While in high school, thinking about guitar rigs was a regular pastime. Before I had built my first rig, I had thought through a hundred. I often vacillated, sometimes violently, between entertaining practical and fanciful considerations, bouncing off of budgetary limits and preparing for a theoretical band’s imagined show to an imagined, but supportive, audience. Now, one of the main aspects of my day job at XAct Tone Solutions (XTS) in Nashville is helping others build their dream ’boards. Whether it’s Peter Frampton or Billy Strings, Tom Bukovac or Andy Wood, every guitar player has a unique set of pedalboard needs and wants dictated by the music they dream about creating.
How do we start making a dream ’board? I have often told clients that this stage is the best, as it’s all possibilities and no responsibilities. However, being able to do anything can lead to option paralysis, so it can be helpful to quickly apply some constraints. What material needs to be covered? What venues will we play? What is my budget? Sadly, the last question is usually the most restrictive.
Testing the placement of pedals and the adhesive mounting is an important stage of organizing the overall flow of a ’board.
The songs to be played dictate the sounds to be played. The sounds to be played dictate the stuff to be played. For our pedalboard, we want to choose gear that, in combination, has the ability to round the required sonic bases. In general, increasing the quantity and diversity of sounds means increasing the amount of gear required to cover them. For example, your Hendrix rig will have more weight in coily cable than pedals, and your U2-inspired pedalboard will likely require the lead singer to begrudgingly help with load-in. For our dream ’board, we want to pick a set of effects that can cover most pop and rock sounds of the last 60 years well. This generality means abandoning the painstaking recreation of any specific sound and settling for evocative when exact is unavailable.
For many players, one of the first choices made is what sort of overdrive and/or distortion their rig requires. What sort of timbres are needed? Light overdrive or massive distortion? Will you use your amplifier’s gain to produce overdrive, or will you run your amp mostly clean, letting the grit come from pedals at your feet? It is a good idea to look at your overdrive elements as a system that works together, considering each pedal’s sonic signature individually, as well as in combination with other effect pedals on ’board. For this rig, I’ve made subjective choices that hit the fundamental food groups of pop and rock timbres when paired with a clean amplifier. It’s not cheap—but neither are dreams.
“The songs to be played dictate the sounds to be played. The sounds to be played dictate the stuff to be played.”
Greer Lightspeed
The Greer Lightspeed has become a nouveau-classic, regularly showing up on the ’boards of professionals and enthusiasts alike. A so-called transparent drive, it shapes and pushes your instrument's voice without making it unidentifiable. This pedal can serve as a light overdrive alone or be used to push pedals and amplifiers farther down the line. The Lightspeed on our pedalboard is a special—made by Nick Greer himself out of his very own mojo component stash. $229 street, greeramps.com
XTS Rehoused Nobels ODR-1
The original version of the ODR-1 has reached near-mythical status. Nashville session ace Tom Bukovac sowed these once-dirt-cheap overdrives all over the city like a late-’90s, guitar-playing Johnny Appleseed. The originals have since blossomed into $2,000-plus uber-vintage prizes. With a strong low-mid presence compared to something like a Tube Screamer, they are a great match for black-panel Fenders. More affordable reissues and clones are available and compete well with the real thing. This one was bought before the boom and rehoused to replace worn-out parts. Mechanical footswitches and jacks don’t appreciate in value, even if green overdrive pedals do. $119 street for current reissue, nobels.de
Soldered cables are preferable for the sake of longevity.
