

My latest thing is gain staging and volume. I got so fucking sick of making minuscule accidental changes to the volume on my Meet Maude and having it noticeably change when I kicked it on. So that got me started looking at delays, which kind of spiraled into me looking for all black pedals, which spiraled into me looking for pedals in general with less knobs for less fuckupability when jumping dafuckup. I've also noticed that this is what I do when I can't gig or play with my band. I bought so much gear when the microraptors were little. Then when I played more my contentment rose. Now we're back to just kicking it at home I've gone gear nuts again. Mostly it's just not playing so I start obsessing about small details, but maybe 3-4% of it is an actual frustration with gain staging. I just wanna set shit right and then forget about it with my band.

So in a way that's now an aspect of my problem solving approach. Creativity: all your control parameters are belong to me. Problems solving (gig/band stuff): consistency is the overriding concern.

And it being black.

[retinal orbita]

I should also mention despite my anguished cries of “buying utility things causes me physical pain” above that I am ALWAYS organized for shows/jams - I worked in TV production for years on mobile trucks and the level of organization needed to keep your TD happy is wild. I never have to borrow a cable or an amp or a power supply. I subscribe to the philosophy that less is more and always have my shit troubleshot before I arrive. Which is why I’m always wary of fancy routing and complex switchers. I think for me to be happy/comfortable I’d rather leave stuff at home than bring complex arrangement.... just me though, I don’t expect that everyone knows how to coil a cable properly or is going to show up perfectly organized.

One time I was playing in a doom band and the singer told us “amps are provided” for a show and what that actually meant was “a cab is provided” and the show promoter tried telling us that the cab was actually “the amp” because it’s what “made it loud”, so we had to borrow amps and one guitar player had to plug line into the PA (haha what a joke). I was embarrassed to have to borrow an amp from a friend but more embarrassed for the guy when everyone had to explain the basic functioning of an amplifier head to him. To sum up, don’t book a show if you don’t know what a backline is and have your singer forward the email to the rest of the band.....

[Blackened Soul]

I think the problem siding stuff is usually backbone of my rigs vs fun stuff.. for all my boards for bass in a band situation they have always been built around a bypass looper... starting with with one of those red boss ones and over the years I had a few custom ones made.. the one I still have in my old live board was made by Will Sledge FX which was a 5 loop with a patch in-between loops 2 and 3, in the patch was a Xotic X-Blender that had my main dirt pedals in it's loop.. I'm also a big fan of those little 2 patch pedalboard patch-bays, that way you can have your in and out where you want it vs dictated by your pedal placement. Another fave in reverse A/B switchers, you can have 2 things plugged in and switch easy OR just use it as a mute. My current board is a bit wider [for me] as I am running no loopers but the board starts mono for the first half of the signal chain then splits stereo to two separate bass/treble chains for the rest.. so actually my tremolo pedal is at this point more of a signal splitter than a effect... [it has a phase control!] I'm also running 3 EQs, one is use as a effect [cut ALL highs on the bass side for when I want no texture on my bass chain] the other two are for smoothing out piezo pickups before going to gain pedals.. power?2 voodoo labs pp2s I think right now my only big gas [other than dirt pedals I don't need] is a LEHLE 3at1 SGoS


edit...
Found a deal on one to good...

[K2000]

Volume pedal lives in both camps, for me.

[MechaGodzilla]

i've been trying, in the covid-imposed semi-hiatus on my music, to pare back how much stuff i need. i think the "problem" in a given rig are born out of either playing too quiet/loud, or this other thing... you know how bureaucracies tend to inflate exponentially as everyone vies for authority and tries to justify their status within the system? i think adding stuff to the most basic system [guitar plugged into precisely what is necessary] creates the environment for "problems" to grow, and then you want to add to the rig some more. i need to be content with a more limited palette of sounds, and just play better.

what i'm saying is, the best part of my rig is the ever-reliable neutrik+van damme cables.

[John Matrix]

Interesting to see the different perspectives on this. As expected there is lots of grey area and the same piece can serve different roles for different people.

I've found that things originally bought for unexciting reasons can become more interesting over time. I got an EQ pedal to go at the end of my chain because I found that some of the effects I was using were making me hard to hear live. I ended up really liking it not just for that but for getting more out of the box sounds. Now I don't think I would ever not have one. I ended up getting one of the Source Audio ones with presets and I suppose it was at that point that it made the transition from utilitarian to fun.

[D.o.S.]

I’ve bought a power supply, a pedal board/case, an EQ pedal (which I actually really like on all the time), a clip on tuner, a mixer and some velcro for the bottom of my pedals and every time it’s like physical torture spending money on stuff like that rather than a cool fuzz pedal that will inevitably sit in a plastic tub because I spend too much money on distortion pedals and can’t fit them on my board....

What else is utilitarian? Patch cables? Speaker cables?

All of this.

I know I need a power supply. I'm not buying it because it's fucking boring.

[dubkitty]

honestly, by the time i hit BUY *everything* is utilitarian, in that i've chosen something to do a specific thing HERE. i'm not funded to buy things on spec to see what happens. such is life. someday i'll be able to order from Pladask. but for now everything i buy goes through an exhaustive research project watching multiple demos to try and fit my concept as far as what i want a particular kind of effect to do. i still get caught out occasionally even when i've done the required listening because the unit turns out to have noise issues the demo either didn't catch or deliberately obscured. if the sound fades out after each sample instead of decaying naturally, they're trying to hide that it has more noise that the kitchen module at Waffle House.

[coldbrightsunlight]

I too hate buying "boring stuff". But sometimes it ends up being the most inspiring and useful thing that makes me play more/better/whatever.

[Blackened Soul]

Truth!
I’m so about not having to mess with stuff while playing.. I mean if I want to mess with knobs when messing around that’s one thing but if I don’t I want to be able plug in and go

[coldbrightsunlight]

Yeah definitely, plug in and go is the name of the game.

In terms of me playing guitar I am always ready at a gig/practice to just ditch my pedals, or ditch all but one, and plug straight into an amp if something dies, or plug into someone else's amp or the PA or whatever if my amp dies. Not that my pedal setups are large or unreliable, but I just know that I could get through the gig without them in some fashion and that comforts me. So I never make setups that are mega complex for playing out.