Ranchomojo Redux; Rig Rundown

[mojobone]

Due to recent and ongoing upgrades, It feels like time to revisit the subject of what I'd refer to as my 'fortress of solitude', if it weren't overrun with cats. Heck, there's probably a decorative bat somewheres, left over from Halloween, so let's call it my batcave. Pictures to come, and I'll be adding to this a little at a time, cuz there's a lot of ground to cover, what with hardware and software both inside and outside the box, MIDI, triggers, amps, speakers, stompware and possibly more than a mile of cabling. I'll begin with

The Trinity

Line6 X3Live, Korg SV1 and Line6 Variax

The X3Live is the heart of the instrument rig; a Swiss Army knife of inputs and outputs, coupled with extremely powerful and flexible effects and modeling and sophisticated routing possibilities, including dual amp/FX chains with dual assignable outputs on XLR and quarter inch connectors. discounting the FX loop return and the 8th-inch stereo line input, there are four inputs you can route; Guitar, Aux, XLR Mic and Variax, which connects, powers and even controls the whizbang modeling axe, or you can control the X3Live from the guitar, but better you should use the pedalboard, cuz that way, you can touch a button and change the entire guitar, amp and effects rig, any effect, every parameter, including the pickup switching, but not the knobs, which won't update, 'til you move them, a nice touch. The two amp/FX chains are known as Tone One and Tone Two, and Tone Two can be conveniently locked from the front panel so that a guitarist can stomp and change patches while the bassist (or whatever) routed to Tone Two can keep the same patch whether it's a bass amp or a console preamp. It has one tiny yet substantial limitation; it doesn't quite do re-amping, even though you can simultaneously record dry signals when using the X3Live as a USB interface.The XLR mic input does not have phantom power, but can also accept line level sources. The analog effects loop can be placed before or after the amp/cab/mic modeling, again, per Tone/chain.

The Variax already does lightning-fast instrument changes-you can switch from a standard-tuned '59 Les Paul to a 30's metal-body resonator in a modal tuning at the click of a knob. So usually, there's a Variax in the variax/ethernet port, a J bass in the Aux, routed to respective guitar and bass amp chains, or in the case of the metal-body resonator or the mic input, a console preamp emulation. (there are three to pick from) This still leaves the Guitar input available for one of the nine other guitars or pretty much anything else with a quarter inch output.
All of the above is available per patch and there are dozens of patch locations/banks. The XLR outputs are routed to inputs 2 and 3 on The Brain, which we'll get to, later. Generally both the Variax and the Guitar inputs are routed to brain input 2 and bass to input 3 (Mic and Aux almost always feed Tone 2, which routes to input 3) The quarter inch outs can be either line or instrument level, which lets you do tons of fun stuff like using a pedalboard for parallel processing or routing any input signal to a guitar amp, or to a power amp for monitoring or a long list of what have you, which brings me to item 3:

The Korg SV1 Stage Vintage, and it does a couple of other things for the sake of stage utility, but what it does best is vintage stage piano emulations, but not just the combis and the wurlies, but also the amps and speaker cabinets they were plugged into, a genius move, IMO, because it's where a lot of sampled keyboard instruments are lacking. Speaking of which, the samples are a bit of a mixed bag, but they're mostly outstanding.

Maybe what I love most is that this beast doesn't try to do everything; there's a few brass, string and organ patches thrown in for completeness' sake, but there are pass-through inputs for stacking what I presume would be a clonewheel organ in most stage rigs, but I opted for a second stage piano (a Casio PX3 88 with graded hammer action) that mostly does sampled piano, but is there mostly to trigger ginormous samples residing in uh...The Muscles which is a Mac Pro with a dozen cores and 40G of RAM; more about that, later.The SV1 also offers outputs simultaneously available at both line level on XLR (these connect to inputs 5 and 6 on the back of The Brain) and at instrument level, which is convenient for routing to stompboxes and/or real live, tube amps, cuz the internal amp sims are defeatable-too bad they're not independently defeatable per output, like on the X3Live, but I guess you can't have everything...Possibly its best feature is that it's beautiful and everybody that sees it wants to put their hands on it, and when they do, the action is buttery smooth, solid and consistent; it feels and responds like a brand new Rhodes, while sporting red over black reverse keys, like your grandpa's Farfisa.

Of course there's much more to cover, like the compact collection of guitars, amps and stompboxes, and more importantly, the percussion station, plus how it's all situated and the synergies and interactions and whatnot, but here's a good place to stop, for now.

[Len911]

Wow Mojo, upgrades, I'll stay tuned, same bat channel, same bat station, or whatever they used to say

https://youtu.be/alQ0zUjLLmg