XTS Winford Drive
This pedal does both overdrive and distortion. Prototypes can be heard on Keith Urban records, and a great many Nashville session players use this pedal every day in the studio. It ranges from light gain to woolly fuzz sounds, and with the gain all the way down, the mid boost can be an effective boost for amps that are already breaking up in an upper-mid-forward way (think Matchless, Badcat, and Vox). It also stacks well with pedals pushing its input, adding more flexibility to the system. $249 street, xacttone.com
Behringer SF300 Super Fuzz
New fuzz pedals are seemingly born wherever transistors and hot soldering irons meet, and they produce a timbre ecosystem all their own. Fuzz is a sound that amps don’t often produce in and of themselves, so having a fuzz pedal can help round out a pedalboard, giving access to vintage and modern sounds. The SF300 may be cheap, but proves that listening is best done with your ears. When placed in a true bypass loop, it won’t need to be stepped on, mitigating the risks associated with its economical enclosure. $29 street, behringer.com
XTS Shapecharger
The Shapecharger gives this ’board a boost. Where you put your boost will depend on what function you want it to satisfy. Engaging boosts before overdrives and distortions will increase the level of saturation in your dirt pedals with a less pronounced level increase. Assuming your amp has sufficient headroom, engaging boosts after dirt boxes will result in an increase in level without a significant increase in saturation. The Shapecharger also has a separate, sweepable mid control to cut through a band mix, as well as a high-pass control to keep amps and pedals after it from becoming saturated with low frequencies. $199 street, xacttone.com
RAF Mirage Compressor
Compression is great for spanky R&B rhythm parts as well as country-style picking. The Mirage compresses in a natural-sounding way, squeezing your signal without overtly crushing it. Its relatively transparent response creates separation in arpeggiated parts and provides sustain without resorting to overdrive. $199 street, fxeng.com
After overdrive, players might consider modulation and time-based effects. Modulation effects change amplitude and/or frequency in a periodic way, like tremolo or vibrato. Time-based effects, like delay and reverb, store and manipulate your signal to create repeating or spacious effects.
Line 6 HX Stomp
The Line 6 HX Stomp is a multi-effect unit that models all sorts of classic and cutting-edge effects. From overdrive and distortion to reverb and delay, the Stomp does a great job of providing lots of options in a very compact package. The HX series is a significant evolution from the company’s M-series effects, as the increases in processing and algorithmic power are considerable and particularly evident in computationally-intensive effects like reverb. Additionally, if a song requires a sound not covered by the other pedals on ’board, the Stomp can pinch hit, providing access to esoteric effects you enjoy, but perhaps don’t want to carry—like envelope filters, synths, and pitch benders.
The HX Stomp also provides for the very real, if not preferred, possibility of needing to go direct on a gig. Many venues in Nashville and elsewhere have prohibited live amps being on stage. Because the HX Stomp has the ability to model amplifiers and cabinets, adding a DI to this ’board will allow it to function well on an ampless stage. $699 street, line6.com
Strymon Mobius
Why include the Mobius modulation pedal when, hypothetically, the HX Stomp can do all the same modulation types? There is some overlap, but adding the Mobius gives fast access to two great wobbly sounds per bank. The Mobius can also serve as a sort of placeholder. If some new effect comes on the market, it’s likely that it’ll fit in the same physical spacing as well as use the same type of power. Whether future change is driven by preference alone or a paying gig, it is helpful to have a pedal position that can serve as an escape hatch.$449 street, strymon.net
Placement is key to the exact sonic combinations you’re seeking on any pedalboard, and philosophies vary—although distortion, OD, and fuzz usually make up the first bank of tone tools. But with a device like the GigRig G3 Atom, all rules can be broken.
GigRig G3 Atom
We’ve spent a great deal of time picking out all of the widgets we will use to squeeze, pull, and twist our guitar sound. We could cable these together and have a fully functional guitar rig, but a dream ’board is more than what you want to use. It also encompasses how you want to apply those devices. When you spend a bunch of time developing sounds, it’s very nice to be able to save or index them for later use. A MIDI controller can send commands to MIDI-capable effects, recalling previously saved patches. Non-MIDI-capable effects, like typical overdrives, need external help to be accessed via presets. One solution is to put them in loop-switcher-controlled bypass loops. If chosen wisely, the loop switcher can both control our so-called “dumb” pedals and their MIDI-responsive siblings.
On our dream ’board, the effects we’ve selected will orbit around the GigRig G3 Atom. In the past, presetable switching systems had a tendency to get bogged down in the preset modality. Everything worked great when you were on a show with a predetermined setlist and cues, but when it came to improvising sounds, effects were often trapped and inaccessible inside of presets, unless the controllers expanded to include foot switches for every effect—at great monetary and volumetric expense. With a button-per-audio-loop interface, improvising different combinations of pedals on the G3 Atom is simple, and sonic-spelunking sessions are not impeded by a preset-only straightjacket.
