Voodoo Lab

Hi. I am in need of some advice with regards to cable length, true bypass, midi and the GCX. Some of these questions are not exclusively about the GCX, but relate to my rig prospect in general.

Cable Length.

I am currently looking to change my rig from a pedal board (it consists of about 18 different stomp boxes, mostly boss, electro harmonix, digitech and so fourth) to a rack rig using a GCX (3 GCXs to be more exact).

The thing is, some of my effects (some crybaby wahs and other non midi expression pedals) need to be "on the floor" to operate. This means that I will have to run a cable (15ft at least) from my gcx to my pedal board and another back for each of the pedals (in each loop). Obviously because the Gcx is true bypass, whenever an effect is not in use, all the cable that runs to and from that effect will be bypassed. Still, I am worried about signal loss from all that amount of cable it will take from the rack and back for each floor operated effect. For example I will have a crybaby wah, a boss Giga Delay and a Dunlop Talk Box on at the same time. This will mean that each effect will have 30ft of cable running (per loop. 15 to and 15 from.). When the three effects I just listed are all on, we are talking about 90ft of cable.

I have considered using a planet waves modular snake to run all the cable (to avoid constant connecting and disconnecting.)

http://store.daddario.com/category/1465 ... rency_id=1

What can I experience in terms of signal loss? Are there any flaws to this rig design that I haven't taken into account? Any input on how this "modular snake" will do against regular old school cables.

(PS. One of the stomp boxes I want to keep in my floorboard is a Dunlop Talk Box, so I will be using the planet waves snake from my amp head to my speaker cabinet on one of its cords. Should I worry about this? Is this snake ok to use with speaker cables)

Midi:

Is it possible to use the Ground Control Pro to control midi devices and loops from the GCX at the same time? For example: Bank 1 turns on GCX loops 1 (Pod X3 Pro), 2 (Digitech Whammy), and 3 (Lexicon MX300), and also puts the Pod x3 Pro in a specific preset, puts Digitech Whammy in a specific preset and Lexicon MX in a specific preset. Bank 2 turns on loop 1, turns off loop 2 and turns on loop 3, changes Pod X3 Pro preset and changes lexicon MX300 preset?

Regarding MIDI:

Yeah, the Ground Control Pro can control the MIDI parameters of your units as well as switch pedals on a GCX. So you're good there!

Regarding the cable length:

Personally, I run my guitar straight into my wah then into my GCX. Putting pedals on the floor and connecting them to the GCX loops costs a ton of cable and the signal loss (if any) doesn't really bug me this way.

However, the GCX has the buffer that will help with signal loss from long cable runs. You should be ok running those long cables to your pedalboard and back to your rack. That's what the buffer is there for. It might help adding another buffer after the GCX to your amp. But I think you'll be ok as I'm sure many others use that same method to connect their wahs to a GCX loop and have great results. I'm not sure about the Planet Waves modular snake in this rig. It may be fine. I really don't know. Maybe someone else can help with that one!

Regarding the talkbox:

This won't be running through your GCX as it relies on the signal from your amp to your speaker cab, not the signal straight from your guitar. I don't think it is safe to plug a hot speaker signal through your GCX. So you actually have less cable than 90ft from your rack to your pedalboard and back. However, your speaker cables will have to be long and you might experience some loss there (maybe someone else can chime in??) On the same note I'm not sure that those Planet Waves snakes will be able to handle the speaker signal. Maybe someone else has an answer regarding that as well.

Good luck with your rig!! Planning and putting it all together will be a ton of fun and it will be a pain but in the end its all good because you put it together yourself and it'll be rockin!

peace!

johnnyG

If there are numerous devices on the floor you could also look in to using a floor switcher... like the Pedal Switcher for instance

It is not uncommon to simply mod a wah for true bypass rather than run it in a switcher loop.

Hi guys. Thanks for the input. Yes! Its a ton of fun just to plan the rig and put it together for me. I asked planet waves about the snake cable and signal degradation and they assured me there would be none (of course they would). None the less I am going to try it myself. They told me specifically not to run the speaker cable through the snake, so this might be useful for anyone else reading. Understood on not running the talk box through the gcx.


Thanks allot for all the answers. Regarding the floor switcher, I think my rig is too complex for that, as I also have an array of rack mount effects.


Jose