Effects pedals with ID amp

[meekmouse63]

Very late to the thread, but it is a thread that helped me to decide to try out the ID15TVP.
And it's the comments on the Amp playing well with pedals that made my decision for me.

That said I thought I'd air out some of my thought process from things I've read in this thread.

First, I'm a hobbiest, I don't gig. If I did my thought process would probably be a little different because moving less gear around is a big plus and less stage clutter is a big plus. I've got a music room and I play. I'm not a top flight guitarist, not a shredder, I'm old and fingers don't work that way anymore.
But what I do love is playing with and sculpting sonic textures and moods.

For the past 5 years I've been playing through various modeling units, the most recent being the Digitech RP line, it's been a couple years since I upgraded. My problem? I've never been happy with modeling sounds, I thought I was but I wasn't. What I mean here is for years I was playing through modeling and I was bored. One day I plugged in a Big muff again and played and went 'wow'....it just sounded different, and I started playing with it and then adding more pedals to change effects. And this leads me to the second point, or maybe third.

second. I don't have a big place or a place I can really crank stuff so I use lower volume amps and my little Marshall MG15 wasn't cutting it. It's SS circuits just didn't play very well with some of the pedals, and it broke up way too easily and not in the good breakoff since, more of an extreme clipping issue. (probably the result of only having one volume knob).
So I started looking at Tube amps....I love tube amps, I love the sound, I love how they react to strong input signals, I love how they respond to overdrive, clean or otherwise. Most importantly I love how they respond to volume control from the guitar and how that interacts with pedals...
So why not get a tube amp? I was going to until I came across this amp. While I love Tube amps, and have owned them in the past, they can be very temperamental and they don't deal real well with certain degrees of humidity. Neither do most electronics, but especially tubes in my experience. Plus they're a pain and kind of expensive in the long term to maintain.
But, for the sound I was willing to go back down that road this time The more I read about the the ID series and it's tube emulation and that it responds in most cases like a tube I was intrigued, this forum helped push me over the edge on that.

Third, and finally (I'm sure you're glad).
Why use pedals with a modeling amp? I've not come across a modeling amp that really when push comes to shove responds like a pedal chain. I've had modelers where you could change the order of effects but they didn't really drive and interact the same way.
Take the Big Muff for example, it behaves and sounds completely different if you put a clean or slightly dirty overdrive before it than it does after it. The sound texture just changes completely. Put a blues overdrive pedal in front of the Muff, or a Soul food, and the texture changes, add a clean boost somewhere later in the chain and you get a lead tone using the same feel...I've never found a modeler that you can effectively do that.
The same with with Wah's (Bad Horsie II) or an Autowah (MXR M120). Placing them before the distortion or fuzz they sound one way, place them after the distortion or fuzz and you get a more muted, but still interesting feel.

Same with Phasers, chorus, flangers, etc..though the latter flanger is almost always near the end of my chain just before delays and reverbs. Which brings me to the last reason I am sticking with pedals...Delay....
One of the things that really interests me is playing and experimenting with multiple delays in the signal stream (Brain May Brighton rock solo for example, and primary influence in the experimentation). It's the reason I bought a TC electronics Triple delay pedal. I didn't see an effects loop on the 15 model, maybe the 60 head does, I didn't look because while I have a 4x12 cabinet I seldom use it because of noise levels in my current residential area. since a delay should always, IMHO, be at the end of the effects loop that pretty much rules out modeling amp features.

That's my thinking anyway, perhaps it's flawed. Perhaps the Blackstar software is evolved to the point where it resolves those issues..if so then I have a lot of pedals that will wind up on EBAY lol...Nice thing about ebay, if you're patient eventually you'll find the pedal you're looking for at a price that if you don't like the pedal or no longer need it you can resell it at little, if any loss...kind of like renting a sound for awhile...I did that a lot until I found the pedals I really liked that provided the sounds I was looking for...almost all pedals can be made to sound good on youtube by controlling what settings and equipment is used (and i swear some of them use additional EQ)

I've rambled enough, thanks all for helping me make up my mind to give the Blackstar ID:15TVP a spin. It was the tube simulator discussion that put me over the top.

[meekmouse63]

Followup point, I neglected to add. I've yet to find a non analog Univibe pedal that sounds right. the TC Electronics Viscous gets close, but it's still a little too pristine and in most cases works exceptionally well, until you hit certain effects where it just sounds....fake, for lack of a better word, I've never heard a digital Univibe that sounds quite right for the 'Bridge of Sighs' sound (probably because most, if not all, lack expression pedal input) or on some Pink Floyd sounds they just don't ever quite sound right....which leads back to why I prefer pedals over modeling....but again, maybe Blackstars software has evolved the modeling platform to the point none of the aforementioned holds true.

There's also the old man in me. I relate better to pedals than I do to software for adjusting sounds..I know what pedal is doing what and more or less if I want to change a sound what pedal to go to and what adjustments to make to that particular pedal to get the sound I want.

BTW not knocking the amp or those who use modeling, like I said in a live situation most of what I'm talking about has little bearing, that level of detail to sound doesn't really apply.

[notryt]

I use a full pedal board and a hd500 on the ID:60 and ID:100... I like to mix and match effects.. delay, chorus, reverb, octaver, OD, looper, etc, I bought the amps for the tube emulations.. not the effects... when i just want to play around ill mess with the effects on the amp. I do have the fs10, a handy addition but it is a bit noisy and i don't really use it