The Atom can also send MIDI commands to both the Mobius and the HX Stomp, directing them to previously saved sounds for instant recall. The Dunlop Volume X connects to the Atom’s expression pedal port, meaning that changes in the position of the treadle can be translated to changes in the MIDI connected effects, controlling any number of effect settings including volume and effect levels.
The Atom can also reorder the effects in your signal chain. By default, the G3-controlled effects are ordered in a very traditional way: fuzz> dynamics> overdrive> distortion> modulation> boost> delay/reverbs. Being able to change where the Mobius is in the signal chain means that modulations like chorus can be post-dirt boxes and effects like phaser can be pre-dirt. The Shapecharger is run outside of the G3’s control. This means that the boost can be added at any point without setting up another preset or dedicating a controller button to do so. $995 street, thegigrig.com
Barry’s custom interface is mounted below the frame of the Pedaltrain JR MAX ($189 street) that is the platform for his dream pedalboard.
Interface
A pedalboard interface can add ease of use and functionality. This one has an instrument input and an output for the amplifier. In addition, there is a normalling insert loop that allows a “pedal of the day” to be connected externally. The insert connects to the rig via a loop in the G3. If one part of one song in one show needs an effect, you can add it here without removing something else on the ’board, and pedals on trial can be connected and tested before permanent installation.
“A higher mA port rating will not damage your pedal; it will just leave some capacity untapped.”
Power
Powering pedalboards is getting trickier these days. When everything ran off of batteries, things were easy. Now, high-powered DSP-based effects and computer-controlled true-bypass loop switchers are power hungry, requiring high amounts of current. Each device needs to be powered by a power supply port that has the appropriate voltage and current ratings. Voltage should be exactly what the manufacturer calls for—no more, no less. Manufacturers publish how much current is needed for their devices in milliamperes (mA). Connect your stompbox to a port that has that mA rating or greater. A higher mA port rating will not damage your pedal; it will just leave some capacity untapped.
It is also a good rule of thumb to use a supply whose outputs are isolated, meaning there is not a shared ground path or means of conducting noise between pedals via their supplies. We’re using a Strymon Zuma as a supply for this build. At 9VDC at 500 mA, each port has enough power for most pedals on the market. If there’s ever a need to swap pedals, it’s likely the power supply is up to the job. This ’board does have some special power considerations. The G3 is powered by combining two ports in parallel, summing their individual capacities for a total of 1000 mA. The HX Stomp also requires ~1000 mA nominally, but its power-on surge can cause start-up issues when the Zuma gets up to operating temperature. Stomp powering duties are handed over to a CIOKS Crux, which converts the 24V DC expansion output of the Zuma into the 9V DC the HX Stomp requires.
Mounting the power supply beneath the ’board—here, a Strymon Zuma mated to a CIOKS Crux—is an essential space saver.
We’ve selected a Pedaltrain JR MAX for this build. It’s lightweight and, at 28" wide and 12.5" deep, has room for all the required pedals without being deeper than necessary. The power supply and interface can be mounted underneath, leaving the top of the ’board for the fun bits. We’ve given the ’board a laminate top, which looks great and allows us flexibility in pedal placement.
Wiring up a ’board like this can seem daunting. To keep things neat, we custom-cut every cable to length and stay them to the ’board with adhesive mounts and zip ties. Soldered cables are preferable for longevity's sake, but if available tools or skill sets demand an alternative, there are many sturdy solderless cable options.
“Just play. Your dream ’board should inspire you to dig in without getting bogged down.”
This ’board is a flexible tone platform. Setting up a new sound can be as simple as selecting which loops to include in a G3 preset and combining them with a set of bread-and-butter modulations, delays, and reverbs in the Mobius and HX Stomp. Alternatively, you can dig deeper and build bespoke effects in the Mobius and Stomp, and recall them via MIDI commands from the G3. So if a tune requires a very specific rhythmic delay and/or chorus, you can dial them in and recall them for a song-specific preset. The possibilities are nearly endless.
Even if you’ve built your dream ’board and made the choices that best suit you and your situation, finishing a personal build can lead to a feeling of “what do I do now?” If the materials and methods are fitting, the answer should be easy. Just play. Your dream ’board should inspire you to dig in without getting bogged down. Choose gear that inspires you, and put it together in a manner that does not impede your inspiration. Seeing your rig go from daydream to realization can invigorate the same creative drive that makes music. Go use the thing you made to make something greater!
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Onstage, Tommy Emmanuel executes a move that is not from the playbook of his hero, Chet Atkins.
“My biggest decision every day on tour is, ‘What do I want to start with? How do I want to come out of the gate?’” Emmanuel explains to me over a video call. “A good opener has to have everything. It has to be full of surprise, it has to have lots of good ideas, lots of light and shade, and then, hit it again,” he says, illustrating each phrase with his hands and ending with a punch.“You lift off straightaway with the first song, you get airborne, you start reaching, and then it’s time to level out and take people on a journey.”
In May 2023, Emmanuel played two shows at the Sydney Opera House, the best performances from which have been combined on his new release, Live at the Sydney Opera House. The venue’s Concert Hall, which has a capacity of 2,679, is a familiar room for Emmanuel, but I think at this point in his career he wouldn’t bring a setlist if he was playing Wembley Stadium. On the recording, Emmanuel’s mind-blowingly dexterous chops, distinctive attack and flair, and knack for culturally resonant compositions are on full display. His opening song for the shows? An original, “Countrywide,” with a segue into Chet Atkins’ “El Vaquero.”
“When I was going to high school in the ’60s, I heard ‘El Vaquero’ on Chet Atkins’ record, [1964’s My Favorite Guitars],” Emmanuel shares. “And when I wrote ‘Countrywide’ in around ’76 or ’77, I suddenly realized, ‘Ah! It’s a bit like “El Vaquero!”’ So I then worked out ‘El Vaquero’ as a solo piece, because it wasn’t recorded like that [by Atkins originally].
“The co-writer of ‘El Vaquero’ is Wayne Moss, who’s a famous Nashville session guy who played ‘da da da’ [sings the guitar riff from Roy Orbison’s ‘Pretty Woman’]. And he played on a lot of Chet’s records as a rhythm guy. So once when I played ‘El Vaquero’ live, Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’” Emmanuel says, laughing.
Atkins is the reason Emmanuel got into performing. His mother had been teaching him rhythm guitar for a couple years when he heard Atkins on the radio and, at 6, was able to immediately mimic his fingerpicking technique. His father recognized Emmanuel’s prodigious talent and got him on the road that year, which kicked off his professional career. He says, “By the time I was 6, I was already sleep-deprived, working too hard, and being forced to be educated. Because all I was interested in was playing music.”
Emmanuel talks about Atkins as if the way he viewed him as a boy hasn’t changed. The title Atkins bestowed upon him, C.G.P. (Certified Guitar Player), appears on Emmanuel’s album covers, in his record label (C.G.P. Sounds), and is inlaid at the 12th fret on his Maton Custom Shop TE Personal signature acoustic. (Atkins named only five guitarists C.G.P.s. The others are John Knowles, Steve Wariner, Jerry Reed, and Atkins himself.) For Emmanuel, even today most roads lead to Atkins.
When I ask Emmanuel about his approach to arranging for solo acoustic guitar, he says, “It was really hit home for me by my hero, Chet Atkins, when I read an interview with him a long time ago and he said, ‘Make your arrangement interesting.’ And I thought, ‘Wow!’ Because I was so keen to be true to the composer and play the song as everyone knows it. But then again, I’m recreating it like everyone else has, and I might as well get in line with the rest of them and jump off the cliff into nowhere. So it struck me: ‘How can I make my arrangements interesting?’ Well, make them full of surprises.”
When Emmanuel was invited to contribute to 2015’s Burt Bacharach: This Guitar’s in Love with You, featuring acoustic-guitar tributes to Bacharach’s classic compositions by various artists, Emmanuel expresses that nobody wanted to take “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” due to its “syrupy” nature. But for Emmanuel, this presented an entertaining challenge.
He explains, “I thought, ‘Okay, how can I reboot “Close to You?’ So even the most jaded listener will say, ‘Holy fuck—I didn’t expect that! Wow, I really like that; that is a good melody!’ So I found a good key to play the song in, which allowed me to get some open notes that sustain while I move the chords. Then what I did is, in every phrase, I made the chord unresolve, then resolve.
