For sure it's a little complicated but I think the physical layout and cables help make sense for someone like me who works best with being able to literally see the pathways
I have a Patchulator and it takes some preplanning to get the signal chain set up just right. I like it! The inputs and outputs are TRS sockets. That means, if you have stereo effects, you can run the output from the stereo effect into the Patchulator. If the L & R outputs are separate on mono TS outputs, you can use a Y cable to bring those two signals (L & R) into a single TRS input jack to the Patchulator socket. Same also for the green patch cables on top. This does give you an ability to do parallel patching by splitting the signal and then using a Y cable to take the signal to two devices at once (parallel). Yes, it gets complex, but if you take your time and map it out, this can be achieved and widen your sound. Good video, Emily!
When I first saw these, a few years ago, I thought "Hey, I could make one of those!". So I did. I was able to fit 5 "loops" into a 125-sized enclosure (same size as the Skylar pedal shown). I might be possible to fit more, but the limiting factor tends to be the size of the phone jacks used. The nice thing is that it fits well into a pedalboard.
@@bonjonbovi- So do I! I've tried several times to post with a link to the only photo I have, but I think a filter of some sort here blocks any posts with an image-hosting-site link.
@@markhammer643 That's so sad. Do you have a tutorial on how to build this? I would like to have one too, but this one seems to be to costy & limited in the pedals you can connect.
There's not really all that much to it - one 1/8" phone jack for every 1/4" phone jack. Drill holes on the side of the box for the 1/4" jacks, and holes on the top for the 1/8" jacks. Each 1/4" jack gets connected to a 1/8" jack, making sure everything is properly labelled/legended, and that nothing is unintentionally shorting out against anything else, whether the enclosure itself or another jack. Fundamentally, all you're really doing is "extending" each patch cable from a pedal (or to the amp or from the instrument). Short 1/8"-to-1/8" inch patch cables (easily and inexpensively purchased from any place catering to modular synth people) are used to connect "this" 1/4" jack to "that" one. Some retailers/distributors will sell packages of an assortment of colors. I'd recommend that, since it can be hard to mentally follow the signal path of the top-jacks in the absence of color-coding. This will let you know that "the *green* patch cord goes from the output of X to the input of Y" The tricky part is planning out, and accurately machining, all the required holes. If one attempts this, make sure you have a clear sense of how much room and clearance is required for each type of jack. Since different brands/types of phone jacks require different kinds of space, I won't offer any sort of "standard" spacing. I used a 125-C type cast-aluminum enclosure - the size of many pedals Emily demos - but you could use anything sturdy enough and amenable to machining. The round-ish shape of the Patchulator means none of the patching cords has to be very long. (Hammond makes octogonal enclosures in suitable sizes.) If a person wanted to be ultra-DIY, you could make yourself custom 1/4"-to-1/8" patch cables to run from the pedals to the patch-bay. That would conserve space, and allow you to fit more patch-points into a small-ish enclosure. But admittedly, that's a whole lotta soldering.
This is a good idea. At $129, it’s a reasonable price. Being able to quickly reconfigure a pedal board is pretty useful. Would be even more amazing if there were switches, not patch cables, to do the job. But that could get pricey.
Actually a pretty good idea! I think a small but important modification could be to use different color cables so you can be quicker and color coordinated. Good piece of equipment.
Okay, that thing is cool as heck! Pedal order makes a HuGE diffenrence, and thats a great way to mix and match to find sounds, or even just play around with!.😎👍 Love it.
Very cool bit of kit. I especially enjoyed the bass and sound board pickup mixes. Incredible the amount of different effects you can achieve without having to loop. Thanks for your effort. I love your channel.
I Love ❤️ my Patchulator! I use it as the heart of most of my board’s for year’s… when you combine it with a signal blender it’s even better! A blender isn’t necessary for most folks but the Chapman Stick has 2 outputs - lead and bass. I also I run a synth chain through my board as well, so 3 separate stereo chains of effects that can be routed through shared pedals too. I was sold as soon as I saw their second version was stereo! It didn’t have any negative impact on my tone at all and nice using the flat TRS (insert style) cables to run out and back from the pedals with actual stereo in’s and out’s or a standard short TRS cable for stereo pedals that only have TRS in’s/out’s. I have many videos up using it on my boards… You did a great job explaining and showing how it works! It really is pretty simple to experiment changing order of VELCRO’D pedals!
This is a lot more interesting than I thought it was gonna be and mostly because of the way you guys did it! Made it pretty easy to understand. I'm not gonna get one but that damned Microcosm, however. Someday. . . Someday. . .
oh we're so glad!!! ❤️ we wanted to make this video as easy to understand as possible, and honestly, this demo took us longer than it usually does because we didn't want to scare anyone away with how complicated it seems! and I know I'm a bad influence here, but... YOU NEED A MICROCOSM 😂❤️ it's the most amazing pedal in the world, so amazing that Russ and I own (2)
@@emilyharpist I'm gonna tell my wife that Emily Hopkins says I need to get a Microcosm! Maybe I should finish school and get a job first so I can afford one but that sounds too far away and suuuuuper lame!
