# Electro-Harmonix SYNTH9 Synthesizer Machine



## Robert1950 (Jan 21, 2006)




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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

What? He starts off with Rush. Is this aimed at the Canadian market?

I suspect the hardest part of designing this thing must have deciding what to include and what to leave out, from the universe of synth sounds.


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## Lord-Humongous (Jun 5, 2014)

That's a really cool pedal.


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## Adcandour (Apr 21, 2013)

Lot of cool stuff in that one box.


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## Budda (May 29, 2007)

I'm afraid to watch.


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## Gavz (Feb 27, 2016)

Neato! I just may stick with my keyboard noodling though...but you never know.


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## High/Deaf (Aug 19, 2009)

E-H has gotten great mileage out of that ADC / synthesis technology. I bet all of those keyboard-type pedals have the same hardware with just different software to produce different voices. Imagine how nice it would be if you could mix a couple of different organ, synth and orchestra sounds in one box.


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## dodgechargerfan (Mar 22, 2006)

High/Deaf said:


> E-H has gotten great mileage out of that ADC / synthesis technology. I bet all of those keyboard-type pedals have the same hardware with just different software to produce different voices. Imagine how nice it would be if you could mix a couple of different organ, synth and orchestra sounds in one box.


This is why I haven't purchased any of these pedals. I know that as soon as I do, they'll release one big one that covers it all.
But I want them all. 

Another thought is to add a controller to a guitar and use patches.
But that's not pedals!!


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## cbg1 (Mar 27, 2012)

was listening to a fellow use the mel9 at an open mike last week. he had a pretty cool thing happening.... i see there is a B9, C9 and now this one are these fairly new pedals?


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

My hunch is that they'll likely stick with the current strategy, which is to offer variations that appeal to overlapping niches (e.g., a Mel 9 lover will likely want this to complement it), can fit on a pedalboard, have a low-enough price-point that the market will be bigger, and make productive use of the same basic form factor, machined chassis, and possibly even boards (assuming that the major differences are in the firmware, similar to the Line 6 modeller pedals). I don't know that the HOG and POG2 have been huge sellers. The Flanger Hoax, for all its brilliance, pretty much tanked. Have _you_ seen anything that complex come out from them for the last few years? Everything new seems to top out at 6 knobs and a rotary switch. It's working for them. Why tinker with it?


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## cbg1 (Mar 27, 2012)

cbg1 said:


> was listening to a fellow use the mel9 at an open mike last week. he had a pretty cool thing happening.... i see there is a B9, C9 and now this one are these fairly new pedals?


ha saw them all lined up at the end of the video a Key9 as well


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## High/Deaf (Aug 19, 2009)

mhammer said:


> My hunch is that they'll likely stick with the current strategy, which is to offer variations that appeal to overlapping niches (e.g., a Mel 9 lover will likely want this to complement it), can fit on a pedalboard, have a low-enough price-point that the market will be bigger, and make productive use of the same basic form factor, machined chassis, and possibly even boards (assuming that the major differences are in the firmware, similar to the Line 6 modeller pedals).


I'd bet a paycheck that these all have exactly the same internals. Everything from the box and control layout to the common internals, like power supply and pitch to voltage conversion would work for any of these, why reinvent the wheel? I find that PVC tracks really well, and is a bit polyphonic, if not totally. The only thing really different is the voices, which could be stored in a RAM or EPROM. So different s/w loads or a different chip is all it would take. 

But why change the business model - they get to sell more of these, largely because of the price point. Well, until Behringer/TC comes out with a toneprint version that may force E-H to get a bit more aggressive with either their feature set or their pricing (I'm sure they've covered the R&D by now, because of the various products the they've spread it across).


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## hollowbody (Jan 15, 2008)

I watched this video 3 times and am planning to buy one ASAP. I already have he B9 and Mel9 and would love being able to use this as well. 

As for them all being the same pedal with different presets - that's likely, but often use my B9 and Mel9 together and would potentially use the Synth9 in conjunction with one or the other fairly often, so being able to do that is worth the expense and pedalboard real estate for me. 

Speaking of real estate. I'm gonna need a bigger board. 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## tomsy49 (Apr 2, 2015)

hollowbody said:


> I watched this video 3 times and am planning to buy one ASAP. I already have he B9 and Mel9 and would love being able to use this as well.
> 
> As for them all being the same pedal with different presets - that's likely, but often use my B9 and Mel9 together and would potentially use the Synth9 in conjunction with one or the other fairly often, so being able to do that is worth the expense and pedalboard real estate for me.
> 
> ...


Very curious as to how you use the two at the same time? Guitar into the B9 using dual outs and have the clean signal go into the Mel 9 and then the clean signal from the Mel 9 and the 2 effected signals into your Helix separately??


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## dodgechargerfan (Mar 22, 2006)

cbg1 said:


> was listening to a fellow use the mel9 at an open mike last week. he had a pretty cool thing happening.... i see there is a B9, C9 and now this one are these fairly new pedals?


There's the B9 which came out a couple of years ago. Then the C9, then the Key9, the Mel9 and now this Synth9.

I want a board with all of them on it. Tons o fun.


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## zontar (Oct 25, 2007)

High/Deaf said:


> E-H has gotten great mileage out of that ADC / synthesis technology. I bet all of those keyboard-type pedals have the same hardware with just different software to produce different voices. Imagine how nice it would be if you could mix a couple of different organ, synth and orchestra sounds in one box.


