Moen GEC9 review
Posted on 28/11/2012 by ozzy in The Blog
Recently, I realized that I have had enough of the tap dancing, so I decided to buy myself a decent effects routing system. Since my Vox AC15 combo had two separate inputs (dirty channel and clean), I needed a system that could work not just as a normal pedal switcher, and possibly a "latching" switcher, but also would allow the ABY switching for me to choose between the two separate signal routes to my Vox.
The Moen GEC9 system has 9 loops in 4 signal paths - i.e. 6 loops in path 1, and 3 loops in path 2-4 that could be used separately for several switching combinations of your amps or channels (or it can control up to 3 amp's footswitch-operable functions, or 3 additional effect pedals). These separate loops could be somewhat tricky to understand, but belive me, it's realy easy (see Moen GEC9 demo video). You can program and store 50 presets in total – 5 effect presets in each of the 10 banks. The programing of presets is pretty straightforward, just press a coresponding loop button of your choice and your preset is automaticaly stored. Moen GEC9 also has a mute switch which activates the clean output to a tuner. It also includes a buffered and non buffered input, and a buffered output. The switching from one patch to another does not cut the sound off, and it's relatively quiet (almost no "pop"). The last but not least, I did not find any colouring of the tone.
The user manual says that it needs to be powered with a DC9V/500mA power supply, but I am using a T-Rex Fuel Tank Jr. that claims to have only 120mA per output. It works fine so far.
Pros:
- very flexible
- 3 separate loops
- no tone-colouring
- quiet
- small footprint
- great value for money
Cons:
- no midi
- you can't change the pedal sequence
- cables can be a challenge (as with any looper)
