First impressions diary

It’s just missing the Model FeT and then it’ll be complete.

That being said I have a smaller Rockboard 2.1, if I can get some driven tones that work as well as the halberd and longsword from the Dwarf I’d maybe look at a lighter weight version by removing those and the Hyper Luminal.

@mrdinsdale I have a long story with pedalboards. You can read it here. I will add some more information to that thread in the next days because meanwhile it is again changed. I have two Dwarfs now on my pedalboard, because I am playing three instrument an I am also singing through the Dwarf.

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Some pretty cool looking setups in there! I actually think I read through most of your post when I was attempting to research the Dwarf. Really useful insights there :raised_hands:

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DAY 2

Another lunch break play after hooking the Dward up with my other pedals. One small snag that I hit along the way is that I can’t connect to the Dwarf via Bluetooth to my laptop (VPNs and other security stuff blocking it) and tbh it’s too slow for anything other than small tweaks. For now will use the iPad via BT or try and get it wired up again, just means removing from my board to make room for the usb cable.

Think I may have to look at wired options, perhaps a long USB cable I can coil and attach underneath my board should I ever need to connect. I’m gussing not but anyone know if I connect via usb C to my iPad will it allow me to connect to GUI?

Worked out how to assign controls to the device and set up some stuff so that I can make quick tweaks on the fly to the compressor and Boobtube drive.

Now that I have it on my board I can more easily A/B my exisiting physical pedals to try and match the tone, I’m not expecting anything to be exactly the same but it’s a good reference to a tone I know works well in the band setup.

Next up going to play with some more drive options along with having a play with some of the modulation options :raised_hands: It’s a world I’ve never really explored before, I’ve rarely used chorus, phasers or flangers etc before so don’t really know what I’m looking for but might try and replicate some of Justin Chancellors bass tones as a bit of a goal to keep me focused!

The dream is to get proficient enough to start crafting some more out there stuff. Not remotely applicable to the current band but it would be awesome tos start being able to but cool tones like this together - How to Create a Synth sound with Mastro Valvola LEM & OFF1 - YouTube

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Been jumping between playing into my bass amp, DI out to my Scarlett 2i2 and headphones straight out of the dwarf.

Found a bit of an issue with headphones, because I’m using the channel 1’s out and channel 2’s in as an FX send, if I use headphones I get the send signal in one ear and the end of the chain in the other.

Is there any way to configure the headphones to a single channel? Fortunately (I guess) I’m deaf in one ear so I can just about make it work if I put the headphones on the right way but it’s not ideal :joy:

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Hej!
I must admit i didn’t read every word above, but i read “Bass” and “distortion” :sweat_smile:
Maybe you’d like to check out my aida-x model of the boss ODB-3 Boss ODB-3 Bass Overdrive
I’ll probably try to capture it better soon, but what i shared there is already very usable. I already used it live and it sounds great :grin:

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I most certainly would :joy: added to the list!

It does.


And is way faster than BT!

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Yeah, huge improvement and found that the table + pen is perfect for the fairly intricate UI.

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Had a bit of a play with combining some drives etc to try and mimic the sound of my EAE Halberd.

Ended up settling for the GxTimRay into the GxBoobtube. I also did a split with a LPF at around 160hz with some fairly heavy compression to try and get some of the chewy depth of the Halberd.

Sorry for the terrible framing of the video :joy:

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So a little more time now with the Dwarf and eco system I’ve started to get a feel for what I do/don’t like. Overall I love it, it’s everything I’d hoped for and more.

Negatives

Mostly small usability issues:

  • Not being to configure headphone output.
  • Requires a lot of careful planning for what controls you want to be exposed on the device should you need to edit while away from an external device.
  • Switching pedals is pretty faffy as you have to reconnect each time, it’d be cool if you could drop a new pedal on top of the one you want to replace and it would attempt to connect it up where possible.

Ecosystem stuff:

  • User profiles for sharing - It’d be great if the pedalboard sharing was a platform which enabled user profiles with all their collections available.
  • Push updates to shared pedalboards - I’m forever making improvements to my signal chain and tweaking things so it’d be great to update my existing shared board rather than having to upload a fresh one every time.
  • Better organisation of Plugins/Modules and Pedalboards so they could be tagged up and categorised better. It’s pretty time consuming currently as if you want a specific flavour of a pedal you have to do a lot of searching and reading descriptions.

Plugins:

  • It’d be cool to see more familiar faces out there, I love the more original pedal offerings (there are some really cool ones) but it’d be nice to see some other staple guitar/bass pedal emulations. I think that’s also (right or wrong) what a lot of people look for when evalutating a platform like this.

Thats a longish list of stuff but it’s all pretty minor gripes, not one is really a dealbreaker, just a range of quality of life stuff. Absolutely blown away by the handful of AIDA-X profiles I’ve had chance to try, it’s opened the door to a huge array of options. There are some great FX available there, you’ve just gotta find them first! The amount of depth you can go to with tweaking is way beyond any other platform I’ve encountered, it’s pretty breath taking compared to other stuff I’ve tried.

I’m sure some are already in the pipeline. If there is any way to get involved in anything around the pedalboard sharing platform that would be cool, I’m sure there are plenty of web developers (including myself) who would happily help out if possible!

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This has been requested several times in the past and I have seen a preview of this feature coming in a future firmware update!
(hopefully sooner rather than later, but it will need some refining and testing before ready for general use)

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Nice, yeah I think this was mentioned further up. Very excited to see this feature!

The feature itself is mostly ready by the way, it is mostly a matter of fine-tuning which plugins can replace each other.
Here is AIDA-X replacing another AIDA based plugin. Mono-to-mono plugin swap, with the audio file player on the left not matching the dropable IO and thus doesnt get “replaceable” icon.

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That is a game changer :raised_hands: I’d imagine it must be hard to fine tune all that stuff to align I/O, looks great.

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As previously mentioned, I have a bit of an issue running integrated with my pedalboard in that the headphones use channel 1+2 as stereo outs when I’ve got it configured as an FX loop between Channel 1 out and Channel 2 in. I’ve added some switches (circled) in the top position they handle the FX loop and in the down position bypass the FX loop and treat 1 + 2 as a stereo out. Obviously the stereo out will only work if I’m using headphones etc.

Is there a better way to do this? It’s definitely adding some clutter to the board!

PS the 2nd switch at the bottom that looks redundant previously had some FX in that I was having a play with but is completely redundant now.

Hi,
Can you share the pedalboard so we can edit it and re-share it ?

I think those two plugins could help you :

I’ll try and get it uploaded asap.

I think the auto selectors would be handy if I was changing the wiring configuration however I always have channel 1 + 2 connected:

I’ve got it set up roughly like this:

It roughly works out so I go through all my analog drives, then through Dwarf channel 1, out to the CAPO preamp and back through the Dwarf channel 2 before heading back to the CAPO post DI. There wouldn’t be a physical change to wiring except for the presence of headphones, the ideal would be that I just get channel 2 mono in the headphones so that I don’t have to sacrifice the FX loop.

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the headphones on the MOD units follow what the analog outputs are doing, so this is not possible directly form the Dwarf.

but why not just use a mini cable splitter? I have seen those that have mini jack to separate L and R outputs.

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Heres the board - Bass - FX - hybrid fx loop v2 - MOD Audio

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