If you are into guitar playing and know a bit about history, you will recognize the discussion about Digital versus Analog. In the old days a guitar player had mainly an analog signal chain: the guitar is connected to one or more effect pedals, which are connected to a (tube) guitar amplifier. It sounded great, but amplifiers are big and heavy, can break. And pedals are often a one trick pony for the effect (e.g. drive/distortion, reverb, echo etc…). To amplify the guitar you need microphones before the guitar speaker. Tube amplifiers need maintenance and can break. And… you have to tap-dance on the effect pedals if you need a different sound.

Then digital multi effect pedals came on the scene, replacing the analog pedals. And in 2011 the Kemper Profiler was launched. A completely digital system where sounds where ‘profiled’ from actual amps. And the profiler contains digital versions of effects too. It sounds absolutely great, and on stage you now only need one Kemper pedal, stage monitors (that you need anyway) and front of house speakers for the public. Much more simple and less error prone. Many professional played moved to a Kemper or similar solutions from other gear makers. So some years ago I bought a second hand Kemper to try it out. It works great, sounds great and doing gigs is really easy. Just press a preset on the Kemper and you have a great sound!

But… you loose a bit of the ‘rock and roll’ of guitar playing in my opinion. And it turns out that I like turning the knows on devices more than programming the Kemper on the device or in the app on the laptop. And… there is something else in the sound of an actual overdriven tube amp! So I got thinking, is there maybe a middle ground, where I re-introduce a valve amp and effect pedals, but still have presets to change my tone easily?

It took a lot of research on the web and a lot of support from AI, but there is! I did not know this, but already for some years there are ‘switchers’. With a switcher you connect your pedals in separate loops. In a preset of the switcher, you decide which effects are turned on, and often also in which order they are placed. And… MIDI is now available for modern amplifiers and modern pedals to also be steered from the switchers presets. Now I am having a setup as the following in mind:

• A switcher to create pedal loops and send commands via Midi to the amplifier and some pedals
• Traditional effect pedals, mainly for the rock sounds, including my original 80’s Boss DS1. They can be enabled/disabled in the presets of the switcher
• Modern Midi enabled pedals with presets, mainly for delay and modulation. In the switcher you can send the pedal a ChangeProgram midi message to enable a pedal preset
• Modern tube amplifier with Midi to select channels from the switcher, so I can use the inherent sound of the amp tubes for rock sounds. For example the Marshall JVM205 or the H&K Tubemeister 40.

I quickly concluded this won’t come cheap. So I started selling some of my unused pedals and some other gear I use less. I have my eyes on a switcher, an amp and some new pedals. I try to buy most gear second hand (via marktplaats.nl in the Netherlands).

Finally, I will surely buy the pedalboard solution from https://rockboard.de! If only because they have a great configurator tool where you make a mockup of your board with actual sizes and connections of your intended pedals. Now you know beforehand if your pedals will fit, which cables of which lengths you need etc… The picture with this post is a screenshot of my ‘dream’ board design 😁

This project will take some time (and money). I’ll keep you posted…