phil_m Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 I don't post a lot of new threads in this forum, but I had an experience this weekend that made me realize the versatility of the HD500 in a new way. My church is going to be having a long Easter Vigil service the Saturday evening before Easter, and I'm playing music the whole through. It's a combination of drama and music, and the music varies a lot throughout the evening. So throughout the service I'm playing acoustic guitar, mandolin, an archtop jazzbox (which I want to sound more like an acoustic than an electric), and electric guitar. The church has a somewhat decent sound system, but there's a limited number of channels, so for all these instrument I'm limited to one channel. The other thing is that the monitor situation is no optimal. I'll be sharing a mix with a bunch of other musicians. So I ruled out going direct with my electric tones right away. It just never works out well when you don't have excellent monitor. The acoustic instruments are OK going direct. So faced with having to get these four instruments, each with very different output characteristics to work out with one channel I came up with the following solution. I created a preset each for the acoustic, mandolin and archtop using the Aux in for the input. I put the FX Loop block in these presets and I'm using the FX Send as the output, taking that to a direct box. The reason I'm doing this will be clear in the next paragraph. By using the Vintage Pre model, I was able to easily customize the signal chain so the output level from FX Send is roughly equal. The sound guy shouldn't have to adjust anything during the performance. For the electric, I'm using an amp, and I'm just going to use the HD500 for effects only. Since I'm using the FX Send for the output in my other tones, as long as I don't need the FX Loop block in these tones, it frees me up to use the HD500 in the normal way I would with an amp. I just have my guitar going into the guitar in and the 1/4" going to my amp. I guess my main reason in posting is just as reminder of the amazing flexibility of this stuff. I know I forget how powerful it is. Honestly, this is the first time I've really used the HD500 for my mandolin, and I'm wondering why I waited so long. It sounds great. I put a little delay and reverb on it, and I've never heard it sound better. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alienux Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 Very cool. I've had to switch to mandolin a few times (for a song called Build Your Kingdom Here) and have always just mic'd direct into the PA, but after reading this, I may try going through the HD500X. I like the idea of putting some subtle timing effects on it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevevnicks Posted April 2, 2015 Share Posted April 2, 2015 sorry I deleted my question, started new thread. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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