HELP pedals!

hi, does anyone know how multieffects pedals compare in quality to a bunch of single ones.. i'm guessing theyre worse as otherwise noone would bother with single ones.. also does anyone know what the best chorus and delay pedals are? i was gonna get these first, any other effects essentials? thanks!

well, multi effects are kinda wierd you have to find the right setting, and when you want another one you have to switch too it. I like the boss super chorus, and get a digitech delay, or boss digital delay, those are both nice.

Cheap multiFX are comparable to cheap single pedals, expensive multiFX are comparable to expensive pedals.

A plasticy Zoom is probably the equivalent of some of those nasty Dod stompboxes, or the Dano minis. The Boss GT-6 is at least the equivalent of the Boss stompbox range. An Eventide Orville is probably better at what it does than anything you'll find in a pedal.

A lot of people don't like multiFX because of either the presets, or because they can't get the hang of, or don't like, programming sounds. If you're not willing to learn to use the thing, it'll never sound good.

MultiFX offer much more flexibility in terms of changing sounds rapidly; just changing patch could turn 3 FX on, 2 off, change the parameters on another 2 and change the order of the FX blocks. Doing that with pedals would be pretty much impossible.

... But at the same time, if you're like me, you might like adding and taking away effects throughout a song. Normal chord sound, then with delay, then to a solo sound with no delay, then with delay and wah, then take off the wah, then take off the distortion to get back to normal, but add a flanger for a certain chord section, etc. If you do that sort of thing, you end up having to program a whole lot of different channels of the same sound with different effects added. Generally the theory goes that Single effect boxes provide the most quality sound, whereas multi FX boxes provide a better mix, and often create a more unified sound, with more possibilities in variation and completely different sounds changed quickly.

Originally posted by Bardsley
[BIf you do that sort of thing, you end up having to program a whole lot of different channels of the same sound with different effects added. [/B]

Most multiFX have a Manual mode, where each pedal, instead of selecting a patch, will let you turn an effect block on or off. At the very least there should be an control pedal and maybe an expression pedal that could be assigned to turning blocks on and off.

Try out Line 6's POD.It has 2 types of chorus,along with delay.Both can be tweaked however you want them.Line 6 also makes chorus and delay stomp boxes.

I tend to buy single effects now after mostly using multi-effects. For me its more of a personal preference though. Even though they're more expensive in the long run, I found that with multi-effects I would just get lost mucking about for ages and never get anything done. With the single pedals I find them quicker to fiddle about with and I tend to get to know them better. I like them for playing live as well as, if something is wrong, I can just take that pedal out of the loop or see immediately what the problem is rather than having to scroll through a lcd edit screen. Also, on a much more shallow note, I just prefer the look of loads of different battered pedals!
Having said that, the multi-fx pedals I used are really old now and I've heard really good things about the POD, and in the end I reckon its up to what you like!

Pretty interesting. From my experience, Zoom oldies multi effects are really sux, including all GFX series but they are quite cheap. KORG toneworks are with flexable price and reliable. Behringer multieffects are not worth trying and settings are also crappy. Digitech multi effects are pretty impressive and cool as well as can get the analogue settings but the price depends. POD quality is th best if I may say. BOSS multi effect pedals also rocks as BOSS is what we all well known for in hardness and resistance, the price is reasonable and BOSS GT series are cool, expecially GT 8. Digitech GNX series are quite confusing as well as complicate but after use fully understand the manual and functions, its will be the life time gadget but still got many cons compare to Analogue effect pedals and stomp boxes. Thats what I known little for digital effects. ^_^

Couldn't do without MIDI control on MultiEffects pedals.
Nothing beats letting your computer change patches for you mid song.