New studio pedalboard system for Kevin Plessner, NYC based Session Player, Studio Engineer & guitarist for shoegazer indie space rock & roll band, Oceanogrpaher http://oceanographermusic.com/
Kevin's rig needed to satisfy a healthy sized list of audio criteria and some logistic options as well.
Satisfying the session player in him, the board had to have a bunch of different "flavors" that he could call upon instantly as requested by a producer. In the "under the microscope" listening environment of the studio the system had to have amazing tone and a non-existant noise floor.
For the creative artist in Kevin, the system had to be able to provide great core tone with layers of washy reverbs and delays for his space rock moments.
Kevin came into the Nice Rack Canada showroom to talk about his situation and was able to play through some different demo rigs to get a better firsthand understanding of the Switching Logic and Signal Routing possibilities available to him.
The session player in him chose the True Bypass Switching Strip Concept, the engineer in him was appreciative of the fidelity of parallel effects mixing and the space rocker in him was inspired by being able to create a number of different sonic textures layers deep.
The brain & heart of the system are the custom switcher & line mixer. The Switching System was custom designed and built by Nice Rack Canada. The mixer is built upon the cards from 2x RJM Music Mini Line Mixers mounted in a custom system interface assembled by Nice Rack Canada.
The signal flow is;
Guitar >> Switcher 1 Input >> Master Bypass >> Loop 1 Love Squeeze >> Loop 2 Katana Boost >> Loop 3 Aqua Puss >> Loop 4 Switcher 2 >> Switcher 2 Loop 1 Swollen Pickle >> Switcher 2 Loop 2 Boiling Point >> Switcher 2 Output >> Switcher 1 Loop 5 Klon >> Loop 6 Volume Pedal >> Buffered Split to Tuner & System Mute, After System Mute Signal is split to Mixer 2 Input 4 Left + 4x Switchable Sends (Stereo Memory Man Hazarai + El Capistan + Blue Sky + Space).
The Stereo outputs of each Reverb & Delay is routed into the stereo inputs on a RJM Music Mini Line Mixer. The summed Stereo Outputs of the MLM are routed to a 2nd MLM. Left Out is routed to MLM 2 Left In 1, the Right Output of MLM 1 is Switched to either MLM 2 Left In 2 or Right In 1.
The reason for the switchable summing of the Left & Right signals is twofold. A stereo amp situation is not always available to the player, so the L&R paths have to be summed. When summed the Right Output of the System only sees the "Dry" signal out after the "dynamic" effects, and the Left Output has the "Wet", this allows a Wet & Dry mono amps set up.
When the Right Output of the Wet effects mixer is not summed to Mono, the Left & Right System Outputs see a "50/50" blend of "Dry" & "Wet Stereo" Signals. This gives the player great "core" tone while adding the fidelity of "100% Wet" True Stereo Effects.
A "Dry" Mute function was added to allow Kevin to get tracks into Pro Tools with a "100% Wet" texture. Using one his beautiful boutique overdrives he can set a dynamic texture and then run the signal into Multiple Delays & Reverbs in Parallel with those devices set to "100% Wet" Signal Ratio. The mixer output is a wash of wet guitar for creating keyboard like "pads".
Switchable Ground Isolation Transformers were installed on the 2x System Outputs.
All design, wiring, Mixer modifications, custom switcher & system interface by Nice Rack Canada. Power Supplies by Voodoo Lab.
