Are you a simpleton? Do you like the simplicity of simple things?

2manband

2manband

Kick Henry Jackassowski
I find that the older I get, the simpler my guitar rig gets. My love of knobs and buttons and LED lights in my signal chain peaked decades ago and has been in steady decline ever since. My “main rig” these days is just a guitar into a cable into a little 1x12 combo amp. (I’ll acknowledge it’s a 2-channel tube amp with foot switch and reverb, so I’m still slightly fancy)

My most recent gear purchase was a Godin 5th avenue jazz guitar. No cutaway, one p-90 pickup, and 2 knobs. I love it. Maybe I should dig out my old Epiphone Valve Jr to go with it.

Maybe I should give up on guitar and just bang 2 rocks together.
 
I am, and I do.

The motion detection faucets, toilets, soap and paper towel dispensers drive me nuts. I am capable of manually operating all of those devices, but that's maybe a topic for another thread. :shrug:
 
All day long I work in VMware environments, RDS clusters, Azure portals.... the last fucking thing I want to do at home is to start plugging in USB cables to download patches and to adjust shit on a pedal or modeller.

I have an Eventide H9 which sounds amazing... but it can do soooo many things and the limited display and encoder wheel is frustrating... so you end up using an ipad to figure out your 8 or 9 favorites... load them in the first couple slots... then tap dance.

When I had a theatre show a few months ago, I said "fuck all that noise"... left the Kemper at home with all of the extra pedals... did the entire show with a Tuner, Wampler Tumnus, EVH Phaser, and a Keeley Halo Core tap tempo delay into a Soldano Astro 20 tube head.

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It ended up sounding so good, that I've revamped my board around this head with a few more pedals... but that head allows me to adjust the knobs on the fly, change my delay mix with my foot, and if I need to run direct... the Astro has an IR XLR output on the back and can run without a cab. :baimun:
 
I have a computer based rig at home but if I'm out on the road I take the simplest rig possible and analog if I can help it.
 
I guess. I've owned channel switching amps with effects loops and various magic tone-shaping knobs and whatnot, but I've never really used these features and much prefer single-channel amps and few pedals, if any. Ok, I'll always bring a tuner.

Generally, I prefer few but useful features. I don't like multi fx units, not that they sound bad, I just get options fatigue quickly and I can't be bothered with menus and endless tweaking. Same with plugins for recording; it's just a comp, a trem, a delay and a reverb.

I suppose, as I get older, I realize time is precious, and I'll rather spend it actually playing and recording guitar. Getting some tracks done and getting better at it are the things that matter to me.
 
Not so much a love of simplicity as a distaste for hauling, setting up, and troubleshooting a bunch of futzy little devices.
 
I definitely like to keep things simple. Straight into the amp, or acoustic. I do have a couple of pedals in the closet, but the only one that gets regular use is a simple reverb in front of my teeny reverbless practice amp in the work apartment.
 
I keep it simple. I think Leo got it right with the P-bass. Send that right into an amp with no extra bullshit. Okay, maybe a fuzz. I feel the same way about Gibson guitars and tube amps. Ten channel modeling amps with three onboard effects can fuck right off.
 
I’ve only started playing with a pedal or 2 in recent years. Maybe I’m getting more complex.
 
I find myself playing slightly dirty with reverb and just adding Delay when I want to sound lush. If I was to gig on my own terms it would be all I'd need these days.
 
I have a pretty complicated rig, but it's only a few pieces that are very flexible. Digitech Drop in a midi controlled single loop box into an MXR Timmy into a Fractal FM3, controlled by a Morningstar MC6 Pro for patch switching with a Hotone Ampero 4 button switch for tap tempo and switching 3 effects on or off per patch and a couple of expression pedals for volume and wah or mixing effects in, depending on the patch.

I'm playing in 4 bands right now, so I generally set up 6 patches per band (only 2 for the Beatles tribute), and I can set up 6 scenes per patch on the FM3 with long or short presses of the three buttons, and can choose between 4 individual versions of any amp, cab, or effect for each scene. It was complicated to set up, and would probably confuse the hell out of anyone else, but I find it pretty intuitive.

I recently added a Bluetooth Widi jack to the MC6 Pro that allows me to send Midi commands from MobileSheets setlist app to change patches, enable effects, set tap tempo, etc. when I go to the next song. This is great for my country band where I am sometimes emulating baritone guitar or using synched echoes or whatever, and the setup between each song can sometimes be 4 or 5 button presses to remember. With this, all I have to remember is to set the Drop interval correctly for a few songs, and I have those notes on the setlist pages that change the patches.

For at least my first decade and a half with gigging bands, I plugged straight into a two channel amp, with occasionally a wah or chorus in the chain, so all this is fun for me. I've been using the same setup for a few years now with only maybe one patch cord failure, and have used the Widi Jack thing on a number of gigs or rehearsals with no issues.

I also usually test it at home before each gig, just in case.
 
“And be a simple kind of man
Oh, be something you love and understand
Baby, be a simple kind of man
Oh, won't you do this for me son, if you can?”

 
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