Introduction
There are many guitar multi-fx or processors in the market. At first sight all seem to be worth buying and might lead to confusion, but there is no better judge than your own ears!!. The only thing you need to understand is the systematic way of testing the sound and tonal spectrum of the processors in the price range.
In the following article it is assumed that the reader is an amateur,semi pro artist and has a maximum budget of 600$ to invest on his sound. The reader might plan to use the multifx directly into the PA without any amp or stack in between.
If you don't have a classy amp and wish to use only the multi-fx as a sole modifier of your sound then i would recommend getting a processor which emulates amp models and cabinets. Don't go for multi-fx which emulate only effect pedals.
Preparation
You dont want to be bamboozled by the salesman into buying something which the shop wants to sell.
- Line6, Vox , Boss,Korg and Zoom are the industry leaders so check out their products on famous websites like musiciansfriend.com, amazon.com and zzsounds.com, also go through reviews(atleast 10 different reviews).
- Suppose you shortlist 2-3 multifx depending on your price range and tonal requirements, then search videos on youtube.com( 4 different videos giving demo of the multi fx)
- Note- If your are watching videos uploaded directly by the manufacturer then don't get blown away by the sound quality , because they use really high end guitar, amp and recording interface to record a single audio clip. Your gear can cause the sound to be drastically different.
Inside The Shop
- Take your own guitar to the shop and try to go with a decent pair of headphones which give a flat response need not be top of the line stuff, but something like Audio Technica low end stuff like M40 etc will do. I would recommend getting a decent pair of flat response headphones or studio monitor which gives you exact sound of the processor without coloring it ( i.e. enabling you to hear almost all frequencies produced by the processor), you will need it in future to set the frequency spectrum to get your own tone and great sound.
( here i assume
that while going live you will directly feed your guitar input to a
processor and then to a mixer board see figure 1)
 |
| Figure 1: The assumed signal flow at a live venue |
Testing the sound
- Multifx have different modes of output for the kind of setup you will use select the mode which is used for recording or feeding the signal directly into PA, plug in your guitar to the multifx and insert headphone jack to processor headphones output (will be a 1/8 "slot standard guitar slot is 1/4 "), now put on your headphones. you are ready to go!
- Most commonly used effect is overdrive and distortion, and now a days multifx emulate effect pedals like boss ds-1 etc as well as legendary amp and amp heads like Mesa Boogie,Jcm 800 etc. Let it be any multifx the amp models and cabinets options that it emulates greatly characterize the sound that you will get out of the multifx.
- Amp models and cabinets- these are the closest you can get to getting a great tone but each one costs up to 1000$ and are bulky. Amp heads contain circuit which modify guitar signal and cabinets are like big speakers which convert this modified signal into sound.
- Effect Pedals- with advancement in technology these were created to mimic the same sound characteristics as that of an amp, these are very portable and cheap.
- Turn off every other effect except for the amps. Go through every amp sound while keeping the Gain(boosts guitar signal), a parameter on every amp up to 40-50% of max value. Keep bass at 20%, mid at 60-70% and high at 30-40% of the max values. (I ll explain why these settings in another article).
- For amps which are meant to be clean use the neck pick up (as you want to have warm tones)and for the amps which sound distorted at these settings use the bridge pick up( 90 % of heavy distortion songs use bridge pick ups because they give lots of mid range frequencies, which is a characteristic range of guitar).
- Select the best amp model one for clean and one for distortion that you loved among the options then turn on the cabinets while keeping the amp settings constant, once for the clean amp and other time for the distorted one, now go though all the cabinet options till you get one best which you like.
- Now you have one amp-cabinet combo for clean and one amp-cabinet combo for distortion or overdrive, next important thing is reverb!(every song of every genre uses this effect only the magnitude varies)
- For distortion combo turn on the room reverb keeping the Time- 10%, Volume/Mix-10-15% try keeping other knobs in reverb module of max upto 10% remember keep the bass low, mids high and high frequencies at medium level , reverb widens your guitar sound, making it more prominent so add just a pinch of it in your distortion. Too much of it will make you sound like some jazz player.
- For clean combo you might want to have more of reverb and increase the settings upto 25-30% of the values, remember keep the bass low, mids high and high frequencies at medium level.
- Repeat this on 2-3 shortlisted multi-fx it should take 10-15 mins each and the one which sounds great to you is all you need!
- All the best, do post in case of any queries.
