Andy Timmons - Board creation with HX Stomp

[ncockerill]

Fellow Helixers,

 

I am an early adopter of Helix Floor and still using for live shows and recordings.  I love it.  But like most guitarists, I am always too eager for a new experiment and I have been thinking about creating a (near) replica of Andy Timmon’s current rig.  Except I’d like to use an HX Stomp as the Mesa Lone Star and cab, and pretty much everything else will be traditional analog stomp boxes.

 

Here Andy explains his current board, starting at the 8:28 mark:    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUf3iY8MV5Q

 

If you don’t know Andy Timmons, you probably should.  Ridiculous player and legendary tone. 

 

I would probably use the Boss ES-8 switching system, which should do the job (although Andy uses a custom made Gig Rig for this).  Attached is a mock-up of the board with a diagram of the proposed signal flow.  Looking for any input into whether what I’ve created here will work; most notably, the use of the 4-cable method from the ES-8 to the HX Stomp. 

 

Essentially, I want to run everything before the amp (HX Stomp) and only the Strymon Timeline after the amp.  I guess I could just run the ES-8 direct to the input of the HX Stomp, and then put the Timeline directly in the HX Stomp FX loop instead of running the 4-cable method, but then I wouldn’t be able to control the Timeline from the ES-8.

 

Anyway, if anyone has input, I’m appreciative. 

[Kilrahi]

It looks like a pretty well thought out setup. 

 

I'm curious, what's the thinking with keeping the poly tuner over using the Stomp's inbuilt tuner?  Do you find polyphonic tuning is a lot easier/faster to use live (I've never tried it)?

[rd2rk]

Once you've got your loops physically set up on the ES8, remember that you can select any loop or loop combination by programming the ES8 loop to load via the PC# sent automatically by the Stomp via MIDI.

[ncockerill]

2 hours ago, Kilrahi said:

It looks like a pretty well thought out setup. 

 

I'm curious, what's the thinking with keeping the poly tuner over using the Stomp's inbuilt tuner?  Do you find polyphonic tuning is a lot easier/faster to use live (I've never tried it)?

 

The advantage would be that the dedicated TUNER OUT jack out of the Boss ES-8 is always on.  So, I don't need to switch to a tuner mode on the Stomp.  I actually don't find polyphonic tuning to be that faster or easier to be honest.  But I already have the PolyTune, so might as well use it.  Plus, its tiny and takes up minimal space.

[ncockerill]

1 hour ago, rd2rk said:

Once you've got your loops physically set up on the ES8, remember that you can select any loop or loop combination by programming the ES8 loop to load via the PC# sent automatically by the Stomp via MIDI.

 

Good point.  I think this can work the other way as well.  That is, selecting certain loops or presets on the ES-8 can trigger PC/CC changes on the HX Stomp as well.

[rd2rk]

Page 19 of the manual shows how to send CC#s, but I didn't see anything about being able to SEND PC#s, only receive.