Nice Rack NYC | St. Vincent

[Vegas]

Annie Clark of St. Vincent recently came into the shop with a list of criteria for a new pedalboard system.
1. Fly as checked luggage, doing lots of fly gigs this year with a new record coming out.
2. End the tap dancing routine and focus on playing guitar, singing and interacting with audience.
3. Must Sound Great
4. Be easy to set up, no full time guitar tech on tour.

A week later Annie picked up her new rig comprised of a Z Vex Mastotron, Death By Audio Interstellar Overdrive, Boss Super Shifter, Eventide PitchFactor & an Eventide Space. The effects are wired in True Bypass Series, Routing via a RJM Music Mini Effects Gizmo, controlled by a RJM Music MasterMind. Voodoo Lab Pedal Power 2 Power Supply. Custom System Interface, Silent Tuning Option & Tap Tempo Switch by Nice Rack NYC. Annie re-purposed a Moog Expression Pedal that she liked the feel of.

With St. Vincent using an Ableton Live Rig to playback ambient sound effects and percussion, I was able to take inbound PC messages from Ableton into the MasterMind. Making the pedalboard respond to incoming preset messages freed Annie to focus on playing and singing while letting go of the memorized & stressful pedalboard tap dance routines for each song.

The entire rig is set up in under 3 minutes requiring only 5 patch points.

Sonic quality is a obviously of concern when your effects are either premium hi-fi like the Eventides or Boutique Unique devices by Z Vex & Death By Audio. The RJM Music Mini Effects Gizmo not only handles your audio well, it sounds damn good too.

Packed into a Pelican 1720 Rifle Case with wheels makes Fly Dates and New York City living easy. This rig will go to the 4th floor of a walk up, ride in the trunk of a cab and handle a TSA molestation with no difficulties at all.

Annie commented that having a pedalboard like this would increase the efficiency and artistic quality of each St. Vincent performance. When you see a St. Vincent live show that you enjoy, remember a part of that quality came from Nice Rack NYC being able to interpret the unique needs of the player, the music and the logistics.

Nice Rack NYC
Custom Cables, Racks & Pedalboards
WEB: http://www.NiceRackNYC.com
EMAIL: info@NiceRackNYC.com

[nkjanssen]

Great board, great pictures, great info!!

Love the Loonie too! I assume you froze that into centre ice?

[Vegas]

Thanks for the kind words about my work.

Not "frozen" per se but rather cyanoacrylate. For much the same reasons as a center ice Loonie, so goes the "signature" in my rigs.

[Vegas]

While Annie passed through NYC on tour recently I did a PSU update on her board, removed the 2x linear supplies for the Eventides and replaced them with a Pedal Power Digital.

[eencarna]

Excellent post! I love how you linked the two power supplies into a box and routed them out via powercon. Is there anywhere online where I can find out exactly how to do that? Thanks!

[Vegas]

eencarna, you can order these assemblies from our shop.

Please contact info@NiceRackCanada.com for more information.

[wespickering]

Hi Vegas,

I recently saw St. Vincent in Nashville and was totally impressed by the lack of "pedalboard dance" and started looking into how this was accomplished. I'm really happy to have found this post. It's a brilliant setup! Major props.

I have a few of questions:

1) There is a "To Mac"-"From Mac" in/out on your custom interface. Obviously, the "from mac" is getting MIDI from Ableton, but what is the "To Mac" sending back to the computer?

2) Is the MIDI running through your custom interface just to centralize all the patch points, or is there something else going on here that I'm not seeing (splitting/distributing MIDI to Eventide pedals?)? Could the same be accomplished by running the MIDI directly into the RJM Mini Effect Gizmo (minus the neat and tidy centralization)?

3) I assume that both the Pitch Factor and SPACE pedals are receiving preset changes via MIDI? Both of these pedals can receive an unlimited number of preset messages via MIDI, right?

4) Is the Tap Tempo being centrally routed to multiple pedals? If not, which pedal is it controlling? Also, what is the expression pedal controlling?


Again, beautiful work. I hope she sends you a nice Christmas card this year. You deserve it!

[Vegas]

A "To Mac" connection is to send Controller Memory to Sysex Librarian.

All of my rigs have a latching connection point for any system input or output, this provides operational security to the system in a live concert environment. There is no chance of anything accidentally coming unplugged. Any input or output to the system is patched to a interface point rather than on any system hardware. This reduces failure possibility due to human mistakes.

Both the PitchFactor and Space can receive 100 preset change messages. By using the HotSwitch function on the Space you can create another 100 "virtual" presets.

Tap Tempo is common to both Eventides.

Expression Pedal can be assigned per preset to specific functions in the Space or PitchFactor.

I'm an Atheist, Christmas Cards are a waste of trees, but I do appreciate the sentiment all the same.