Is there a future for analog pedals?

Hypothetical question.

Let's say we lived in a parallel universe where digital gear came first. All your favorite tones were recorded on Kemper and Axe-FX. You grew up playing an HX Stomp, a Helix, a Quad Cortex. For decades it's all anyone ever played.

And then a few new companies start popping up here and there offering a new invention - analog gear. Instead of 500 amps to choose from, you get one. Instead of the ability to tweak every facet of a given effect, you're limited by the hardware and the range that the designer/manufacturer has decided is best.

In this scenario - how would analog gear be "marketed"? Who - having grown up on digital gear and knowing it was the basis for all their favorite tones/tracks and what their favorite artists played with - who would still choose to adopt this "new" analog technology?

Obviously this probably sounds like a rather pro-digital slant, which I don't mean it to be. I just always find myself wondering exactly how much of a role nostalgia, familiarity, etc plays in this conversation.
 
Joben Magooch said:
Hypothetical question.

Let's say we lived in a parallel universe where digital gear came first.
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It’s kind of hard to wrap my head around how that would work.

If digital is first, all I can think is that all forms of signal processing are just theoretical, and then the implementation of those theories is in the form of digital simulation.

So the sell would be that this new-fangled analog gear is true real-world implementation of those theories. This would also come with a revolution in analog computing- there are many problems where analog computers blow digital implementations out of the water.
 
PedalBuilder said:
Ironically, the simple fuzz face circuit is impossible to model digitally. A key part of the fuzz face sound is the interaction between the low, non-linear input impedance of the fuzz face and the pickups of the guitar. I had an exchange on this topic with Cliff Chase at Fractal Audio and his view is that while you can easily model a fuzz face that’s behind a buffer, that kinda misses the what makes the fuzz face enjoyable in the first place. So I suspect that the last analog effects will be simple circuits like the fuzz face and Jordan Boss Tone that have low input impedances and are highly interactive with the guitar’s pickups.
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I wonder if Universal Audio could do something to replicate those impedance changes with their Unison technology.
I know they emulate the input impedance of studio preamps (neve, api, ...) and guitar amps (fender, marshall, ...) already
 
CR0SSBL4DE said:
I wonder if Universal Audio could do something to replicate those impedance changes with their Unison technology.
I know they emulate the input impedance of studio preamps (neve, api, ...) and guitar amps (fender, marshall, ...) already
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I'm not sure how UA's Unison tech works, but from what I read I'm guessing that it adds a static input resistance to the input? A bunch of modelers, including the Axe-FX/FM9/VP4, Helix, and Quad Cortex, already have selectable input impedance that uses the static resistance method. The difficulty is that the input impedance of a fuzz pedal is non-static/nonlinear. The static input resistance will get you closer than you would be if you just had a 1MΩ input impedance but it won't capture all the fun nuances that make fuzz pedals so enjoyable to play through.
 
I think analogue pedals will die as "tools" but stick around as more luxury/fun items just like amps.

I rarely gig with any amp at all, just in ears or a wedge. If I needed a dirt pedal for a gig, I would probably grab a tonex one. Pedals have the same lack of necessity for me that amps do. Even though I don't need them to gig professionally, I like having them to play with at home.
 
PedalBuilder said:
I'm not sure how UA's Unison tech works, but from what I read I'm guessing that it adds a static input resistance to the input? A bunch of modelers, including the Axe-FX/FM9/VP4, Helix, and Quad Cortex, already have selectable input impedance that uses the static resistance method. The difficulty is that the input impedance of a fuzz pedal is non-static/nonlinear. The static input resistance will get you closer than you would be if you just had a 1MΩ input impedance but it won't capture all the fun nuances that make fuzz pedals so enjoyable to play through.
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FWIW, the Quad Cortex has a passable fuzz face style pedal, but they did it so that there's a switch for humbuckers/single coils, and a control for the guitar's volume, so you can simulate a fuzz face like that. But it's obviously nowhere near the real thing since a big part of it is how it reacts to your volume knob. You can sort of get any fuzz face tone, but only as a preset tone, not so much changing it on the fly (or at least not as accurately).

It's a decent compromise, but shows exactly what was said about it being impossible to model completely.
 
As long as my hands still work there will continue to be analog pedals.

I love everything that inspires people to play, be it digital or analog. The digital stuff is fun and quiet and I understand that appeal. There is a huge amount of ease to getting recorded guitar sounds for young players without spending thousands of dollars.

Now on the other side of the coin, menu diving sucks, digital distortion can be harsh and as mentioned the fuzz pedals suck.

My biggest complaint with Fractal/Kemper/Fender modelers, my short attention span social media brain is always searching for a “better” sound instead of just playing. Way more time tweaking then strumming and thats why I still to amps and pedals.

Flip a few switches and stomp on a few boxes and exercise the demons.
 
Before I designed my Rockman-inspired gadget, my go-to tool for playing at home was Guitar Rig 5. That was a lot of fun, I could get some really wicked tones out of it - along with some crappy ones, of course. But I haven't touched it in 3 years. In a way, I find it liberating to constrain myself to just using what's in the Rockman thing: a compressor, distortion, chorus, delay, cab sim. And in my admittedly niche case, they're all onboard my main guitar, so I just pick it up and play. No setup. Whereas with Guitar Rig I had to turn on the laptop, plug in a little USB interface, the guitar cable, headphones, and there were so many ways to tweak Guitar Rig that I found myself neglecting the actual playing and just scrolling through presets and tweaking virtual knobs instead.

I play a lot more now, and I've seen actual improvement.
 
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PedalBuilder said:
I'm not sure how UA's Unison tech works, but from what I read I'm guessing that it adds a static input resistance to the input? A bunch of modelers, including the Axe-FX/FM9/VP4, Helix, and Quad Cortex, already have selectable input impedance that uses the static resistance method. The difficulty is that the input impedance of a fuzz pedal is non-static/nonlinear. The static input resistance will get you closer than you would be if you just had a 1MΩ input impedance but it won't capture all the fun nuances that make fuzz pedals so enjoyable to play through.
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Yes, I know it's a non linear behaviour, and that's what I mentioned it. The difference between a good and a bad neve 1073 are the transformers. And if the input transformer is saturated, it will load differently the input, and that's also definetively non linear.
I'm not sure about Unison and if it only has variable resistive input impedance, and that's it. I always assumed it did something more, since comparing the cost of 2 almost identical interfaces with different number of unison inputs would cost about $100 more per unison input (I may be remembering the number wrong).
 
Did anybody try using an active guitar with one of those fancy nonlinear input impedance things? The active pickups wouldn't care about being loaded that way.
 
Nostradoomus said:
The other thing about analog and why I will continue to use it...If it breaks I can fix it. It's why I drive old cars and listen to records on old stuff too. I'm not a purist by any means, it's just functional for me.

And I'll never have to worry about a company suddenly deciding not to continue updates or going under and all support is lost. Digital stuff is getting really really good there's no doubt about it, but I am leary of all of it. I guess I like owning a thing as opposed to a digital representation of it (speaking more of plug ins of course).
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of course there is the analog equivalent where sometimes the inventory of spare parts becomes an issue that makes it harder to repair things that have been long out of production, but even then enough demand raises prices and causes people to harvest parts from non-working sources, and 3-d printing is starting to fill the gap for many people that are restoring old toys, clocks, pinball machines, etc
 
Where I switched to pedals, I had a behringer bass pro V. There are so many parameters that are hard to change on the fly, I switched to pedals.
 
In order to build a precise and effective answer to the original question, we should probably define "future".

Just like everything else, the method is the key to achieve a result.

Is it 20 years from now ? 200 years ?

If we consider the universe as a stompbox, with a Future control, where do we set it ? at noon ? fully CW ?
 
JTEX said:
How about 5 years? Analog pedals, where do you see yourselves in 5 years?
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I guess there is a massive amount of stompboxes already built. Billions of them probably. Let's hope they will be put to good use during the next 5 years.

The only way for analog stompboxes's future to be impaired is if something happens to music players.

Yes, there's a tiny chance that someone will take over the world and punish by death anyone who is using an analog effect anywhere on Earth.

For example : Robert, overworked and disgusted by all these audio circuits and troubleshooting posts, decides to fix everything by seizing power in the US, invades the world and forbids every analog effects.

In that case (and there is a probability) i'm afraid we can be concerned for our stompboxes's future. There will be a Resistance, but for how long ?

If there isn't a global pro-digital dictatorship during the next 5 years, analog circuits's future is guarenteed.

I'm willing to bet 10 euros on the last hypothesis.
 
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