Revisiting the Intellifex

[bobmeyrick]

A decade or two ago I used a Rocktron Intellifex and Midimate, before going back to stomp boxes. Rack units were not the way to go. The poor thing was just sitting there, unused and unloved...

 

Just recently I thought I'd dig it out and give it a whirl, for old times sake. Most of the patches were presets with a couple I'd programmed myself. I looked online and downloaded a few Allan Holdsworth-style chorussy reverby things... interesting, but not really usable for the sort of thing I play most of the time.

 

Which led me to consider what sort of effects do I actually use most of the time, and I came to the conclusion that all I really needed was a touch of reverb, with maybe a subtle echo (Robben Ford used a TC2290 for that), a slapback echo, a bit of chorus and something that approximates to a univibe/Leslie effect (a light vibrato will do). The Intellifex can do this and much more besides - cavernous reverbs and pitch changing for example.

 

So I dug out the manual, got programming, and now patches 1 to 9 cover the sounds I'd use pretty much all the time. The Midimate has the option of plugging in an expression pedal and I've got that controlling the vibrato speed on one patch. One thing missing is effect "spillover", but hey, this unit is about 20 years old. Who knows, I may even use it on a gig!

[gpuma]

these things from a logistics point of view make so much sense that I keep wondering how is it possible that the "multi-effect unit era" came to an end

[bobmeyrick]

these things from a logistics point of view make so much sense that I keep wondering how is it possible that the "multi-effect unit era" came to an end.

 

I think it may be because you can't really change the sounds "on the fly", unless you have the expression pedal controlling a specific parameter. As guitarists, we are generally not happy dealing with menus...

[gpuma]

 

I think it may be because you can't really change the sounds "on the fly", unless you have the expression pedal controlling a specific parameter. As guitarists, we are generally not happy dealing with menus...

 

absolutely, but just the troubleshooting nightmare when something goes wrong, the power issues, the loss of signal through, the noise... I don't know, it seems a lot worse than few menus. I have a conventional pedal board too, just to be clear, but I never was happy about it

[mars_hall]

I have the blackface and XP versions in use in my rig. Pedals were a source of noise and fallout in subtle clarity.

[Kuz]

I have an inteliverb I used to use to record with (and used to occasionally use live). It sounded great, very low noise. But like said above, dialing in tone live, really hard to do.

 

Thus now, live, it's physical pedals that I can just spin a knob if needed.

 

Great units though, well ahead of their time.

[t0aj15]

these things from a logistics point of view make so much sense that I keep wondering how is it possible that the "multi-effect unit era" came to an end

It didn't, in fact they've become far better than ever before I currently use this;