Pedal geeks i need u (help jjjusten make decisions about awesome pedals for his store)

oh there's totally youtubes of nerds doing this but with boring patches

Actual LOL at "boring patches."

Some months ago, I traded in my MXR Reverb pedal and pretty much regretted it ever since. Reacquired one today and really fucking relived to have done so. Such a well-rounded and perfectly crafted reverb box. Had to trade my Afterneath for it, but enh, who cares. The "Epic" mode on the MXR is basically their version of the Afterneath, anyway. Fewer controls, but that's an even trade, because the MXR has five other excellent modes to play with.

So, I'm back to four reverbs now: MXR, Keeley Abbey Chamber Verb, Earthquaker Levitation, and Earthquaker Ghost Echo.

Also, ordered a Malekko 616 Dark and awaiting its arrival. Super excited to get that one dialed in.

So, I bought an Arpanoid. And, erm, huh.

I, uh. . . have absolutely no idea what I'm doing.

You're buying a lot of things with fiddly little knobs on them.

It passes the time.

I'm going to get an Empress Zoia as soon as it gets released. It's gonna be the king of fiddly pedals.

^^^ This... MIDI over 1/4" jack though?

I don't know how it works but if it does than cool.

So, come to find out that my Arpanoid was defective and it did the "up and down" thing in both the middle and right position on the toggle switch (the right position is supposed to be for "down" only).

Contacted Earthquaker and they were very quick to send me a postage paid return label with the promise that they would either repair or replace it after diagnosing the issue. Still waiting on their response upon getting the pedal back, but so far, the service has been pretty rad.

Got the new pedal itch again after sending my Arpanoid off only a day after I got to play with it, so I traded my Ghost Echo and Levitation for a Transmisser.

And, even though it's a ton less initially intimidating than the Arpanoid, I'm still pretty in awe of just how little nuanced knob twisting changes the way the pedal acts entirely. It's fuggin' awesome.

Anyone interested in trading something for a Walrus Descent? It's a great pedal, but can't fit it into my current plan.

if Reddit can have a trading forum, perhaps we could too?

Oh hey just let me know what you are looking for...

i like the idea of a pedal trading forum here!

just sold a bunch of stuff and ended up picking up the catalinbread formula 55 and belle epoch deluxe along with the chase bliss brothers boost/drive/fuzz thing

i have accidentally built a neil young machine and it sounds awesome

Ha I just googled "catalinbread formula 55" and the first result is Andy from Pro Guitar Shop playing Powderfinger.

I've built a couple pedals from kits before but just ordered all the parts to build a Earthquaker Acapulco Gold clone, mostly because they appear to be incredibly simple - a 2 ICs, 6 capacitors, 1 diode, 3 resistors, and 2 pots for one with a gain control.

cool! i’ve always liked the look of that pedal - just one big knob you turn up when you wanna rock harder

goddamn the belle epoch deluxe is so nice, i fuckin love this thing so much

glad to hear! it has all the makings of a classic and the guys who made it happen are incredibly cool dudes. shame about what's happened to catalinbread since then :(

i realize that could sound like shade and i don't mean it that way. i'm just sad about it.

wait, what happened to catalinbread?

just did some googling and... eurgh, that sucks :(

Nick Harris was killed by a falling tree branch two years ago. There has been fallout from that. Howard Gee, one of their other main designers, appears to have split from the company in the past few months and the reasons are as far as I know shrouded in mystery. They did a weird interview at winter NAMM where the guy running the booth didn't seem to know enough about the pedals to talk about them in-depth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKUONqc8170

yeah i knew about nicholas but hadn’t heard howard had left - he seems like such a cool guy and a really talented designer, hope he goes onto even better things

Howard's instagram is very good if you like cats and guitars

That Formula 55 pedal looks awesome, as does the Wampler Tweed '57 overdrive I learned about when I went down the rabbit hole. I have a Greer Ghetto Stomp, though, which I loved the second I heard Rick Holmstrom use one with Mavis Staples (he just keeps it snap, crackling and popping for the whole set), and I'm not sure if it supplies more or less enough the same stuff as those others.

