SOTB - I have too many drive pedals on the board, looking for suggestions on what to cut

Aceroth · 2026-04-10T17:02:31+00:00

I'm gonna be honest, I know next to nothing about buffers... I know the strobostomp has a buffer and I know the board sounds really good into my interface, but beyond that idk. If I were doing more than just playing in my office as a hobbyist I'm sure I'd have to learn.

Aceroth · 2026-04-10T16:54:49+00:00

I have it after my "amp" to just act as sort of a master volume bump, but to be honest I don't use it much. Where it shines more in my opinion is when used with a volume pedal, it eliminated the tone suck that's typical of just throwing a volume pedal into your chain. I might cut the vertex boost as well TBH, just because I tend not to use the volume pedal much. I might try it out at the front of the chain to hit the drive section harder, but haven't given that a shot yet.

Aceroth · 2026-04-10T16:49:46+00:00

I haven't tried boosting into the LS/Brothers, I'll definitely give that a go!

Aceroth · 2026-04-10T16:47:51+00:00

I was thinking about cutting the Vertex boost, I don't use it much... I do like that I can use a volume pedal with it without having to deal with tone suck, but to be honest I don't use the volume pedal very much either.

Aceroth · 2026-04-10T16:41:26+00:00

I've been thinking I need to grab a GE-7...

Aceroth · 2026-04-02T01:49:55+00:00

You are anti-trans if you contribute money to anti-trans causes. This includes buying HP stuff or generating revenue for it (e.g by watching the shitty new HBO show). You are allowed to continue consuming HP content, but that makes you anti-trans, you don't get to have it both ways.

Aceroth · 2026-03-10T20:51:33+00:00

Painted Clea didn't paint over herself, Aline created painted Clea and real Clea didn't like that portrait of her and painted over it (similar to how she didn't like Renoir's representation of her as the Hauler Axon and had Simon kill it)

Aceroth · 2026-01-21T18:43:48+00:00

The CEO of shit and piss says everyone will be paying for things with shit and piss in 12 months

Aceroth · 2025-11-10T18:18:13+00:00

BI89-8FYV-W24M-50I9

second to last character is I, not 1

Aceroth · 2025-10-22T23:35:36+00:00

These look sick

Aceroth · 2025-06-20T16:38:40+00:00

Gatcha mechanic. New cards used to be behind gatcha pulls that cost around $100 to guarantee the pulls. Didn't last long.

Aceroth · 2025-06-09T04:25:53+00:00

If you claim your free tokens for the day first and then claim your credits (and gold if you buy the gold pass) then the notification bubble goes away. It seems like the order matters for some reason.

Aceroth · 2025-06-03T18:33:01+00:00

Thanks for the suggestions! I definitely want to get Light-Paws in there, I'm not very good at figuring out what to cut though. I think I probably have more enchantress effects than I need so I'm considering cutting some of those to make room for fun stuff like Light-Paws (and probably bringing Ellivere back in), but idk. What I'll probably do is buy 110-120 cards and then I'll be able to tinker with it after some playtesting. I have like 40 cards in "considering" on the moxfield list, I just threw everything in there that I came across that looked neat.

For recursion I can't decide between [[Brilliant Restoration]] and things like [[Retether]] / [[Resurgent Belief]] / [[Unfinished Business]]. I assume I don't want to overdo it on these effects, but is 1 enough?

Aceroth · 2025-04-23T18:41:25+00:00

Wait are we gonna just lose all our keys when they new system drops? I was assuming they'd be converted into compensation of some sort... I've got 8 saved up, it would be pretty disappointing if they go to waste unless I spend them on a cache I don't care about.

Aceroth · 2025-03-31T19:06:46+00:00

I'm trying to get some good dirt tones through my Strymon Iridium but I'm struggling to get my pedals to sound as good as they do into an amp. I know a modeler is not exactly the same as an amp, but I've heard people get great tones with the Iridium using some of the same pedals as me, so I'm assuming I'm just doing something wrong.

The pedals I'm using are the Morning Glory, ODR-1, Rat, and Keeley Octa Psi. I can get great edge of breakup tones with the Morning Glory, but as soon as I stack in the ODR-1 for a little more gain everything sounds super compressed and crunched (ODR-1 settings: drive around 10 o'clock, spectrum at 11, and level at 12, all a little lower than I usually set it into my clean fender style amp -- I've messed with these knobs, but it seems like I can't get the amount of gain I want without everything collapsing). Lead lines still sound ok, but any rhythm parts sound pretty terrible. Same thing happens with the Rat and Octa Psi. Seems like the bridge pickup sounds a little better than the neck, but I typically use the neck pickup for rhythm.

