Off Topic TC Electronics Pedals

[DrKev]

Falling in love with TC electronics pedals lately. I've had and loved the PolyTune for ages, got the Spark Booster a few weeks back, I've just got the Alter Ego delay a few days ago, and I'm about to order the Hall of Fame, the Ditto looper will probably follow too. I think I'm addicted.

I'm having a ball with the Alter Ego delay. I spent five hours with it on Thursday and Friday, gigged it last night. The audio tap thing is a cool alternative to stanard tap tempo, I love the looper for home practice and the TonePrint Editor is fantastic in that I can also save a chorus, flanger, or vibrato into that TP slot if I so wish!

What about you guys? How are you finding them in live use?

 

[beej]

I had a few of the TC pedals, but have since sold most of them (still have a HoF on my little board). They're great little pedals, but I found other ones that I liked more for the specific application.

Still, can't argue with the bang for the buck and the flexibility.

 

[paranoid70]

I love the Flashback Delay, definitely my favorite Delay pedal. I use it all the time.

I also have the Corona Chorus - very good for adding subtle chorus to 'thicken' up your sound. Very useful if you the only guitar player in a hard rock band. For me, this pedal is nearly always 'on'.

Lastly I have the Spark Booster as well. This one is pretty good, but I think there is serious competition here from other pedal manufacturers. Good pedal, but wouldn't say it's a 'must have'.

I would really love to try their Flange pedal. I've never seen on the stores though. Currently I use a really old Boss Flanger, and I think an upgrade might be in order soon.

 

[threeminutesboy]

I have a polytune too and a TC Nova Systems that I use for all digital effects a real great unit. I will probably add a ditto looper in the near futur

 

[DrKev]

I love the Flashback Delay, definitely my favorite Delay pedal. I use it all the time.

Lastly I have the Spark Booster as well. This one is pretty good, but I think there is serious competition here from other pedal manufacturers. Good pedal, but wouldn't say it's a 'must have'.

Eric, the Spark Boost is has surprised me. At first it's nothing special - a nice clean boost, not quite 'transparent' but nice, and very little noise (which was my main reason for buying it). But on the 'clean' setting, the gain knob introduces some compression. I run it before my OD pedal in the chain. With the OD on and the Spark driving the OD pedal I get extra gain and extra sustain and that extra compression allows some nice harmonic feedback at surprisingly reasonable gig volumes. It's a lot of fun!

What are you favourite settings on the Flashback? At first I thought the stock Tape setting was great but at last night's gig it's was a little too much modulation when I turned the mix up. 2290 is gorgeous but a little too bright on the repeats. I might need to make a somewhere-in-between TonePrint.

 

[mbeck]

Let me chime in here: my pedalboard consists mostly of TC pedals: a PolyTune, the Alter Ego, the Trinity and a Spark Booster, which was also my last purchase. I love them all, as they make me sound so much better With the Spark in front of everything my Amp started to breathe in Clean Channel. Don't know how elso to put it. Also my Drive-Pedal (Okko Diablo Gain+) got even better with the Spark Booster in front of it, just like DrKev stated My favorite Delay at the moment is the TonePrint, that came with. Pretty much modulation going on, but I dig it.

 

[Voo]

+1
I am running a HoF, Flashback, Corona and a Polytune
Love them all for the simplicity of use, totally worth every penny.

 

[ozzyrules]

Sorry to rain on the parade, but I had nothing but problems with TC. The polytune is great. The Corona chorus,and the flashback delay gave me great problems through my effects loop. I tried them on my buddy's Mesa Dual rectifier through the effects loop & he had the same problem. There was an impedance mismatch. I finally gave up after numerous calls to their customer service. They were horrible. Sold mine and will never buy them again. I've found what works with my equipment, and it's not TC electronics.

 

[Manxmusicman]

In my main rig I use a G Major 2 and before that used the nova system and I had no issues with them at all. Loved the versatility and the range of effects they have, the G Major works brilliantly with midi and my diezel head. Having said that I've been building a smaller pedal board with Digitech Hardwire stuff and find them to have a great natural sound particularly the reverb and delays that I can't get close to with the TC gear, maybe the single pedals trump the multi units but it has made me wonder if TC stuff sounds a little sterile compared to others in the market?

 

[paranoid70]

Eric, the Spark Boost is has surprised me. At first it's nothing special - a nice clean boost, not quite 'transparent' but nice, and very little noise (which was my main reason for buying it). But on the 'clean' setting, the gain knob introduces some compression. I run it before my OD pedal in the chain. With the OD on and the Spark driving the OD pedal I get extra gain and extra sustain and that extra compression allows some nice harmonic feedback at surprisingly reasonable gig volumes. It's a lot of fun!

What are you favourite settings on the Flashback? At first I thought the stock Tape setting was great but at last night's gig it's was a little too much modulation when I turned the mix up. 2290 is gorgeous but a little too bright on the repeats. I might need to make a somewhere-in-between TonePrint.

I use the Spark in the Effects loop for a volume boost. I had used in the front of the amp and was getting a cool OD for the clean channel... but no real volume boost, so I moved it to the effects loop. I am looking seriously at a Mesa amp with a built in volume boost. If I get that I would probably move the Spark up front. I also have a Pigtronix Fat Drive for an OD pedal as well.

For the Flashback I tend to use tape for long delays and the 2290 for short delays or when using it with chords (Pride in the name of Love by U2 for example.) I tried the toneprints but keep going back to the Tape and 2290.