This is so cool! I tend to use an HX stomp for this, because I can easily re-order the effects. But this will let me do it with my real life pedals too which is super cool!
That's a pretty cool gadget! Would be useful if one was running multiple pedal boards and needed to switch things up on the fly/ between songs; maybe even a solo artist with looper(s) and multiple inputs? Lots of possibilities... Thanks for the fun demo! 🙏 Enjoyed it 😊
Can definitely get complicated, especially using all eight ins/outs and patching in a boredbrain terminal because being able to switch between six different effects blocks simply isn't enough, lol! I'd say my only real complaint is it takes up a good amount of space when you already have a fairly crowded pedal board, and can be a bit of a challenge to set up "permanently". Rather than using it to switch between individual pedals, I had mine set up to patch between small blocks of two or three pedals which I'd already worked out an optimal order for beforehand, had the patchulator in a central position, which required purchasing a few longer patch cables (two and three feet) to get it all together.
Best use I can see would be switching a looper from beginning to the end of the chain. I frequently use a looper at the beginning of a chain. I will play something, set my guitar down, and now I'm free to adjust knobs or my chain to get everything dialed in. Switch it back to the end of the chain to loop the sound of all your effects working together.
Gr8 demo. I use mine for fx pedals (very modest collection of cheap pedals), and routing of mixers, into my soundbar (don't have dedicated monitor speakers). Because it is "passive" and therefore signals can get attenuated, I route out to a small 5 channel stereo mixer before sending "master" out to soundbar. Really useful and simple device.
Even though I am no musician, I actually understood the initial setup. I guess I have hooked up so many computers, home theaters, gaming systems, etcetera for friends and family that input/output order has become second nature.
HAHAH YESSSS THAT WAS MY GOAL 😂❤️ I wanted to make this video as easy as possible, since it looks like a complicated device. I'm so glad it made sense -- thank you so much for watching!!
I understand this, but you explained this super well for the muggles out there as well. This give me modular synth vibes! The possibilities are endless! This thing is such a good idea and definitely makes it super easy.
"MUGGLES" LMFAOOOO 😂❤️ I'm so glad it wasn't overwhelming!! I've seen other videos of the patchulator and I felt super intimidated, so I really wanted to break this down in a simple way. it's a super useful little device that's saved me a TON of time!
Those four pickups make me wonder if/wish there were other classical stringed instruments that had split outputs for this very thing, like a theorbo or a bandura. I love how you use yours to play two parts in different tones using separate pedal chains.
A wonderfully clear and lucid demonstration of this gizmo's capabilities, and beautifully illustrated what huge impact pedal order can make! I am so old I remember when pedals were coal-powered, and used steam to move steam punk devices.... At least I think that's how it was.... Thanks and all the best!👍😉
I use Matrix mixers to blend pedals. Coloured cables help, a lot. Sound engineers use bits of white insulating tape and a sharpie to label up gear like this. You can safely remove the tape without damaging the painted surface.
Sometimes my silly squirrel brain has more “OOH! WHAT WOULD THIS COMBINATION SOUND LIKE?” zaps coursing through it than I can actively manage. Patchulator’s been helpful in those moments, when I want to quickly try out nifty sound ideas before my feeble old buffer is overrun, so to speak. It’s also fun for more aleatory approaches: just go nuts patching without thinking too much about the “correctness” of the chain, you know? BTW, it’d be a way fun video wherein, maybe, y’all roll dice or something to determine the flow and just see what sounds come out??
As someone mentioned, patchbays are often used in studios. Using a device like the Boss ES-8 can even take more time to set up. That said, once you've set up such a Switcher, you can recall the patches live and this is where those devices shine. For this, consider youtube (on demand) studio and twitch ((not so) narrowcasting) live. Playing at home? Somewhere in between. It sort of depends if you need to change a sound playing along. If not, a patchbay is fine.
Yes, I have two patch bays in my studio I use often, I’m just happy to find that there’s one exclusively for pedals - I find it useful, especially as someone who owns so many and does so much rearranging!
How cool! I'm sending this link to my friend who has a studio with TOO many guitars, amps and effects. I can see this helping him to keep the inspiration going without wasting time rewiring things.
