Can someone recommend a good effects processor?

Whistle
1

Hi all,

I’ve been wanting to get some equipment to add effects to my live performances (particularly reverb and maybe some compression too) and was wondering if anybody has experience in this area and could offer some tips.

I’m sure this topic has been addressed before, and I did do some research on the boards here… I didn’t find anything conclusive though, except that I’m leaning towards a Shure SM57 for the mic, unless anyone has other suggestions? For effects someone did recommend the Zoom 9001, but looking online it seems very old and hard to find, and I’m guessing there are better things available now for the money…

But yeah, an effects processor is what I want, right? Or should I go with a mixer that has effects built-in (and also gives me the option to play with a backing track)? I’m not very savvy at all about this sort of thing, so any help is appreciated.

I play a bit of flute as well as the low whistle, if that makes any difference.

Cheers,
John.

2

Hi John,

We use sm57 mics for everything from wind instruments, frame drums and difficult to mic string instruments. It is a great workhorse microphone and isn`t very subject to feedback. There are many better sounding mics but none that can adapt to as many live situations as the 57s.

About effects. I really recommend you find a good music shop and go check out the sound in person. There are a lot of makers out there and each has a different sound and quality to the reverb and other effects. If you are playing professionally I recommend that you look at some of the higher end dedicated reverb units instead of a multi-processor. The sound is much better and it can serve for good recordings at home too.

Zoom make some ok equipment that seems to work ok, but on a similar price level Alesis kit is a bit better. They have some small dedicated reverb and other units that are tough and sound ok. Best point is that their kit can survived playing out a lot and still work. We use them for events that don`t have proper processors in their rig.

We are shopping for a new unit now so I will share our results when we decide too.

Good luck!


Kelly

3

May i recomend Lexicon reverb processing as its the best quality reverb for less then the cost of a new mortgage, and your pritty much guarenteed to see at least one lexicon box in any studio you walk into

thair website:
http://www.lexiconpro.com

this is there latest ‘entry level’ product, and it has a compressor! and two channels! 0 so you could potentially have two seperate instruments on seperate channels running seperate effects, horslips-tastic!
http://www.lexiconpro.com/product.php?id=12

if you need a desk*, soundcraft have an 8 channel powered jobby with a lexicon chip in, its an older model but if memory serves it got some great revews at the time:
http://www.htfr.com/more-info/MR242084 (no compressor though)

nb: i dont work for Lexicon, i am just a satisfied customer of theirs for menys a year.

  • …and if you can get your head roundsoundcrafts desk routing conventions grumble grumble
4

Reverb? Effects? :really: :boggle: :swear: :poke:

Taste!

5

It’s interesting for me to see people talking about effects with the whistle.

I usted to be a electric bass player, with all the thinga’magikas attached, and one of the things that captivated me the most about the whistle was the “no-need” for support stuff, and electricity and the monster truck behind. Mind you that I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to have effects, I just found it curious, maybe I’d never had thought about it before :slight_smile:

Still, johnnyboi check out Behringer equipment, not sure how it will work for whistle, but I have lots of stuff from them for my bass, and I can’t be more satisfied with the price-quality ratio.

Good luck with your research and keep us posted!

Cheers!

6

Go to a music shop, try stuff out.

You might be able to get away with a series of inexpensive pedals to achieve the reverb and other effects. I have an Behringer EQ pedal I use with my bass, and I am pondering trying a reverb/fuzz pedal for use with my harmonica.

7

I wasn’t going to post in this thread as my experiences are with rock bands and the electric guitar, so my effects needs are very different to yours.

But there is one general rule that I can confidently put forward that will help you. If you buy a cheap effects processor it will sound exactly like a cheap effects processor. You definitely get what you pay for.

Sorry for the previous posters that mentioned them, but avoid anything with the word Behringer stuck to it. They have a well deserved awful reputation for build quality and reliability.

You should also avoid the cheaper Zoom products, they just sound bad.

It sounds like you’re effectively playing an acoustic instrument into a microphone and want to add some compression and reverb onto that line feed. In that case I’d steer clear of options designed for electric instruments and investigate gear designed for doing the same to vocals or specifically for acoustic instruments. I’d try and do some research for you but I can’t get on shopping sites from work I’m afraid to look up the kind of thing I’m thinking of.

8

We will have to respectfully disagree. Please, take the gear snobbery elsewhere. Given the hobby of tinwhistling gladly accepting $5 whistles alongside $500 hand-made master works, it seems out of place to make such bold, generalized statements.

I can speak from direct experience with my Behringer Bass EQ pedal. It works. An excellent value for $29.99. The bold yellow helps to break up the bleak blackness of my GK amp.

9

a great performer can spellbind an audience using a Fedog they bought down the shop 10 minutes before a gig.*
a great producer will still get the same nasty sound out of cheep kit as half a luddite with studio-time.
QED?

*aditionally they probably ont be using any reverb :stuck_out_tongue:

10

I did a lot of research when buying a mixer, and Behringer seems to be a well respected brand for entry level recording gear. It only cost a few $ more to get one with effects built in. I think there are 100 different things it can do, but only in certain combinations. It’s pretty cool, but I’ve never actually used any of the effects other than just messing around.

A tube mic-preamp with compression will make a lot of things sound better (especially fiddles with bridge pickups).

One of my favorite performers on whistle (Neil Anderson) has an interesting setup. He plays his whistle into a microphone which is plugged into a little brown amplifier. It looks like a little guitar amp in size and shape. The amp has a cable coming out the back that goes to the sound man. I think the main thing the amp does is roll off the top. He usually plays Bb whistles, and he gets a really smooth tone without the harshness I associate with whistles. If the average person heard it they might assume it was a flute.

11

Sorry, it’s not gear snobbery I’m trying to offer constructive advice, most musicians and engineers I know universally detest Behringer gear.

I’m all for saving money and buying value gear but this isn’t like a tin whistle where you can get decent results out of a cheap one. If you buy rubbish your sound will suffer in the end or it’ll break quickly. You might get lucky and get one that works for a while, who knows. If you’re happy with Behringer gear then that’s fair enough.

I’d rather not take the risk and spend a little more for something more reliable, especially if it’s to be used in a gig situation. Why rush into buying gear just because it’s cheap? Wouldn’t it be better to invest in your equipment, save for an extra month, and be rewarded with a better sound and more reliable gear?

12

Johnnyboi, if you don’t yet own a microphone, does this mean that you haven’t been playing live before now? Or maybe your live setup is just for personal enjoyment? If so, I’d hold off thinking about effects until you take care of first things first. Yes, the SM57 or SM58 is a fine workhorse mike for just about anything.

Jem, I’d separate reverb and compression from other effects. Many live or recording setups use some reverb to compensate for room acoustics if needed, and some compression to balance an instrument’s presence in the mix if needed. It’s part of the overall sonic tailoring in any good audio technician’s kit.

Having individual control of your line reverb apart from the overall desk mix can be a good thing. Whistle responds quite differently from, say, guitar. And given the 30+ dB difference between low and high notes on many whistles, a little compression can make life easier - though it’s no substitute for learning how to work the microphone.

Of course, any effect can be abused, including intentionally for fun. :slight_smile: You always wanted to play your whistle in an empty Notre Dame, or inside a sewer pipe? Have at it! Compress your whistle attack to sound like an organ pipe. IMO, screwing around with effects in private is a great way to get it out of your system, and learn from experience where to set the dividing line between good taste and bad.

For most live performance, standard stomp boxes are practical and probably fine. Just chain together what you want. A Lexicon rack unit is definitely magical, but probably overkill. Another option is a software processor. Load it on a laptop for live use, and feed it via the FX send on your sub-mixer. Lots of flexibility.

Or, as mentioned, there’s something like the Behringer Xenyx 1002FX board, with 50 different reverb presets, as a sub-mixer. The preamps work well with an SM57, and you get lots of individual control over your EQ and level in the mix. The FX quality is comparable to a stomp box. No compressor, though; that’s a separate unit.

Behringer … I know about the bad rap for cheap quality control. But I’ve used a Xenyx 802 mini mixer and Behringer active DI box for a few years now. They’ve both been solid performers for me, and great values at the price. I can imagine problems in rock band situations where the gear gets manhandled and needs to be more robust. But with some extra care (and luck), it seems fine for personal or occasional live use. The DI is a bit noisy, but the Xenyx board is very quiet and A-OK, and small enough to slip right into my gig bag.

13

About cheap products.

I have been doing electronic and ethnic music for about twenty years now. And I have learned one key lesson. You do indeed get what you pay for. It isn’t about snobbery or brand passion or anything else. The bottom line is very simple. If you buy something good the first time around you won’t have to replace it for a long time and you will enjoy working with it.

That said. Behringer was ok at one point in their history, but the vast majority of products they produce are adequate for beginners who are ok replacing kit later with higher level gear. But I say save the money and invest in one good item and save yourself the risk of breakdowns and problems.

For mixers I have had Mackie for years. They work, they sound clean and they make a great line of smaller ones that are suitable to set up for your own performance rig. They are not much more expensive than their peers and they last forever. I have a 1402 I have taken all over the US and Japan for 15 years and it still works brilliantly including the phantom power for my condenser mics.

Effects. I agree that Lexicon is the best available from a stand point of reliability and sound quality. But I still think Alesis kit can survived longer on the road and is cheap enough that you can afford to have one get killed on tour and be able to replace it. I would not take a high end Lexicon to most live shows. Let’s face it, the vast majority of smaller live houses out there just do not have enough sound quality to tell the difference between a decent mid range processor and a high end one. Unless you are playing top shelf venues, Alesis, Digitec or some of the the other makers will do just fine.

