Is it worth getting a sophisticated switcher?

giovanni

giovanni

Well-known member
I’ve been wondering this for a while. I heard that a switcher can reduce the overall noise floor, make your tone absolutely fantastic, make rainbows fly out of your amp, give you a 7 figure salary, clean your house and all that goodness. Is the hype real? Any experience with specific solutions? I’m thinking Boss, EHX, Gigrig, etc. Did they change your life in magical unexpected ways?
 
I had one and sold it. It didn't help me at all.

There's several ways it could be useful:
  • engaging pairs or multiples of effects into the signal at once
  • saving presets of different configurations
  • bypassing a pedal with a lousy bypass
I didn't have any of the above needs, so for me it just added complexity I didn't need.
 
Yea I guess it depends on your needs.

I would like one for the presets. I keep things in a pretty specific order for the most part, but maybe being able to switch on the fly would open me up to new things.

The biggest issue is I change my pedals out quite often, so certain presets might be obsolete for me at a certain point..
 
spi said:
I had one and sold it. It didn't help me at all.

There's several ways it could be useful:
  • engaging pairs or multiples of effects into the signal at once
  • saving presets of different configurations
  • bypassing a pedal with a lousy bypass
I didn't have any of the above needs, so for me it just added complexity I didn't need.
Click to expand...

Yup. I use pedal combos but I don't shift multiple at once and don't change my pedal order. I have everything in the effects loop of my radial bassbone pre so I can always snap back to clean immediately. That seems to be enough for me.
 
As with most things, the answer usually is: It depends. Boils down to what you want your rig to do. If you constantly find yourself wanting to switch between different pedal setups then a switcher might be the answer.

I recently got a Wetter Box which is a rather unique dual loop switcher. It’s similar to a Boss Line Switcher, which is what it replaced in my rig. It’s got one feature that to me is killer: stereo loops with stereo output…all capable of being blended together. I have a dual rig pedal board with one side being mostly for bass and the other for guitar. Both need to be hooked up with stereo outputs which is a pain without something like the Wetter Box.
 
I’d love a G2/3 but I am not in a band and can’t justify the spend. I think it’s really geared for a band setting with different presets for parts of songs so a bit superfluous for the needs of a simpleton like me. Are you considering one @giovanni ?

Have seen G2s go for reasonable money now that G3 is out.
 
I have been considering one for a while but I also can’t justify the cost given that I’m not currently in a band and don’t need to have presets etc. I totally see the benefit if I were, but given that Dan from Gigrig swears that it actually also improves the tone, I was wondering if that’s actually the case - it’d give me an excuse for a fancy new toy ;)
 
As a band member who prides himself on his quick foot-switching prowess, I would consider myself a cheater for using one- also, after building all of these circuits, I'd really prefer to interface with them rather than some blinky black box that somebody else made.
That being said, they are very neat little machines and I would never judge anyone negatively for using one properly with a complicated set-up.
 
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