This is a really good in depth look at how pedals interact and the audio examples are nice too. (especially around the 8min mark) I've always experimented with the order of pedals to find what I'm looking for in a tone but a device like that is way deeper than I would ever need to get. It reminds me of an old time telephone switchboard.
a lot of people have said the same, and it's a valid point!! although I have to say, I once saw 2 patchulators side-by-side in the center on someone's board, and they surprisingly didn't look out of place / inconvenient! it made it look even more complicated though lmaooo
If there was ever a device to solve a 1st world problem, this is it! Seems like a pretty handy device if you want to leave like 4 pedal boards and 3 amps plugged into all at once and patch yourself into whatever you wanna use for that particular session. $129 isn't a bad deal for that.
Even with the layout, I'm not sure I can wrap my board-brain around why I would use this in my own setup... it's convoluted enough...😏& I don't want bass-guy coming through my rig. 😅 Fun and useful review as always guys! ✨
This is an interesting and useful piece of equipment and I think you guys explained its uses really well. It's not something I'd use (I only use three pedals and only play at home) but it'd be useful for a gigging musician.
thank you so much, Simon!! :) we use it a lot here at the studio because we're always dealing with a MESS of wires, so this makes everything a lot easier!! 😂❤️
Looks like it would make spaghetti of your pedalboard. Cable management is a must. Tripping over cables can be terrifying, especially if you hooked up something expensive. I am interested in that product though,, cause the pedal board with the most wire wins. Lol
I looked at these a long time ago, but wound up using a half normaled patch bay, OBNE Signal blender and a midi switchable effects loop pedal because cable mess tweaks my brain and I can hide the wires (mostly) with my setup and it gives more options. Patch bays are great in general though. Highly recommend the Signal Blender! Lovely demo as always and well explained.
Oooohhh YESSS I've had my eye on that Signal Blender for a while now!! We bought the "Split / Meld" pedal from OBNE; we're big fans of all their utility pedals (and regular effect pedals, too! they're awesome!)
This would be a great tool to see what would be the best lineup on your pedalboard instead of mucking about switching them up and unplugging them from underneath.
right?!? I feel like it's such a helpful little device, and I don't see it too often on other people's boards (I actually recently saw someone have TWO patchulators on their board... but that was an anomaly!) 😂❤️
I like the form factor, for on a pedal board, or other live use. But for the studio you'd be better served with more traditional 19" rack patchbays which offer greater functionality including copies, normaling and semi-normaling. I can still see other uses for this gadget though, especially for moving a lot of signals between regular synths and eurorack gear due to the signal paths basically being to and from 1/4" and 3.5mm. I suppose the price will determine if I get one at some point..... what price convenience?
As soon as you slowed down the gameboy/kalimba loop, it got absolutely filthy and I loved it. Kinda sounded like a dungeon/cave theme or something. Just saying lol
I wire in pedals as Ableton external effects but they all need an input which is already cramped even though I have 18. This could be really flexible! Sold out currently! Hopkins Bump.
Another interesting and useful demo, and reasonably priced, too. You mentioned your penchant for video game covers (always impressively done, by the way), and at the risk of (further) dating myself, I'm going to half-jokingly offer a suggestion in this regard. It's from the Sega Genesis days and the game is Shinobi 3 and the song is Inner Darkside (song #5, 11:20). I'm mostly joking because it's fairly complicated piece and you'd likely need a few other players to do it, but absolutely one of my all-time favorite game songs, truly exquisite. Hope you enjoy the piece, if you don't know it already. -Cheers! Here's the link: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-QPwTddEX7Fs.html
@@emilyharpist mmmm analog..... +1 awesomeness to Emily. Yea it really isn't nice having to use space for utility equipment... like in my eurorack I want send return but I don't want to use rack space for it lol. I was considering this thing i could dual lock (like velcro, if you like to be able to stick and remove/ replace things check it out) it somewhere easily but I want to be able to effect like 4 inputs with their own outs so If I run 4 or 5 synths like band members I can run different pedal on each for example if I wanted but still have them on separate tracks, I just didn't take the time to sit and consider if there's a way to patch that like that... maybe you could use it for like 2 or 3 different send/ returns?
Shit, I had actually designed a similar patch bay for pedals and now I discover it already exists... I guess I have to look for something else. Awesome video, as usual
thank you so much!! I had an idea for a pedal specifically built for instruments (harps) with multiple outputs, but same here -- once I found out The Patchulator existed I was like ".. oh .. I guess my idea is useless now.." ❤️🥺
Hi Ms Emily ☺😘💖 That's an Interesting and Useful Unit There for Sure 😎👊💯And I Thank You Evaaa SoSo Very Much for Your Input and Expertise and This Awesome Demo Video for The Patchulator and You are Just Absolutely Amazing Angel ☺☺😘😎💯💖
Cool! Thank you for this video! So in a nutshell, its just a hand held, unbalanced patch bay, right? Is it possible to just use the main ins and outs of the unit (without patching effects) to run a dry guitar out like a reamp box?
