M9 questions

[Soundhound]

I played an M9 today and liked a lot of what I heard. I was playing a nice fender roadworn strat though a 65 amps 2x12, so what's not to like?

The effects sounded terrific, but I had two questions. I wasn't able to really work the Strat's volume, because it got darker any lower than 10 or 9 1/2 or so (old style pots I guess?, sounded great all the way up though). So I couldn't really tell if the drives in the M9 could respond well to volume changes on a guitar. The drives were the least impressive group to me, they tended to mask the sound of the guitar too much. But as some have said here, the Boost Comp was very nice, and with some tweaking of some of the other drives, who knows? I just couldn't tell whether I could go from clean to mean with the volume knob, which is how I usually go.

The other question I had is, do you guys feel like the parameters for the various effects have that much control? It seemed like as I turned things up or down, some of them had pretty dramatic effects, it was as though there were only say, five or 10 steps in the sweep, rather than a continuously variable control like on an analogue pedal.

All in all, really promising. I'd love to replace a bunch of pedals with this, maybe keep a few drives on a pedaltrain jr with the M9, and have a pretty great, small and light board.

But those two things escaped me. 1) Do the drives react well to guitar volume changes and 2) is range of some of the controls really only 5 or so steps, and if so, have you found that limiting?

thanks!!

 

[alvarete]

This has been discussed previously, so short answers:

a) IMO, no. Opinions vary, though. Personally, I've kept my analogue drives and compressors.
b) Nope. Parameters' sweep range have a large usable range, not just 5 notches. Not limiting at all.

I recommend spending some more time with the unit to decide for yourself on drive dynamics, as opinions seem to differ on that one.

 

[Soundhound]

Given the level of interest/obsession on this board, I imagine almost any question asked has been discussed previously to one degree or another. It's that intense interest and expertise that makes TGP such a great place.

From your answers, the M9 would be pretty much what I hoped/suspsected; something I could use with just a couple of drives for a pretty comprehsive board. That would be a very good thing.

This has been discussed previously, so short answers:

a) IMO, no. Opinions vary, though. Personally, I've kept my analogue drives and compressors.
b) Nope. Parameters' sweep range have a large usable range, not just 5 notches. Not limiting at all.

I recommend spending some more time with the unit to decide for yourself on drive dynamics, as opinions seem to differ on that one.

 

[alvarete]

That's how I use it. I imagine if you're extremely anal about, say, phasers, you'd end up with a dedicated analogue pedal to replace the phaser model on the M9, but for most peeps it's good enough for 90% of what they are going to do (myself included).

The only effects that aren't quite there are the rotary sims. I still break out my Destination Rotation to get my rotary fix.