Snarf–thanks for the kind words, my friend. I’m glad it can be of a bit of enjoyment amongst all the ramblings. hehe

thanks for all the advice and what-not on here

And congrats on the Timeline! I am in the process of putting together a series of videos called ‘Using Delay in Modern Music’, which will feature the Timeline a lot, so hopefully that will be helpful. I’ve been working on it for a while, and time has just kind of been against me lately in finishing them. But, soon!

And which controller did you get? I use the Rocktron Midi Mate, and it’s actually so simple to use that you think you’re doing something wrong at first. And actually, the Timeline is set up quite simply for midi as well, so it should be fairly simple with whichever one you have on the way.

I totally hear you with having a small enough rig to not scare people. But your rig looks pretty nice, bro! Love it. Ya, just let me know which midi switcher you’ve got, and I can try to help out with the switching stuff for the Timeline.

Cheers,
Karl

I absolutely love your blog/site/whatever it is. I probably have read everything on it over the past couple of months since I first stumbled across it, and have tried several of your suggestions, which for the most part have been right on (at least to my ears), particularly the Tim and the Mosferatu which sound so good I can almost taste the tone (as you might say). I recently got (finally) a timeline and a controller is on the way. Do you think you might find time at some point to give a little more detail on how you have structured your presets, how you jump back and forth during a service, etc.? I am bringing “modern” worship music into a conservative, german lutheran midwest church and your minimalist approach has inspired me, but I need to somehow adopt it on the gear side too so I don’t look like a guitar hero wannabe (very tough, and reading your blog makes it tougher!). Thanks for a really great resource!
Doug (EJ Strat, Vox Ac-15, hot plate for volume [and hopefully not tone-sucking] control).

Jeff–so nice to hear that. I love the Timeline, and it’s nice to hear about other people digging it, too.

And nice gear score coming in! Yikes! And is 48 volts correct?! I read that somewhere and just assumed it was a typo. lol Wow, that’s crazy! Can’t wait to hear the shootout, brother!

Larry–same thing! Can’t wait to hear the shootout, bro!

Good times are coming.

I’ve got a Creation Audio Labs Holy Fire (48v!?) on the way and my Timmy should be going out next week. I might have to do my own, infinitely inferior shootout video…

Larry–ya, I’m not very good at pictures…either taking them or embedding them. hehe Sorry. I’m trying to think what the pedals are on that board that I’ve rarely mentioned in this blog, so I don’t bore everyone. hehe Probably the orange one on the right, which is a Guyatone tube tremolo (with a JJ tube). I used to make fun of that pedal ’til someone convinced me to try it. hehe And the one on the upper far left is a George Dennis optical volume pedal which surprisingly works very well. The upper right is an Ernie Ball Jr. to control a separate looping rig that I run live. And the Memory Lane is sitting on top of the PP2. hehe

Jeff–that’s exactly it! No matter how much flexibility midi-ing everything would give me, there’s just something about being able to sit in front of your board and tweak. And with the delays midi-ed and everything going into the two bypass loopers, with careful planning I’ve been able to minimize the stomping enough to where a midi setup would only be worth the time and effort if like, say, Chris Tomlin were to ask me to go on tour (which I’m just gonna go out on a limb and say is pretty highly unlikely…hehe )

As for the Timeline/Memory Lane thing, I apologize in advance because this is long. As hard as it was to sell a Memory Lane, I was using my second one only as an always-on, in the background, sound. Well, a switch started having issues on it, so I sent it back to Diamond (who, incidentally, fixed it for free and even paid for the return shipping…Diamond guys are very good people). And while that was away, I made a setting for my Timeline as an always-on, in the background sound; because, since once you have an actual upfront delay sound, the background one is no longer needed, I could switch midi with one click to go to a more pronounced Timeline patch and then never miss the always-on patch until I turned delay off…at which point I can just switch back to the background patch. So that delay is almost never off. And I actually started to like the crisper background delay sound of the Timeline better for an always-on sound. I mean, I’ve got it set pretty analog-sounding, but a digital delay will never feel like a good analog one, and vice versa. They’re different pedals for different sounds. But, as I have a darker sound anyway, I liked the crispness of the Timeline for that background delay sound just a little better. And then, add to all that, that with the money from selling the Memory Lane, I could get another Timeline; and then I could use the two together, but still have the analog warmth when I needed it from the Memory Lane, the choice was made.

What I use them for is the first Timeline for most of my delay needs, and the second for most of my modulation and phrase sampling needs. And sometimes I’ll run them in conjunction with say, quarter notes on the first at a lower mix, and dotted quarters on the second at a higher mix. My first one had so many options, it kind of opened my mind a bit, and I realized I needed to be able to say, have a reverse delay, but also have another delay pedal to reverb that signal fading in the background.

(So sorry for the length of that response!)

Philip and Jeff–And the board looks bigger than it actually is. But, I know I’m not buff enough to carry all that either. So, the part with the Midi Mates is actually a separate board. I just unplug their power and midi (which are hooked into the main board) and detach it into two boards.

And ya, the plan was always to get another Midi Mate for the second Timeline, but they are hard to find for the right price and ones that aren’t pink or red or some horrifying color. So I was running it off of a Midi Mouse for awhile. Which is great for space saving, but not so good if you need to get to more than 3 patches in a hurry.

Kenrick–haha Ya, I know. But I have gotten rid of a lot of superfluous effects and boosts and such over the last year in order to streamline things. So, the board looks big, but if you count the actual effects, there’s only 13 including the volume pedal. Then you’ve got the tuner, pedal power, 2 bypass loopers, 2 midi switchers, and a volume pedal for the separate looping rig, and suddenly just your power and switching have taken you from a humble 13 pedals to a quite large 20 pedals, unfortunately. But the ease of switching live, having presets, being able to have a pure tone and still use effects, and less noise from pure power is worth it……kind of. Every once in a while, I still wonder for a few seconds how many more ‘fun effects’ I could have if I sold all my switchers, tuners, and power. hehe