 

[paranoid70]

In my main rig I use a G Major 2 and before that used the nova system and I had no issues with them at all. Loved the versatility and the range of effects they have, the G Major works brilliantly with midi and my diezel head. Having said that I've been building a smaller pedal board with Digitech Hardwire stuff and find them to have a great natural sound particularly the reverb and delays that I can't get close to with the TC gear, maybe the single pedals trump the multi units but it has made me wonder if TC stuff sounds a little sterile compared to others in the market?

I would use the word subtle rather than sterile.

 

[wheres my pick?]

I've got the chorus, flanger, and alter ego delay, as well as the almighty flashback X4. I used to use them a ton and they were great but I now have an axe fx. Great pedals though, the X4 is just so great, if I could only have one pedal it would be that one.

 

[Roxy]

I have the Polytune II (had the classic), Flashbackx4 (had Flashback), The Dreamscape (had Corona), Vortex Flanger, HOF Reverb, & Ditto Looper. I plan to buy the Shaker this year, and maybe another Flashback for pedal board use. All are excellent and no problems running the effects in the effects loop of my MESA Express 5:50 Combo. I run an ISP Decimator II 1st in the loop and everything works great with no noise. All powered by the Voodoo Lab Pedal Power 2 Plus. Both the amp and Pedal Power are plugged into a Furman Power Factor Pro. All true Bypass and connected using Mogami Platinum & Gold Cables. From crystal clear cleans to the MESA Burn crushing distortion no issues, just not fast at switching tones.

I tried the Rottweiler Distortion out before I bought my MESA and was very disappointed. Thought it was terrible. The Mojo Overdrive was okay, and the Dark Matter online demos sound all right, but since I have a MESA I'll get all my OD & Distortion from the amp.

My wish from TC Electronic would be to design an updated G-System that would be Toneprint enabled, and have the existing pedals all in one unit. I'm interested in checking out the current G-System, but since it's several years old I'm afraid to buy one and then they release an new G-System like I described. So, I'll wait and see what they do, or maybe look into an Axe-FX if it never happens.

 

[Roubster]

I have the corona and polytune. The chorus is pretty good and haven't really ha any issues with it. Only gripe I have with the pedals are the flimsy foot switches. Grated they have worked fine, but I always need to step on them with extra care to make sure it's on. I had the flashback x4, but it was just ridiculously big. Sounds were nice, but made me realize that I ways used mostly the tape settings. So I got an amazing tape delay which is tiny in comparison, versatile, tap tempo and 3 presets available to store. It's the Empress TD.

 

[joe web]

since they released the TP series, i had an eye on the flashback and the dreamscape, but never did the step and change my system to the TP series pedals. i love to have a delay which reacts to midi-taptempo....but the X4 seems a bit overblown for my needs.
but nevertheless i´m a longtime TC user and love their products.
having a G-Major (1st generation) still in one of my racks and since a few month i´m using a g-system (1st gerneration as well)
with my DC-5 Mesa head. great setup, cool sounds, no hum-noise, no problems at all. and the input-section on the 1st generation is fine for me.
maybe i´ll try a spark in front of the amp within the next weeks. let´s see if it opens up the sound a bit.
a toneprint option on the g-system would be awesome, but don´t think that this will come.

 

[mikeller]

I have a Flashback on my small board, and a Polytune, Corona and Vortex now on my main board. No problems whatsoever, am powering them with a Pedalpower2. The Corona and Vortex (along with a Boss DD20) in the amp loop. I had a SPARK Booster, but have sold it in favor of a Lizard Legs Flying Dragon - one knob and extremely transparent which is what I prefer.

 

[Dr. Rock]

A few years ago when my Boss GT-5 finally died, I went through the cost-vs.-function excersize about replacing the single effects unit with a system of pedals. Acting knee-jerkedly to a real good online deal I took a shot with the T.C. Nova System. Overall it's quite good and easy to haul and fast to set up. I can't say whether the onboard options actually sound as good as the stand-alone pedals, but T.C. claims its just a pared down G-System. I definitely recommend the Nova System at least for practice and small gigs, and I've heard of several pros who take it for a back-up option.

 

[DrKev]

Sorry to rain on the parade, but I had nothing but problems with TC. The polytune is great. The Corona chorus,and the flashback delay gave me great problems through my effects loop. I tried them on my buddy's Mesa Dual rectifier through the effects loop & he had the same problem. There was an impedance mismatch. I finally gave up after numerous calls to their customer service. They were horrible. Sold mine and will never buy them again. I've found what works with my equipment, and it's not TC electronics.

This may be an issue with the Mesa effects loop. I've read about it before with other pedals but I just came across it again this evening in relation to TC pedals. Simple mod to switch the effects loop from parallel to series (you can get the schematic from Mesa) and all works well. See here...

The Boogie Board • View topic - Issue with TC pedals in Rect-o-verb loop

 

[ozzyrules]

This may be an issue with the Mesa effects loop. I've read about it before with other pedals but I just came across it again this evening in relation to TC pedals. Simple mod to switch the effects loop from parallel to series (you can get the schematic from Mesa) and all works well. See here...

The Boogie Board • View topic - Issue with TC pedals in Rect-o-verb loop

Yeah, same problem with my Egnater. I spent a ton of time on the phone with Egnater technicians. We couldn't find a solution other than some type of mod. I guess my mentality is that it should be "plug & play" for the amount of $ spent. I have found other replacement pedals that work just fine in my loop. Thanks for the link, though.

 

[dannymusic]

man, I think thats very irresponsible to stick with one vendor.

dont you guys get it? Pedals are like being PIN collectors at disney world, it only works if you keep trading, and trading, and experimenting, and selling, and drooling, and pedal GAS and trading, and...........