Tommy Emmanuel's Gear
“I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head,” Emmanuel says. “So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever.”
Photo by Simone Cecchetti
Guitars
- Three Maton Custom Shop TE Personals, each with an AP5 PRO pickup system
Amps
- Udo Roesner Da Capo 75
Effects
- AER Pocket Tools preamp
Strings & Picks
- Martin TE Signature Phosphor Bronze (.012–.054)
- Martin SP strings
- Ernie Ball Paradigm strings
- D’Andrea Pro Plec 1.5 mm
- Dunlop medium thumbpicks
“And then to really put the nail in the coffin, at the end, ‘Close to you’ [sings melody]. I finished on a major 9 chord which had that note in it, but it wasn’t the key the song was in, which is a typical Stevie Wonder trick. All the tricks I know, the wonderful ideas that I’ve stolen, are from Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie, James Taylor, Carole King, Neil Diamond. All of the people who wrote really incredibly great pop songs and R&B music—I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a -half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
I share with Emmanuel that the performances on Live at the Sydney Opera House, which include his popular “Beatles Medley,” reminded me of another possible arrangement trick. In Harpo Marx’s autobiography, Harpo Speaks, I preface, Marx writes of a lesson he learned as a performer—to “answer the audience’s questions.” (Emmanuel says he’s a big fan of the book and read it in the early ’70s.) That happened for me while listening to the medley, when, after sampling melodies from “She’s a Woman” and “Please Please Me,” Emmanuel suddenly lands on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”
I say, “I’m waiting for something that hits more recognizably to me, and when ‘While My Guitar’ comes in, that’s like answering my question.”
“It’s also Paul and John, Paul and John, George,” Emmanuel replies. “You think, ‘That’s great, that’s great pop music,’ then, ‘Wow! Look at the depth of this.’”
Often Emmanuel’s flights on his acoustic guitar are seemingly superhuman—as well as supremely entertaining.
Photo by Ekaterina Gorbacheva
A trick I like to employ as a writer, I say to Emmanuel, is that when I’m describing something, I’ll provide the reader with just enough context so that they can complete the thought on their own.
“You can do that musically as well,” says Emmanuel. He explains how, in his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” he’ll play only the vocal melody. “When people are asking me at a workshop, ‘How come you don’t put chords behind that part?’ I say, ‘I’m drawing the melody and you’re putting in all the background in your head. I don’t need to tell you what the chords are. You already know what the chords are.’”
“Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’”
Another track featured on Live at the Sydney Opera House is a cover of Paul Simon’s “American Tune” (which Emmanuel then jumps into an adaptation of the Australian bush ballad, “Waltzing Matilda”). It’s been a while since I really spent time with There GoesRhymin’ Simon (on which “American Tune” was first released), and yet it sounded so familiar to me. A little digging revealed that its melody is based on the 17th-century Christian hymn, “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded,” which was arranged and repurposed by Bach in a few of the composer’s works. The cross-chronological and genre-lackadaisical intersections that come up in popular music sometimes is fascinating.
“I think the principle right there,” Emmanuel muses, “is people like Bach and Beethoven and Mozart found the right language to touch the heart of a human being through their ears and through their senses ... that really did something to them deep in their soul. They found a way with the right chords and the right notes, somehow. It could be as primitive as that.
Tommy Emmanuel has been on the road as a performing guitarist for 64 years. Eat your heart out, Bob Dylan.
Photo by Jan Anderson
“It’s like when you’re a young composer and someone tells you, ‘Have a listen to Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind,”’ he continues. “‘Listen to how those notes work with those chords.’ And every time you hear it, you go, ‘Why does it touch me like that? Why do I feel this way when I hear those chords—those notes against those chords?’ I say, it’s just human nature. Then you wanna go, ‘How can I do that!’” he concludes with a grin.
“You draw from such a variety of genres in your arrangements,” I posit. “Do you try to lean into the side of converting those songs to solo acoustic guitar, or the side of bridging the genre’s culture to that of your audience?”
