Re: Thoughts on the Eclipse, Fireworx, G-Force, and PCM81

[Per Boysen <perboysen@gmail.com>]

On 25 jun 2006, at 17.28, Krispen Hartung wrote:

> Thanks, Per. The effects loop and lack of pre-programmed scales on  
> the fireworx is not a problem fo me, as I would not use either  
> function.  When you say the Eclipse is big and heavy, you just mean  
> the length of it in the rack, right? Both are 1 space units.

Yes, the Eclipse goes deeper into the rack. And it weights a more as  
well. When I had one for two months I found it hard to crate original  
patches that didn't sound like what I have heard other musicians  
sound like. To my taste the Eclipse had a too big impact on the  
sound. But some musicians want to use it as a standard effect box and  
then it may come in handy. My brother played me a piece by Steve Vai,  
from a record, and I immediately remembered the exact Eclipse preset  
Vai was playing through ;-)

On the Fireworx I have made twenty patches that I use and that is  
pretty much what I need. It's ok to plug an electric guitar straight  
into the Fireworx and I was able to create a good plain jazz guitar  
sound (as far as you can go in that direction with a Strat). I like  
the compressors, the filters and the pitch shifters. Luca is right  
about the "clean" sound of the Fwrx. Check out this demo of a  
Telecaster plugged straight into the Fireworx: http:// 
www.looproom.com/audio/mobjam2.mp3  I think that recording shows well  
how the Fireworx compressors and pitch shifters sound on a clean  
guitar sound.

I also managed to make a cool sound with lots of loooong reverb and  
then a filter cutting down the reverb treble. The built in step  
sequencer, programmed as a hihat pattern, runs the dynamic filter cut- 
off and a LFO synced to song tempo adjusts the speed of the "hi-hat  
filtering". An expression pedal sweeps between all open reverb sound  
and totally "beat sync filtered" reverb. I think the layout of the  
Fireworx makes it easy to come up with such fantasy patches.

Greetings from Sweden

Per Boysen
www.boysen.se (Swedish)
www.looproom.com (international)
http://tinyurl.com/fauvm (podcast)
http://www.myspace.com/looproom