I personally think Behringer and Zoom are very cheap and not very good products overall for effects. Though some of their simple kit is passable such as their DI boxes (ok in a pinch).

The best advice I can give is go listen to some units. Look at the box and see if it is well made once you decide it sounds ok. If you go with an expensive rack unit, buy a good rack back or hard rack and properly mount it. Use a patch bay if you can to avoid overtaxing the inputs/outputs by constantly plugging and unplugging things. Patch bays cost $30 and have 48 inputs usually so you can wear out a lot before you need to replace it and save the wear and tear on your effects unit.

If you want to use it in your studio, buy something high end. If just for the road, get something durable that sounds good enough. Don’t drag a $2000 unit around to live shows.

Finally. There are a portable mixers out there with good onboard effects. Not Lexicon level, but certainly passable for a lot of live situations. Take a look at Mackie’s live focused small mixers. These are good units. We have a CFX-1604. It is a good mixer with nice preamps and phantom power for live situations with condenser microphones. The effects are ok for basic reverb and it has decent eq in the channels. A smaller version, not sure what their current model is called, should be available in a 12 channel. May solve all your input mic support and basic effects problems. And you can alway put a compressor by DBX or another good maker on one of the sends.

Good luck.

14

Wow… thank you all for your considered and thoughtful responses. I guess i need a moment to digest everything and follow up some of these suggestions further…

The lexicon unit looks great, although it is probably overkill for my uses. I am however a believer in buying good equipment the first time, as the previous poster emphasised, so it may be worthwhile…

Ideally though, something smaller and cheaper would be fine, it’s just that most of what I’ve seen has been for guitars, and whether it would be suitable for woodwinds I wasn’t sure.

I had a look at the Alesis stuff… they have a good looking unit called the XT Digital Reverb, for under 100 bucks.

Again my focus here is live performance rather than for the studio.. so compact and durable is good, as long as sound quality isn’t compromised a great deal.

Still having a look, I’ll let you know how I go. I’ll try to visit some local audio equipment stores as well.

15

I had a chance to check the Mackie link. Check out these two units. They have good basic effects onboard which should be as good as the Alesis in sound quality.

More importantly this kind of unit gives you the option of adding effect units that don’t have XLR (Canon) inputs by tagging them through the Aux return. So you can easily add other units as you find the need.

Best point is the XLR inputs on these small mixers and the line eq you can use when playing live houses with terrible mixers. And XLR outs so no need for DI boxes. And it has phantom power if you find you end up wanting to run condenser micrphones later.

Also it is USB friendly so you can integrate it at home to work on recording.

Put it in a hard effects pedal case and off you go.

16

http://www.mackie.com/products/profxseries/splash.html

Late in the day brain damage. Here’s the link.

17

Everytime someone mentions Behringer there’s always this fight.

As long as each one is happy with their own gear, and the price they payed for it… it’s cool!

I’m happy with all my Behringer equipment, that’s good enough for me.

Just be happy people, and play the Whistle!

Cheers!

P.S: Sorry for the off-topic johnnyboi, good luck with your research! Let us know what you chose!

18

I’ve tried touring quite few different setups over several years. For live use I’d always say get a floor board so you can switch effects when you want. You can of course get a midi floorboard to control a rack unit but in my opinion its more hassel than it’s worth - particularly when flying (an all in one unit you sling over your shoulder and take on as hand luggage. There’s no subsitute for trying them out down the shop to see if they do what you want. I’m using a Boss GT-8 just now. It is more complicated to use than say zoom stuff but it’s little more adaptable - if you’ve got plenty of time to program effects it comes into it’s own. I used to use a digitech and it had a nice balance between usability and possibilities. One thing to watch out for is if your playing on a loud stage i.e. with loud instruments e.g. kit drums etc, then you really want to have a good gate. Because the whistle is relatively quiet it has it gained up - often casing problems with feedback (particularly when your not playing).

19

I highly recommend the TC Helicon Create pedal. It has Reverb, Delay (with tap tempo) and modulation effects. XLR in and out and in addition it has phantom power if you decide to use a condenser microphone. It is also very small and rugged.

20

I cannot disagree with this even if I wanted. Behringer is far from bad, and far from badly priced either. For certain things they’re bad (guitar gear), but for processors and mixing boards they’re pretty good for a pretty good price. Their stuff is built to last. They’re far from the best, but they’re far from awful either.

We don’t all have the same experience with the same gear, but bashing a brand is just pointless regardless how you look at it. Similar to my Buffet Crampon concert flute: Before the 1980’s, Buffet Crampon were the laughing stock of the flute-world, but they redesigned their flutes after the 1980’s and it became amazing. Sadly, a lot of people kept bashing the brand name and now they don’t make flutes anymore. We all pay for this.

[on-topic] I’m personally looking toward’s the Korg Kaoss Pad KP-3 or the Korg Kaossilator Pro. It’s far from what you guys would use or recommend, but I’m looking for specific functionality for my use. :wink: