# Finished rack project



## exhausted (Feb 10, 2006)

I've been working on this for a couple of months and I think it's finally finished. I've had everything rack mounted for quite a while but I decided this year to split it into two cases and do the upgrades I wanted and do the proper wiring job it needed.

The whole rack. The POD HD got booted by the Axe-FX and will become a vocal channel. The top case has the Axe-FX, power amp, and pedals in the effect loop of the Axe-FX. The bottom case is full of pedals in front of the Axe-FX.










One drawer of pedals









Second drawer of pedals









Drawer of stereo pedals in the loop









MIDI controller, a couple fuzz factories, giggity, and tuner. The expression pedals are for wah, whammy and volume.










It's completely ridiculous but oh so much fun.


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## hollowbody (Jan 15, 2008)

Holy crap. That's an amazing rig! That must be awesome to play with!


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## Guest (Apr 27, 2015)

That. Is. Amazing. Wow! I'm totally smitten with those RJM midi controllers but they're out of my price range. Some day!


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## sulphur (Jun 2, 2011)

Nice!

That's an impressive rig!


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## exhausted (Feb 10, 2006)

iaresee said:


> That. Is. Amazing. Wow! I'm totally smitten with those RJM midi controllers but they're out of my price range. Some day!


It's been great and just gets better with each update. I got mine from the first batch a couple years ago. I was looking at the liquid foot at the time but it appears the only person that can get those is Matthew Bellamy. It may be better now but at the time it was complete vapourware. I'm glad I went with the RJM. The support as the firmware developed has been amazing.


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## Guest (Apr 27, 2015)

exhausted said:


> It's been great and just gets better with each update. I got mine from the first batch a couple years ago. I was looking at the liquid foot at the time but it appears the only person that can get those is Matthew Bellamy. It may be better now but at the time it was complete vapourware. I'm glad I went with the RJM. The support as the firmware developed has been amazing.


I see a fair number of Fractal artist's live rigs these days and it's maybe 50% RJM now. They're SO great for touring acts, with the big screens, and techs I talk to swear they're way more durable than you'd think from looking at them.


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## hollowbody (Jan 15, 2008)

Are you also running a bass through this rig, or just using the bass effects on guitar? I noticed you have a the Bass Big Muff and a Bass Compressor as well.


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## exhausted (Feb 10, 2006)

Electric guitar, bass guitar, acoustic guitar. Everything, at least for direct recording, will go through this. The bass-centric pedals just happen to sound great on guitar too.


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## keto (May 23, 2006)

The part of my brain that processes music gear info melted when I looked at your rig. I'm no luddite, I love having a huge pedal board and run 2 heads thru a switcher plus 1 sometimes 2 fx loops, so I'm used to a lot of cabling and switches, but still.


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## 335Bob (Feb 26, 2006)

Excellent rig. It looks very well-thought out and put together with extra attention to detail. 
My hat's off to you.


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## Guest (Apr 27, 2015)

keto said:


> The part of my brain that processes music gear info melted when I looked at your rig. I'm no luddite, I love having a huge pedal board and run 2 heads thru a switcher plus 1 sometimes 2 fx loops, so I'm used to a lot of cabling and switches, but still.


It's pretty linear: guitar -> GCX #1 -> through some pedals -> GCX #2 -> through some pedals -> input of the Axe-Fx II. And then loop of out of Axe-Fx II -> (guessing the order here) H9 -> TimeLine -> BigSky -> loop in of the Axe-Fx II. And then AFII output -> SLA1 -> speakers.

That lets him use just one rack for portability by not bringing along the pedals running out in front of the AFII if he wants. Pretty snazzy way to split it up.

The Eventide and bigger Strymon's work well in the AFII loop because they can be bypassed and engaged via MIDI commands from the RJM midi controller. Plus: you can put the AFII loop any place in the AFII's grid.

The only thing that makes me a little crazy here is thinking of all the possibilities for combining all the pieces to make beautiful noise!


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## exhausted (Feb 10, 2006)

That's pretty much it. The loop order is Timeline/H9/Bigsky since the H9 does both delays and verbs for me and yeah, I just do all the engage/bypass and preset selection over MIDI. Running a single delay from the timeline into stereo delay on the H9 is barrels of fun.

There are a few little tricks;
- I put a switch into one of the expression pedals so it acts like a wah. It's programmed to turn the M5's loop on and send it a PC message to change to the wah preset. I think it sounds pretty good. Experimenting with the Mobius to do the same thing.
- I'm using the Mobius in pre/post mode so it takes two GCX loops, one in front of the distortions for vibes/phasers etc. and one after for chorus/rotaries/filters/trems etc.
- I'm experimenting with seek-wah/trem and similar type effects by sending MIDI sequences from Logic through the GT to the Whammy and Mobius.
- The whole thing syncs tempo via MIDI clock with Logic.

And the split of the rack is bang on. I wouldn't take the pedals out with me. I'll use the pedal models in the Axe-FX in that case and just take the one rack. The beauty of the RJM is I can just load an entirely different configuration into it to take advantage of all the bi-directional synergy with the Axe-FX.

About the only thing I can't do right now is a really nice POG type effect.


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