“I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a-half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
“If I was a method actor,” Emmanuel explains, “what I’m doing is—I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head. So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever. I always think it has to have that kind of orchestral, not grandeur, but … palette to it. Because of the influence of Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel, and Elton John, especially—the piano guys—I try to use piano ideas, like putting the third in the low bass a lot, because guitar players don’t necessarily do that. And I try to always do something that makes what I do different.
“I want to be different and recognizable,” he continues. “I remember when people talked about how some players—you just hear one note and you go, ‘Oh, that’s Chet Atkins.’ And it hit me like a train, the reason why a guy like Hank Marvin, the lead guitar player from the Shadows.... I can tell you: He had a tone that I hear in other players now. Everyone copied him—they just don’t know it—including Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, all those people. I got him up to play with me a few times when he moved to Australia, and even playing acoustic, he still had that sound. I don’t know how he did it, but it was him. He invented himself.”
YouTube It
Emmanuel performs his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” illustrating how omitting a harmonic backdrop can have a more powerful effect, especially when playing such a well-known melody.
While digital audio workstations (DAWs) have revolutionized music production, offering unparalleled editing and flexibility, many producers, including me, still mix back into an analog console for the sonic character and three-dimensionality that it imparts. But buying a professional console isn’t cheap! This is where console summing boxes come into play, offering a unique way to enhance your mixes and elevate them to a professional level.
How Does It Work?
Very simply put, recording consoles have two basic sections: an input section (all the channels of mic pres, and EQ) and a center section (that sums all of the channels together and routes those signals to various configurable outputs such as inserts and aux buses). A console summing mixer is essentially the center section of a console and is designed to sum the individual audio channels, aux buses, stems, and submixes from your DAW in an analog domain.
In a DAW, digital summing—the process of combining multiple tracks and buses into a stereo mix—is handled through complex binary algorithms that, while precise, can sometimes lead to a mix that feels lifeless and one-dimensional, lacking the warmth, depth, and cohesion that analog consoles impart.
One of the most significant advantages of using a summing box is the introduction of harmonic distortion, a natural byproduct of analog circuitry. This isn’t like amp or pedal distortion, but rather a subtle harmonic saturation that adds richness and character to the sound. Low-end frequencies gain girth and definition, while high frequencies have a smooth, silky quality. You can achieve natural compression through subtle variations in phase and amplitude, but that depends on how hard you push the summing mixer box.
But the best benefit, in my opinion, is its ability to produce an undeniably open stereo image. Digital summing, while accurate, often lacks dimension or a sense of space. Analog summing introduces subtle variations in phase and amplitude, creating a sense of width and depth that makes each instrument feel like it occupies its own space in a more 3-D stereo field, which results in a more engaging and polished mix. I’ve also found summing boxes encourage a more deliberate and thoughtful approach to mixing, as it requires submixing certain elements.
API’s ASM164 ($3,195 street) is wildly flexible, offering VU meters, multiple inserts, two separate stereo mix options, and more.
For those who work “in-the-box” and aren’t in the market for a summing box, let alone a console, incorporating a summing box can also serve as a valuable learning tool. By running stems through a summing box and comparing the results to an entirely digital mix, you can train your ear to recognize the subtle qualities that make a mix feel warm, cohesive, spatial, and dynamic. This heightened awareness can then inform your in-the-box mixing decisions, even when you’re not using a summing box.
“Whether you want to add depth and dimension to your tracks, enhance your stereo image, or bring a touch of analog magic to your mixes, a summing box can be a gamechanger."
It’s important to choose the right summing box for your needs and budget, as different models offer varying sonic characteristics. Good summing mixers typically start around $2,000, such as Rupert Neve Design’s 5057 Orbit Summing Mixer. While more expensive, API’s ASM164 ($3,195 street) is wildly flexible, offering VU meters, multiple inserts, two separate stereo mix options, and more. The key here is to understand your needs.
Pairing a summing box with high-quality outboard processors, such as compressors or EQs, will allow you to shape your mix in ways that are impossible within a purely digital setup.
Whether you want to add depth and dimension to your tracks, enhance your stereo image, or bring a touch of analog magic to your mixes, a summing box can be a gamechanger. For anyone serious about mixing, it’s a tool worth considering—one that can make the difference between a mix that’s good and one that’s truly exceptional. Until next month, namaste