It would be cool if you could mix & match sounds from different pedals--I find that I like 3 or 4 on most of this series--so if I could mix & match I might get that...


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## High/Deaf (Aug 19, 2009)

Yes, that was my thought, too. I have one of the organ-based versions (can't remember which and I'm too lazy to run downstairs and look) and I only find maybe 3 sounds that are useful for me. I wish I could have 3 organ sounds (the ones I want, please) plus 3 synth sounds and 3 orchestra sounds.

It would also be nice if they could generate some nice piano tones. I don't think they've done that yet, have they?



hollowbody said:


> I watched this video 3 times and am planning to buy one ASAP. I already have he B9 and Mel9 and would love being able to use this as well.
> 
> As for them all being the same pedal with different presets - that's likely, but often use my B9 and Mel9 together and would potentially use the Synth9 in conjunction with one or the other fairly often, so being able to do that is worth the expense and pedalboard real estate for me.
> 
> Speaking of real estate. I'm gonna need a bigger board.


Like tomsy, I wondering how you set this up. Just keep feeding the straight guitar through them and on to the amp, and feed each of these outputs to separate strips in the PA? So a strip for your B9 and a strip for your Mel9?

I think it was your advice I took to run mine through a volume pedal and into a PA strip, so I can swell the organ tone on top of my amp's sound. And I can hit the tuner to mute the amp and play just 'organ'. Thank you for that suggestion, it works great.


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## hollowbody (Jan 15, 2008)

zontar said:


> It would be cool if you could mix & match sounds from different pedals--I find that I like 3 or 4 on most of this series--so if I could mix & match I might get that...


That would be awesome, but I would also like to have MIDI capability to switch between preset, kinda like what this company does for the POG2 .



tomsy49 said:


> Very curious as to how you use the two at the same time? Guitar into the B9 using dual outs and have the clean signal go into the Mel 9 and then the clean signal from the Mel 9 and the 2 effected signals into your Helix separately??





High/Deaf said:


> Like tomsy, I wondering how you set this up. Just keep feeding the straight guitar through them and on to the amp, and feed each of these outputs to separate strips in the PA? So a strip for your B9 and a strip for your Mel9?
> 
> I think it was your advice I took to run mine through a volume pedal and into a PA strip, so I can swell the organ tone on top of my amp's sound. And I can hit the tuner to mute the amp and play just 'organ'. Thank you for that suggestion, it works great.


Glad to hear you're liking going direct to the PA! Using the vol pedal to PA was a trick of mine for a while!

What I was doing for a while was similar to what @tomsy49 said - using the Dry out of the B9 to feed the Mel 9 and then taking the Wet outs of each pedal to a separate input on the PA and switching the pedals on/off with a remote looper.

Right now, I'm using the following setup:

Buffered dual-output A/B box, which allows me to switch between my main and backup guitars on-stage. The dual buffered outs go into the Guitar In and Aux In on the Helix.

In the Helix, I setup a chain that takes the signal from the Guitar In. This is my main guitar sound and gets sent to the XLR outs. On Path 2, I setup a chain that takes the input from the Aux In. This becomes my "flavour" sounds, so I will insert FX loops that correspond to the B9 or Mel9 in there, adding compression, delay, whatever else I want. If I'm using both the B9 and Mel9, I either setup a Path 2a and Path 2b chain, or a split the chain and send individual outs from the respective pedals to the XLRs. I setup Gain blocks at -120db in both paths that allow me to mute the guitar or the B9/Mel 9.

After all that, I can setup snapshots that bring in or take out various sounds. So, for instance, when the band is playing Amy Winehouse's Valerie, I start with a clean Deluxe Reverb sound that takes care of the verses. In the prechorus, I bring in the B9 sound to fill out the back and then in the Chorus, I bring in the Mel 9 on the horns setting for the horn shots there. I'll take some screengrabs of my Helix editor to show you exactly what I'm doing when I get home, but it's basically creative routing of the guitar signal. The Synth 9 would take away a lot of processing on the Helix's part, because the Synth block in the Helix eats up a LOT of DSP!!! Also, I want the Superego so I can freeze the horns/strings/organ/synth on a note or chord and then play over it with the guitar.


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## tomsy49 (Apr 2, 2015)

hollowbody said:


> That would be awesome, but I would also like to have MIDI capability to switch between preset, kinda like what this company does for the POG2 .
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I would love to see that screenshot for sure.


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## hollowbody (Jan 15, 2008)

tomsy49 said:


> I would love to see that screenshot for sure.


Here's a couple


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## hollowbody (Jan 15, 2008)

hollowbody said:


> Here's a couple


Just to follow-up on this, I put up a blog post with a couple of audio samples of these presets to give an idea of what I'm doing and what the results are:

Line 6 Helix - Making Using of Routing Options & FX Loops Ponderings of a One-Lick Pony: Line 6 Helix - Making Using of Routing Options & FX Loops


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## Alex (Feb 11, 2006)

well, i pre-ordered the Synth9. Damn you GC!. I sent the video clip to a friend and he did the same. If you contact Prymaxe, they will give you a 20% discount.


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## Robert1950 (Jan 21, 2006)

Alex said:


> well, i pre-ordered the Synth9. Damn you GC!. I sent the video clip to a friend and he did the same. If you contact Prymaxe, they will give you a 20% discount.


I should contact EHX and ask for a commission on this.


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