More outboard gear

octacalm · 2014-06-03T15:57:37.000Z

So i been looking at getting a Boss RE20 delay and a nice old Chorus unit (Boss CE300) and a distortion pedal for drums. Basically ive been spending too much time on the gearslutz forum. Am i being a bit silly thinking about such items as the Octatrack basically has all these effects. Or is getting nice (and relatively affordable) effects justified?

Barfunkel · 2014-06-03T16:02:33.000Z

Definitely worth it. I’ve said it many times, the OT’s effects aren’t it’s strongest point. I have a very cheap 90’s multi FX unit (Zoom 1201), which sounds WAY better than the OT’s effects. It can’t be really about computing power, as surely the OT has a more powerful CPU than a 90’s budget effect.

jamrod · 2014-06-03T17:09:52.000Z

Yeah, the OT chorus doesn’t do much for me. Wish it sounded like the A4’s!

GovernorSilver · 2014-06-03T17:33:53.000Z

""octacalm"":

So i been looking at getting a Boss RE20 delay and a nice old Chorus unit (Boss CE300) and a distortion pedal for drums. Basically ive been spending too much time on the gearslutz forum. Am i being a bit silly thinking about such items as the Octatrack basically has all these effects. Or is getting nice (and relatively affordable) effects justified?

It depends on your personal taste.

I have outboard effects myself - couple of analog delay pedals, couple of fuzz pedals, and an overdrive pedal. I’m not a chorus person so I can’t comment on the chorus effect in the OT.

There are things that are done on analog delays that are difficult or not possible to do with the OT’s delay - things like cranking the repeat to induce oscillation, pitch shift induced by tweaking delay time, etc. Not everything I do with delay needs to be synced with the OT. That’s why I and other OT users have outboard delays.

Regarding fuzz and overdrive - I play guitar, among other things, so I get why the distortion in the OT’s LoFi Collection effect might not be everyone’s cup of tea. I do enjoy using LoFi, however, because I like the ring mod as well as its distortion.

I love the OT’s filter and dark reverb.

cop_porn · 2014-06-04T03:38:24.000Z

I tried to scale down my live setup, started using OT as a mixer with thru-effects for my analog synths (yeah, sounds stupid spectrewise)), but today i have listened to some sketches and decided to implement back my analog mixer and big effect boxes, they bring too much tastiness to ignore it.

Ozone · 2014-06-04T04:52:06.000Z

One thing missing from outboard is the OT scenes manipulation power… & if no midi on external fx, then no p-locks or lfo action. Also only 4 outputs on the OT is a big limitation with wanting fx per track. Hopefully Elektron will add more fx via OS updates as time passes.
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For affordable, thumbs up to the zoom g3 which is awesome, really nice amp sims, modulation fx & delays/reverbs, been really good for some old synths. Based off that, I just ordered the Zoom MS-100BT (Zoom MS70CDR good also but doesnt have amp sims, distortions or bluetooth upgrades) for stereo inputs & even smaller footprint. Will be used via the OT Cue outputs going into the MD for resampling there, then back into OT.

In saying that i have an external portable rack that goes everywhere with my elektrons. No modulation fx but much post processing.