What's your SETUP? What do you pair with your Gameboys?

Most of my sets are just two DMGs but I've played with a Critter & Guitari Pocket Piano for the past few shows so I can improvise some keyboard lines.
I know Monodeer uses an arduinoboy to sequence a Volca Beats, though I think it's mainly for the crazy huge kick on that thing.

I've experimented with a few different things...

* Two DMGs, a mixer, and having them both beat-synched so I could flawlessly transition across.
* Two DMGs... both with separate Arduinoboys, going into a MIDI Merge, which then spat out MIDI information to a Vermona Kick module for bigger drum sounds. All of the above going into a mixer.
* As above, but with an added synth for the bass lines.

I've also used a bunch of different effects pedals like the Montreal Assembly Count to Five, some EQ pedals, and a Kaoss pad.

The more I've played though, the more I've slimmed down my setup. It's a pain in the arse to carry about more gear; it takes a much longer time to set up the mash of cables in between sets, and there's far more that can (and does!) go wrong. i.e. MIDI data not sending properly... effects pedals power dying, etc. Now I just tend to use two DMGs, an iRig mixer, and a Kaoss pad... though even that might get the boot for some gigs.

Edit: Specifically on the drums point. I found it tough to mix the Kick in with my DMGs onstage, as it was harder to monitor just how loud everything was. It also caused some issues with my board recording... It would probably be a lot easier with a bigger mixer than the iRig, but that would mean yet more stuff to carry, so I haven't bothered.

Last edited by unexpectedbowtie (Feb 14, 2018 3:53 pm)

reserving this space for when i have the energy to find as many live setup pictures as i can from the last 17 years and be bothered to explain them all

for now, i'll just say my current setup is a psp go, a gp2x f200 (both running piggy tracker), a kaoss pad, & a mixer.
before my back went bad, my setups were sometimes pretty sizeable, think a few of my hometown gigs topped 200lbs worth of gear for my audio & visual setups combined

I used to play sets using a PO-12 and a GB micro w/nanoloop 2 (sometimes two), but now I just run one copy of nl2 because I got better at designing punchy kicks and don't need PO-12 anymore. I find it more comfortable to operate just one bit of gear, there was always something lost when I had to juggle multiple items.

Having said that though, my recent PO-33 acquisition has made me want to pair it with nanoloop at some point.. even so though, I could probably just sample nl2 and play my full set from the PO lol

Last edited by pselodux (Feb 16, 2018 4:25 am)

Haha yeah, that too.. I played one gig with a setup of OP-1, PO-12, nanoloop2, Boss RPS-10. At some point during the first half of the set, one of the cables fell out of the RPS-10, meaning anything I had playing on the OP-1 didn't come through, and as I had everything set up in a case, it took me most of the set to figure out what was wrong while trying to juggle PO-12 and nanoloop.

Similarly, I had a setup of Nord Modular, Octatrack and KMI QuNexus in a big 12U mixer case; again, played one gig with it before realising it was too unwieldy and I should just take my OT out to gigs like that.. nobody really notices the difference anyway, just doesn't look as impressive lol

during my set at the Hexawe All-Stars Blip '11 afterparty i had the piggy midi freeze on me so i did a quick unplug-repulg mid-song that people for some reason thought was actual showmanship of some sort, not just a random hardware glitch that i was fixing as quickly as possible.. i'm probably crazy, but i sort of liked the possibility that my set could go terribly wrong. kept me on my toes