my board only has a wireless receiver, into a drop tuner (that lowers or raises the overall tuning one step at a time - I use it on ONE song!) into a distortion box, into a digital echo, into a noise gate, into a digital tuner.. Sounds like a lot, but thats hardly anything compared to most guy's rigs..

What I NEED on my end is, well, all of them except the echo.. Echo would be the only thing I would get from the board, but ONLY if I had a sound guy that I had worked with that KNEW exactly how much echo I needed and when - mostly for solos to fatten up the sound.. meaning, you don't actually "hear" the repeats of the echo, but mixed properly it makes your overall sound very FAT and with super sustain, so its great for stretching long notes and dive bombing on the wang bar etc.. two handed hammer-ons (like Eddie Van Halen in Eruption) are MADE for echo.. you can fatten up that sound and it just sounds amazing - without echo its just thin..

So, for SOME reason, mixing echo in from the sound board sounds 100X better than running an echo on my pedal board.. it just does.. it fills the room and makes everyone think you're a God onstage.. running echo on my board just makes it sound not so flat and thin.. but boost it through the board and turn it WAY up during a string bend or and I swear everyone in the room starts bowing to me.. lol

So, after all that, basically I hafta control everything because we don't have a sound guy who works specifically for us every night and knows our music inside and out.. That way I can control when to shut off echo or when to turn on the noise gate, which kills your sound on a dime, which is necessary for songs with lots of stops and starts - like AC/DC etc...

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Friendship is like peeing your pants.. Everybody can see it, but only you can feel the warmth..