keyboard effects

February 3, 2009 2:16 PM

I just got a nice keyboard with no on-board effects. What are some good effects equipment for keyboard? Should I just string along some MXR pedals? Invest in a Roland Space Echo? VST?
posted by plexi to Media & Arts (3 answers total)

Best answer: You could do that. Or you could also get a cheap mixer to plug into that has an aux send or 2 with returns. Or if you want to plug into an amp, get one that has an effect loop on it.

Does the keyboard have an effects loop? if not, you may want to think about the mixer option, just to keep it clean.

A delay is crucial. Filters are also cool. Can't go wrong with pedals. If you can get your hands on a space echo, go for it. If you are playing live, the space echo sort of becomes an instrument in and of itself.
posted by chillmost at 2:50 PM on February 3, 2009

Best answer: What's your price range?

For bargain-basement, immediate-gratification purposes, you could always grab a handful of the horrible-but-cheap Behringer pedals. A potential problem is that guitar pedals are made to handle the frequency range of a guitar; they won't handle the low-end as well as you might like. I use a Korg multi effects pedal with some of my synthesizers and it's a ton o' fun but the quality can be iffy.

Another option is to get yourself a rackmount signal processor; MIDIVerbs and Lexicons are cheap on craigslist if you keep your eye open. The drawback here is in a lot of cases (as I understand it) they're programed via MIDI and don't have the fiddleable knobs that pedals do.
posted by lekvar at 3:24 PM on February 3, 2009

Phaser
posted by Ironmouth at 4:01 PM on February 3, 2009