Do you own a ToneCore?

[Peter Snowberg]

I'm taking a little survey here. I have two yes/no questions:

      (1) Do you own any ToneCore pedals?

and if the answer to #1 is yes:

      (2) Based on your experience, do you see yourself getting more?

I'm not looking to debate digital or anything like that. I'm really just looking for one of two super basic answers; either Yes & No, or Yes & Yes.

Thanks everyone! I appreciate it!

[gez]

Am I missing something Peter, or should there be a poll at the top of this post?  If so, I'm not seeing anything.

Anyway, I don't own any...but I rarely buy pedals. 

[Doug_H]

Yes. Yes.

Doug

[littlegreiger]

I don't own any but I would really like to get an Echo Park and maybe a Roto-machine. However, they are a little to expensive for me right now.

[ShoeGazer]

Yes (Echo Park)
Yes (Verbzilla)

[tommy.genes]

1) I have a Liquaflange on the way...

BTW, Music 123 has a deal on some non-factory sealed units right now
http://www.music123.com/Guitar-Effects-q21d733o.music?o=5

2) I'll have to answer this one after I get the Liquaflange, but I might be interested in the Echo Park or Otto Filter, and to a lesser extent Verbzilla or Roto-Machine.

-- T. G. --

[ezanker]

Not Yet...
Considering Echopark and liquaflange.

[aron]

Yes, but they should make the body out of Titanium :-)

[amz-fx]

Yes. Yes.

[puretube]

NO / NO
(though it seems, that "no" is no answer...)

[Garrett]

You missed the echo park thread a while back. I learned alot from that one. But I have yet to test drive one. Sounds pretty good. There was some powersupply issues. From what I understand you will get noise using a PS with other pedals. But as long as you use a dedicated PS for the echo park I understand unwanted noise is not an issue.

I own a boss dd-5 and i love it but recording I hate it. I am going to send it off to analogman to get the HI-Cut mod, which cut's the high's on the repeats so it sounds more like an analoge delay.  Moral of the story the dd-5 repeats are identical to the dry signal, which is the problem I hear from most digital delay's. Sorry for being the thread terrorist and hijacking.

[bwanasonic]

yes, maybe (liqua flange?)


Kerry M

[southtown]

no

[amz-fx]

You missed the echo park thread a while back. I learned alot from that one. But I have yet to test drive one. Sounds pretty good. There was some powersupply issues. From what I understand you will get noise using a PS with other pedals. But as long as you use a dedicated PS for the echo park I understand unwanted noise is not an issue.

As a beta tester for Line 6, I tried to duplicate the noise and power supply problems with the Tonecore pedals. I was unable to do that under any circumstances using a whole collection of Tonecore pedals.  I had the earliest Echo Park versions and never had any hiss...  and I exchanged modules numerous times during the testing and none of them had the problem.

With regard to the power supplies, I have used OEM switching power supplies, the Line 6 adapter, a cheap Radio Shack adapter and more - then daisy-chained two Tonecores together, then two Tonecores with some Boss or Ibanez pedals and could not ever get the power supply hum issues. 

That's not to say that some people did not expereince problems but I suspect that many of the alleged problems were in the pedalboard or guitar of the person trying them. It may be that there was a grounding issue with the persons guitar or amp??  I just know that I have never been able to duplicate any of the noise complaints though I have tried several times.

In my estimation, the whole issue has been VASTLY overblown.  Maybe Mark can throw in some comments on his experiences with them.

regards, Jack

[Doug_H]

I don't have the breadth of experience with the Line 6 gear as Jack or the other beta-testers, but I have a roto-machine and have played with the liqua-flange at the store. I have not experienced any noise problems with either one of these- none, zip, nada, neither with the battery or wall-wart.  Matter of fact, the roto-machine is pretty quiet and only gets a slight background hiss when you crank up the drive control, as you would normally expect.

After seeing some of these comments on other gear forums I've noticed that a lot of the complainaints are using multi-effect "pedalboard power supplies" and etc. I suspect that is the root of the problem in some cases. I power my stuff with individual wall-warts plugged into a power strip and have no problems at all.

Doug

[Mark Hammer]

I have not tested mine under the rigourous conditions that Jack has, but I have noticed no noise issues, and whatever hiss there may have been was WAY less than anything analog delivers, and way less than what I was getting on my Zoom unit or my DOD multi-FX floor unit.  I have used mine only with very low-end "rehabilitated" wall-warts (translation: I added another cap for smoothing), and have experienced no bizarreness as a consequence of that.  Given the high current demands of the unit, it may be the case that folks sharing a PS across several pedals "starve" the EP a bit o occasion, but that's obviously just a shot in the dark.  They're not all idiots, but I'm not that confident, however, that the average musician would do the math and calculate what sort of current capabilities are needed in the PS to be shared across pedals.  To be fair, not all stompboxes provide the sort of information that might be useful or easily accessible to do such calculations.

