H90 with Boss ES-8 – simpler and better than I imagined

[rograt]

At its peak, as well as a Wah and dirt boxes my pedal board has a Boss MD500, RD500, DD500 and a Pitchfactor. All of this required patches that moved effects in from or after the amp’s preamp using Loop 7 and 8.

I came to the H90 thinking about how I was going to make that work. I set the H90 in Dual mode and started to think.

The first revelation was that I could dispense with Loop 8 and keep the Amp effect loop completely away from the ES-8. This is really liberating. I already have a master effects switch on my amp controller so the last thing I need is yet another control on the ES-8.

The second major breakthrough required a leap of faith and that was to remove the H90 completely from the ES-8 so that all the ES-8 does now is output to the first path of the H90.

Having freed up two loops and some switches I went about setting up the controls.

My Boss EV30 performs the Expression pedal duties as before.

The Digitech 3 way switch switches between Select, Bank and Perform mode. This is much more important than you may think. For one thing you can bash the switches with your feet but also you don’t need a long press to go into bank mode.

The set up was still lacking immediacy and I fulfilled this with unused capacity in the ES-8. I used 2 x Boss FS7 dual switches connected to the ES-8 and sending MIDI commands to the H90 to do Bank UP, Bank DOWN, Load next program, Load previous program (no more 2 press operations).

Finally with buttons 7 and 8 redundant on my ES-8 I set those for 7=toggle Bypass on Preset 1 and 8=toggle Bypass on Press B. This means that in the future I have 3 Hotswitches to play with.

The big advantage of all of this is that you can have the H90 in the mode you want and displaying what you want but those added functions still work.

Here, if I can get it to work are pics.

 

[Lorpal]

Does this mean you are not using preset mode on the ES8 – only loop mode?

 

[rograt]

Yes I still use Preset mode but I now need to also create some new presets with H90 MIDI controls. So yes, at the moment it isn’t much more than using Loop (manual) mode 🙂

[rograt]

A few things to add.

1) This set up would not have worked if the sound quality was not up to scratch. I am pleased to report that in DSP bypass I find the sound quality excellent.

2) I like to “play” my set up. In my previous set up I had ES-8 switches to, for example, turn the modulation pedal on in any preset. The problem was that the ES-8 would not carry this setting into the next preset selection so I would have to turn it on again. I no longer have that problem.

3) I rarely used a compressor but had one on my board. The EQ Compressor in the H90 is excellent for my purpose so I have been able to dispense with the pedal.

4) Do I need an ES-8? Good question. Right now I don’t need 8 loops and I don’t need the Volume loop. I do need all of the switches. In fact I could do with at least 4 more.

I hope this helps anyone planning a similar set up. I don’t profess to have the ultimate set up. I just wanted to show how flexible the H90 is. In many ways the H90 and ES-8 remind me of my old TC electronic G-System before it became so obsolete.

[joecozzi]

This is a great use case. I invite you to join and post your experience on the Facebook H90 Users Page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/h90users

[Sorbz62]

Hi Rograt,

What do you mean ‘moved effects in from or after the amp’s preamp using Loop 7 and 8’?

You can move any loop on the ES-8 into any position relative to the amps FX loop, which I presume is using the ES-8 volume loop.  For example you can have loop 8 right at the start of the chain this:

7-6-5-4-V-3-2-1-8

In this example 8 is first and loops 4,5,6 and 7 are in the amp FX loop.

If we talk about the H90 in this above example, and if you used it in dual mode using ES-8 loops 7 and 8, you could have a pitch effect first and a delay or reverb last. It’s easy.

[rograt]

Hi Sorbz62

I get what you are saying. At my peak I had pedals for Reverb L8, Delay L7, Mod, L6, Pitch L5. Then dirt boxes in L1-4

So typical ES-8 presets might look like

1234V5678
124356V78

I then changed a little and had Mod and Pitch on dedicated switches so they could be turned on and off. This worked fine as long as I didn’t change ES-8 preset at which time Mod/Pitch would need to be turned on again.

Then I complicated it by getting into Octave pedals (I’m trying to get a nice OC5 sound for in front of amp with the H90 – not there yet) which sometimes I like in front of the amp and sometimes I like them in the effects loop.

With the H90 rather than make the effects fit my ES-8 patches the Programs store the routing information.

My chain is now ES-8 (effectively my analogue dirt boxes and OC5) > H90 Path 1 > Amp Input > Amp Effect Send > H90 Path 2 > Amp Effects Return

I have changed the Bypass switch on the ES-8 to a short press so I can go straight into the H90 very easily.

OK so the weakness with my setup is, if I want to put a Flanger in front of my Fuzz I can no longer do this but I don’t miss that. If I really feel the need to do that I may get another analog pedal to use with one of the H90 inserts.

We all have different requirements but this is perfect for me. It helps having a 12-mode amp. Some of the milder overdrive set ups work great with H90 effects into them and some of the heavier drive settings definitely don’t.

[rograt]

Just to confirm – I am using Dual Routing and I’m really enjoying using all routing options

Path 1 Series
Path 1 Parallel
Path 1 Pre, Path 2 Post
Path 2 Parallel
Path 2 Series

Yes you can do this with ES-8 presets but I prefer having this integrated in the H90 and in the H90 Program set up

[Author]

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