Endless Pedal: the future is coming

[Nostradoomus]

I think one of my biggest issue (aside from the obvious) is that no one is going to dig one of these out of a dusty attic in 50 years, plug it in, and actually get use it to it's full potential.

The app will no longer exist, any communications protocol will likely be depreciated, and you'll (at best) be stuck with whatever presets / models / impulses the last owner loaded onto the thing.

It may be a bit extreme to call it "disposable" gear, but it's not completely absurd either.

this is what I was getting at

Even AI as we think we know it now (it’s more insidious than we know, for sure) and “open source” etc etc…can be turned off and become proprietary with a stroke of a key. Nah.

 

[Feral Feline]

My desire to have Adrian Belew's Impossible Pedal was made impossible to have when I ordered what may have been the
LAST iSTOMP ON THE PLANET from Pryme-asss who took my money, gave me an order-confirmation-number, and then
reneged on the entire deal well after the pedal should've arrived on my doorstep. I was hoppin' mad about that, at the time.

How many people are still hooking up their iStomp-pedals via the proprietary DSC-iOS cable to an iOS device (running iOS 4.0 or later) to swap out algorithms? I'd have mine locked into the Belew Impossible algo, but it was a cool idea to have other algos available to me on a whim...











There are a few people still trying to keep their iStomp alive, but for me, I think I dodged a paper-weight-bullet.

(Ghosts in the machine)


The promise of more sounds for less money, added versatility, less pedalboard real-estate occupied... maybe it works for a time until you wake up and realise you're trying to drink sand...

 

[Bricksnbeatles]

My desire to have Adrian Belew's Impossible Pedal was made impossible…

I’ve been trying to find a way to have the impossible pedal for years too. I actually had the same issue with prymaxe, but I luckily was able to do a successful chargeback.

Interestingly, the new Digitech Hammer-On has an impossible mode that should be able to completely replicate the functionality of the Impossible pedal. Once the pedal’s been around long enough that I can get a used one a bit cheaper, it’ll be on my board for sure!

 

[Alan W]

My darkroom is now a storeroom. I actually enjoy digital photography. Standing in a darkroom for hours printing the same negative for a client who wants 1000 copies of their face gets old pretty fast! But the work changed after digital became the norm. From shooting roughly 50% B&W and 50% colour transparency it became 100% digital. I still turn some images into B&W digitally but it's not the same.

I miss darkroom work, but am also pretty firmly entrenched in digital. I shoot about 1/3 in B&W (but the raw has everything if I change my mind…). I pretty much treat the camera, and shooting, like it’s still film. (With the exception of not using color correction, or other filters beyond polarizers, etc.) I’ve kept my favorite lenses of old, and often forgo auto focus, etc. to use them with adapters.

 

[HamishR]

When shooting B&W I used to use contrast filters a lot, and used a strong red filter for portraits a lot. So with digital I can simulate the effect by using the colour channels in the conversion software. Set saturation to zero and increase the brightness in the red channel. It gives you more control which is nice, but there's nothing like printing B&W.

One time we were shooting a car for a magazine cover - the car had just won Car of the Year. So we headed down to the beach to shoot it at sunset (no trees or buildings to get reflected in the shiny paintwork) but just as the sun was setting the clouds rolled in. So out came all the filters. Amber filter, grad filter, polarising filter, something else filter... Ended up with an exposure time of several seconds. The camera was dwarfed by the filter stack. It was ridiculous but we ended up with a shot the editors loved. That was what I miss about shooting on film. The absurdity and fun.

I still have my collection of Hasselblads. Three 500 series bodies, no autofocus, nothing digital about them. Beautiful lenses with incredible contrast, colour rendition, sharpness... I have a B&W print of a section of the Eiffel Tower in my hallway. There is so much detail that can't be seen with the naked eye. If I use a magnifying glass on the print I can see a bus in the background behind trees with people disembarking but you can't see it with a magnifier, and it's quite a large print. I haven't used those cameras in over 20 years.