In the autumn of 2004, or maybe the winter of 2004-2005, the beta testers got a note from Line 6 indicating that a software upgrade had provided improved noise gate functioning and that we could/should return out modules for a quieter upgraded one.  I did not until recently receive mine, and for a variety of reasons involving the customs people and Fedex and individual schedules spent a lengthy period between the old and new modules with no pedal to test.  I would not trust my instincts in this instance, for comparison purposes.  The new one is problem-free, though.

Suffice it to say, that they would not have sent us that note unless there were some initial customer complaints about the first production modules that warranted changes, and unless the changes had improved things.  Some 15 months or so after their initial release, I would assume that all the initial first-run ones have been sold, or recalled or whatever.  Having said that, however, if the only place you have found one is that local small-town music store that has had the same 4 pedals in the display case for the last 3 years, next to the polka sheet music and those 3 really bad Chinese amplifiers with the 6" speakers, it might be best to order yours from an outlet that has higher turnover of stock and is assured of having the most recent production ones. It's a bit like buying cigars or smokes - you buy them from a place that sells them fast.

[Doug_H]

Given the high current demands of the unit, it may be the case that folks sharing a PS across several pedals "starve" the EP a bit o occasion, but that's obviously just a shot in the dark. 

That's an excellent observation, Mark. Given that these dsp pedals are notorious battery killers, much moreso than the typical analog gear, I wonder if people take that into acct when they plug it into their pedal power pack.

They're not all idiots, but I'm not that confident, however, that the average musician would do the math and calculate what sort of current capabilities are needed in the PS to be shared across pedals.  To be fair, not all stompboxes provide the sort of information that might be useful or easily accessible to do such calculations.

One of the nice things I discovered when I got home with my roto-machine was that they did provide that info right there in the manual. In fact, I don't recall seeing the typical "must use authorized XXX co. power supply or all matter of  hellfire will rain down upon you" statement in there. Instead the tone was more like "you can use our pwr supply or one that can handle this voltage and current - whatever...". Pretty refreshing for a big corporation. I was also surprised that my boss wall-warts had enough juice for this thing. I had already bought the L6 supply at the store before I knew this, but it's nice to know I could use the boss unit if I had to.

Doug

[Mark Hammer]

I haven't been following the debate/dialogue on other forums regarding this issue/nonissue.  Do people mention the power context they find themselves in?  E.g., do we know what the current rating of the wallwarts used is, and/or what the current requirements of any concurrently used pedals might be?

I say this because there may be a real noise issue that only arises under certain conditions.  It would be useful to identify those conditions accurately so that people can avoid them.

[Doug_H]

Mark, I was following a thread at TGP here: http://www.thegearpage.net/board/showthread.php?t=101875

Funny, after you read it you realize it was basically only one guy complaining (and he did have some specific info about his power setup) and some others chiming in that either didn't like Line6, DSP, didn't get along with their parents when they were kids, etc, etc... In any case, I agree with Jack in that it is "VASTLY overblown". In fact, if you read through the thread (I think) there are more people that really like the tonecore pedals vs. a small yet vocal minority who don't. Typical internet stuff...

But anyway, your idea about current starving gave me an idea and I did some investigation. It appears that according to the info provided by the original poster about his power box (pedalpower II) he may have been on the hairy edge wrt the current reqts of the tonecore pedals. (Read my post at the end of the thread for the details.)  I suspect what we are seeing are people coming to terms with the vastly higher current reqts of DSP, and not really understanding what they are seeing yet.

Doug

[Mark Hammer]

I've probably mentioned it before, but there is a concept in social psychology, referred to as the "availability heuristic".  The basic principle is that humans estimate the frequency with which something has occurred, based on how easily examples come to mind.  As heuristics go, that's not a bad one since when things happen all the time examples will come to mind very easily.

The problem arises that when one or two people go on and on about someting, providing robust memories for us that pop into our heads quickly, we overestimate the frequency.  This leads to another social phenomenon, described in the typical intro psych text, called "false consensus", or the impression that there is widespread agreement about something.  Should one friend go to a restaurant and go on and on about how lousy the food and service was, chances are pretty good that if someone asked us on another occasion if that restaurant was any good, we would be likely to say "I've heard that it's not very good from a bunch of people".

That's one of the problems with forums that function as gossip pages, in the way that HC and others do.  A couple of people go on and on about something and others come to the mistaken impression that either product X experiences such problems all the time, or alternatively that product Y makes everyone happy all the time.  In both cases the actual frequency of consumer satisfaction or dissatisfaction may be highly overestimated.

You got to watch out for the weaknesses of the human mind!