Simple and portable

[colemanhawkins]

I'm looking for a simple floor effects device that runs off batteries and has mic inputs/outputs, preferably xlr. Most of the time the signal would be uneffected, and power can be off. I'm not sure if it would be possible to convert xlr to 1/4 inch and vice versa successfully.

[sonofhop]

Not sure which floor unit to recommend. You can convert XLR (mic level) to 1/4" (line level) using an impedance converter (available at Radio Shack among other places). This is easiest if you're using a mic that doesn't requre an external power supply. The quality of the signal you get may vary greatly depending on the strength of the signal put out by your microphone, microphone placement, other ambient sounds bleeding into the mic, etc.

[Ctenorman]

Coleman, I had a devil of a time doing just what you're trying to do, but my life became a hundred times simples when I got a very small mixer board, the MX602A by Behringer. I could then use any effects board with regular 1/4 inch plugs on an aux send, and then just plug my mic into the first Mic input. If I don't want any effects in my playing, I just turn off the Aux return, and the effects go away, but the sax stays. The other advantage of doing this also is that you get the true sound of your sax from the mic mixed in with the sound from your effects board. Depending on the quality of your effects board, having the clean signal mixed with the effects sound can make you sound much more realistic.

Just so you know, I used to have an impedance converter connected to the line coming straight from my sax, and it always caused problems and never sounded as good as when I got the mixing board. I was never able to get enough gain before it got to the effects board, and the resulting signal had to get boosted at the mixer, and invariably I was the cause of some nasty feedback for whatever reason. By using the pre-amps built into the Behringer, you're going to get a preamp that sounds exceptional, even good enough for studio use, and you'll be sending a signal with plenty of power to the main board, so no troubles mixing you in. Just so you know, I use a guitar effects board actually, the Zoom 707, and it does a marvellous job for just about anything I could imagine. Works as well on sax as guitars; reverb, chorus, harmonization, just about anything you could imagine, and actually pretty good quality. Just don't turn on distortion unless you've got some sort of way to prevent feedback in place. :oops:

[sessionsax]

Seems to me that DOD has a floor effects process for vocalist, I think its called the Vocalist that has XLR inputs. Maybe this would work for you.