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Volume-pedal! To dodge feedback(important if you're using dirt and play loud).
I'm playing with a trumpet player who plays through pedals and amps.
He has a mouth piece with a "built in" contact mic. If i remember his chain is: volume > TC SubnUp > Moog MF102 Ring Mod > EHX CAthedral > Rat > Boss DD-7 > TC Ditto 2.
Usually plugs into bass amps or a PA.

ognoy wrote:Volume-pedal! To dodge feedback(important if you're using dirt and play loud).
I'm playing with a trumpet player who plays through pedals and amps.
He has a mouth piece with a "built in" contact mic. If i remember his chain is: volume > TC SubnUp > Moog MF102 Ring Mod > EHX CAthedral > Rat > Boss DD-7 > TC Ditto 2.
Usually plugs into bass amps or a PA.

Will definitely check if I need a volume pedal... might be cool also for swelling... hmmm. I'll try it, I can rip it from the guitar pedal board. Thanks for the tip!

ibarakishi wrote:speaking from experience, just get a zoom ms50g and a ditto of some sort (i use a x4) and call it a day. if you can't do it with a zoom patch and looper on top of what you already have, chances are you are overthinking things in life way too much. if you are picky about overdrive/fuzz tones then that is the only area that i can see you wanting or needing something else in addition to it, but the zoom can do just about anything you want in a live situation. im never selling mine and most likely will get another backup here in the next year or so. was hands down one of the best music investments of my life

Yeah, I was looking at those Zooms too, especially because I like the B3 on the bass board, but the small ones do miss the Expression input, which I utilize greatly on the B3...
As of now, it seems like I can get pretty close to what I want with a lot of stuff I already have and only some minor investments into fresh pedal purchasing, wich is - well - fortunate
I still have to investigate different dirt pedals. I absolutely don't know yet what will work for my setup and what I will like... but there is fun in experimenting

My experience with bowed strings is that you have to get pretty extreme fuzz/distortion before it's that noticeable. This is probably more true for strings than trombone but I imagine for anything less guitar-y it will be a factor. But that's why experimentation is fun

Back after trying a bunch of stuff...

So questions:
-) How to deal with excessive feedback when using high gain pedals like fuzz?
I tried positioning the amp and mic as good as possible to reduce feedback but in the quite small practice space it just isn't enough.
Should I get something like a noisegate/hum/feedback reducer pedal? are they any good? I guess a noisegate won't really help because if it starts to feedback during playing it'll always be above the threshold of the gate and just continue building up.
I also tried putting a single stage transistor buffer into the chain to get a 180° phase shift, doesnt help, still starts to squeal.
Would some (do I dare say it) digital distortion/fuzz effect be beneficial here? Since a digital processor would distort the waveform itself without the need of extreme gain and clipping the feedback should also be minimized?

-) Any recommendations for types of fuzz/distortion I should try?
I found that pedals without tone controls seem to work better for me, tried it with my Fuzz Face - sounds quite nice. Also tried the Mid-Fi Demo Tape Fuzz and spent almost an hour trying to set the EQ up... and also way too much feedback with that one, even with the volume slightly below unity.
I know a Superfuzz type pedal was recommended already - any specific type I should check out? Other ideas? Preferrably fuzzes without tone controls, that leave the frequency response quite unchanged, so no treble-y or bass-y response, just flat frequency response with nice fuzzy feelings.

Observations:
-) Apparently pedals for bass are more suited for trombone use than guitar pedals - I noticed, that the guitar pedals only start to sound good when playing in the upper registers.. so maybe pedals oriented more towards bass will work better with the trombone setup.
-) Playing with a shitload of effects is fun. Lots. of. FUN! BUT playing trombone with effects is a lot harder than with guitar or bass for me... Especially with my setup where I have the mic set up on a stand and not a clip-on mic for the instrument... I always have to pay attention to keep in position so I play directly into the mic. I think getting a clip-on mic for the bell will be the next step.. more freedom to move around.
-) I find mostly the trem/stutter and maybe auto-wah effects on the Mooer ModFactory usable. Maybe I really should invest into something more sophisticated? Zoom MS-60B is now on the list, maybe I can find a good deal somewhere...


Continuing to experiment and mess around

Regarding feedback with distortion/fuzz:
Use a piezo-pickup and a volume pedal, and cut you volume when not playing.
My trumpet-playing friend uses a Rat as his main distortion, and it sounds rad.
Maybe something with a clean blend could be usefull? MXR Bass Distortion?

Piezo Pickup doesn't seem like a doable way for me, I need the horn for other stuff as well and don't want to mess with it. Maybe a clip-on mic for the bell would already work? For sure would pick up less room sound?
I don't have a RAT, didn't really like it on guitar/bass, but I'll try the Elements next, has clean blend and excellent distortion!
Fuzz-wise the Fuzz Face was ok but not great. Demo Tape Fuzz was also quite good fuzz-wise but way too much feedback.

Noodling with Delay and Modulation
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KvKzwozHSY[/youtube]

Rad
Have you ever tried a Silent Brass type system? A mute with a mic in it?

I made a DIY one for my trombone out of a coffee creamer bottle like this:

I ditched the cap and drilled some holes in the bottom to reduce back-pressure. Then I cut off the bottom 1/3 of the bottle so I could fit a small Casio speaker in it, wired in reverse, to act as a microphone. I attached a super simple 9V amp circuit to it. Then I used a ton of hot glue to stick the bottle back together
Ran a wire out the bottom and into a jack that clips onto the bell.
I glued some foam pieces to the outside of the bottle so it fits snugly into the horn.

I don't have any clips but it sounds remarkably good. A little lo-fi but not as shitty as you might think. It could be great with some EQing, maybe. And most importantly, it doesn't feed back through heavy gain like a standing microphone.

That is a solid idea...
I even have an old plastic straight mute laying around somewhere that I don't need anymore... I could build up something like this... will try it out for sure!

Sounds very cool!!! Definitely like this, great idea.

ognoy wrote:Volume-pedal! To dodge feedback(important if you're using dirt and play loud).
I'm playing with a trumpet player who plays through pedals and amps.
He has a mouth piece with a "built in" contact mic. If i remember his chain is: volume > TC SubnUp > Moog MF102 Ring Mod > EHX CAthedral > Rat > Boss DD-7 > TC Ditto 2.
Usually plugs into bass amps or a PA.

The trumpet player I play with has a small Alto ZMX mixer within reach, so he can adjust both the trumpet in/out volume, and the pedal in/out volume (via aux send/receive) on the fly, so that's another option.

@OP he uses a Zoom MS-70CDR for his trumpet delays & reverbs, btw.

necro-ing this thread to post some progress on the trombone board

overhauled the whole thing, bought and sold a bunch of stuff...
currently in the process of rebuilding, but some essential stuff is missing (a Ditto+, which is still sold out everywhere and won't be back in stock until next year probably) and my expression multiplexer, which is currently traveling europe in the tourbox.

Chain will most likely be
Red Panda Particle -> PS6 -> Disnortion -> Street Sweeper -> PH3 -> Mod Factory -> Mastotron -> Ditto+ -> El Cap -> HoF
with the Expression Multiplexer controlling the Particle, PS6, Street Sweeper and El Cap (most likely)

Some stuff will most likely change again in the future, not sure about keeping the Mastotron and maybe I'll ditch the Mod Factory and get something Ringmoddy up there? idk, never got around trying a ringmod on the 'bone...

sadly the practice space got bulldozed to build an asian restaurant... so I have nowhere to play with it anyways, which makes wiring it up a very low priority task for some rainy afternoon to come...