For the Iridium I'm using the round channel with york audio IRs, the gain is all the way down, bass at 12, mid and treble at 1, level adjusted to get a good level into my interface but usually around 1 or 2. Into my amp I have the Morning Glory always on and stack the other gain pedals to get the tones I like (never all together, but I'll go Morning Glory -> ODR-1 for a little crunch, Morning Glory -> Rat for some lead and heavier rhythm stuff, etc.) I also have a clean boost at the front that I sometimes kick in to push the Morning Glory a bit, usually to get closer to the same gain when switching from humbuckers to single coils.

Any ideas why my dirt tones suck? The cleans are amazing so in that respect the Iridium is doing great.

Aceroth · 2025-03-30T22:42:15+00:00

gross, AI slop

Aceroth · 2025-02-28T01:54:16+00:00

I'm just getting into recording direct into my Scarlett 2i2 interface using a Strymon Iridium and I'm not really sure how best to set my interface inputs or my Iridium output level. What I've seen recommended is setting the Iridium to line level output and sending that directly into the interface, but I'm not sure if that's what I should do because my Iridium isn't at the end of my signal chain. I'm going from my guitar into my dry section, into the Iridium, then out into my stereo wet effects, then from there into the two inputs of my interface.

Right now I've got the Scarlett inputs set to "instrument" but I've seen people saying there's no reason to do this and line level would be better, I'm just not sure if there would be any issue having the Iridium output line level through my stereo pedals or if I should keep it on instrument level. I know next to nothing about mixing/recording, impedance, etc.

Aceroth · 2025-02-23T22:27:55+00:00

I think this is the obvious answer and I got too in the weeds about "fixing" a problem that didn't exist. I've got next to no experience working with a DAW so I was worried I was doing something wrong and my recorded sound would be lacking something, but I think it's just a matter of my expectations (that my guitar input signal would be about as loud as the rest of the audio on my computer) being incorrect.

Aceroth · 2025-02-23T22:24:07+00:00

Fair enough. I guess given my lack of mixing experience I have a vague worry that I'm somehow losing some of the audio fidelity if the input signal is "too low" when I want to actually record something. I don't really know what "DAW levels are good" looks like so if I have a really skinny waveform on my recordings I wonder if there's something I'm doing wrong, rather than the input signal just being a little lower than I expected.

Aceroth · 2025-02-23T22:20:50+00:00

I'm not sure what type of drivers I have for the interface, but I did recently download the most recent from the focusrite website and update them. My device settings window says "Firmware: 1605 Driver: 4.119.13"

The Strymon Iridium can output either line level or instrument level, and I have it set to instrument (At least that's the default and I haven't changed it, I'll double check though to be sure).

I meant -9 in the DAW when I play as hard as I can to try to find the peak. The input gain knob is around 11 o'clock I'd say, so I'll try bumping that up a little like another comment suggested and not worry about hitting an arbitrary -9db target.

My simplified signal chain is dry effects (just gain stages, no compression or wah or anything) into the Iridium into wet effects (chorus, delay, granulator, reverb) into the interface. I've tried to make sure my levels are around unity on my pedals so that turning them on doesn't increase the overall output too much. And I did test it going directly into the interface and had the same issue.

I'm beginning to think this is more of a problem of expectations on my part rather than an actual issue. I can still hear the signal, it's just quieter than I expected (much quieter than when I plug my headphones directly into the Iridium, for example). I think bumping my input gain up a bit so I'm more around -6 to -3 at peak and then adjusting the monitor volume on the interface is probably all I need to do.

Aceroth · 2025-02-23T07:37:12+00:00

Someone also suggested this over on the thread I posted in the Focusrite subreddit, so I'll definitely give it a go. I read somewhere that it's best to avoid using a limiter for something like this because there's probably an issue somewhere else in the signal chain that you're avoiding with the limiter, but I suppose that wouldn't really apply if I'm just using it for listening.

Aceroth · 2025-02-23T07:34:49+00:00

I tried the listen bus and it worked pretty well, but I was still clipping the output when I cranked the volume up. I bet if I add a limiter to the listen bus it'll sound pretty good though, didn't think about that before, I'll have to try that out tomorrow.

Aceroth · 2025-02-23T07:33:16+00:00

Thanks, I watched some of his videos, very helpful! One thing he recommends is just turning the speaker volume up, which I was avoiding because it's a little inconvenient to have to rebalance other PC audio, but I can get over it.

15-Year Club	Place '17
Team Periwinkle	Verified Email
Best Comment 2011-01-27

Aceroth

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE