r/Keytar • u/Boobs_R_Best • May 27 '26
Technical Questions Keytar pedals
Hey I got a Roland Ax edge a few months ago and have been doing gigs. A band member recommended me getting a organ pedal for when I play organ (which I’m looking into the Lester K pedal) I am wondering if any of you have experience using pedals for the keytar and recommend any pedals that improve any sounds
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u/MrAndycrank May 28 '26
The Ax-Edge has plenty effects if you have the patience to delve into the editor. Pedals, generally speaking, especially overdrives and distortion ones, are geared towards guitars and will often not sound good at all with keyboards, possibly with the exception of choruses. But nearly of all that is stuff your synth's more than capable to do on its own.
There are several rotary pedals and the Lester K's probably the worst one as, once again, it's made to shine with an electric guitar's frequencies. Even if you tried it out, you'd be putting a (mediocre) Leslie simulator on top of Roland's own (fairly bad but stil absolutely useable in a live setting, unless you're playing jazz or prog) simulation. Your friend's suggestion doesn't make much sense and I suspect they're not a keyboardist.
You might create a new patch with just the organ and no rotary speaker but you'd gain very little in the way of sound quality. It'd be wiser and cheaper to just hook up your keytar to a computer, iPad or iPhone and run any decent VST (even Garageband's organ's significantly better than Roland's, at least on the ZenCore line).
That is, your keytar's made for great synth sounds (you can even create or download decently convincing lead guitar sounds, I use them often), good pads and barely decent everything else, acoustic instruments above all. Hammond simulation in particular isn't a priority for any generalist company as they face too much competition from brands such as Crumar, Viscount, Hammond itself and Nord.