Man, that sucks about Catalinbread. I had no idea Howard wasn't involved anymore. He seems like a genuinely cool guy, with a ton of weird and original ideas. Hope he can get something bigger and better going in the future.

I still want to get a Bicycle Delay eventually.

Holy shit at the Bicycle Delay. That's got to be the best mostly impractical pedal ever. All these weird reverbs out there. For a while I wanted an Earthquaker Device Afterneath, that was a neat one.

A while ago a friend recommended the TC Electronics Hall of Mirrors, which is a pretty good reverb replicator. He also recommended the far less bespoke Zoom Multistomp, which comes close on a lot of fronts to what it is digitally mimicking.

Personally I don't feel a great need for more overdrives, more amp emulations, or more delays and reverbs. I tend to get two or three good options in my arsenal and use those. In a normal gig I might use four sounds, and I would wager that no one in the audience would notice more than two (if they even think about it, which is itself vanishingly unlikely).

Me, what I want more of is modulation effects that are not primarily dependent on screwing with the fundamental pitch. So, flangers, phasers, ring mods, envelope filters, autowahs.

Copilot fx are great at these imo, I have both the antenna and the orbit and love the pair of them.

jjjusten, what do you know about Hermida Audio?

I picked up their EPH-3 Tape Echo Simulator yesterday and I'm madly in love. Some quick Googling doesn't really tell me much about them. Any thoughts?

Anyone seen this one yet? https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/plasma-pedal-high-voltage-distortion-unit-guitar-rock#/

not gonna lie that looks pretty effin rad

alf hermida came to prominence on the strength of a couple of drive pedals. one man shop, long wait list with the usual market distortions. he's since partnered with Lovepedal for production/promotion/distribution, so now afaik he just designs circuits and love pedal sean does his thing with them. generally good stuff and now super affordable too. i like the zendrive and variants a lot for those rare occasions when i'm feeling smoooooooth.

That's cool. I'm just completely floored by the EPH-3. I never thought I'd see a delay that made me rethink whether or not the Carbon Copy and the Jim Dunlop Echoplex were my #1 and #2 favorites. It's seriously that good.

Holy moly - the Kilobyte so much fun!

So, because I am obviously an absolute whore for delay, I picked up the Walrus Arp-87 and was really underwhelmed with it, unfortunately. It had no knob to adjust the delay time; only the secondary tap tempo footswitch. And because it is a standard size stompbox, it was very hard to get at the tap footswitch with the bypass footswitch being in such close proximity. And the bypass footswitch would sometimes just not work. Very shoddy. And besides, it just wasn't a very good sounding delay.

So I took it back and got the updated Keeley Caverns delay and reverb combo. It is really nice. And very diverse. You can really dive deep and get some different sounds. Only discrepancy is with the Spring reverb mode, as it is kind of hissy. Still sounds great on its own, though. Overall, it's way better than the Arp-87. No comparison, really.

Elvis idk why it never occurred to me but yeah, Kilobyte strikes me as _so you_ lol. And Philippe is one of the good guys for sure.

The bottom having dropped out of the market for my lovely pre-Fender SWR Super Redhead (but idiot optimism telling me that it will be considered a classic soon enough), I am going to hold onto it for the time being. Which means I'm going to need a bass overdrive. What's good? I want something that's fairly touch sensitive (the more I plunk the more it barks) and that gets largely doom metal at extreme settings. I am in Europe, so European obscurities are more readily available to me than American obscurities.

I love my Fuzzrocious Cat Tail, a rat clone, on both bass and guitar. It covers a lot of ground and may be able to work for you. Here is one available in Europe:

http://www.effekt-boutique.de/fuzzrocious-pedals-rat-tail-jetzt-cat-tail.html?___store=en&___from_store=en

Darkglass is a Finnish company that basically specialized in making bass ODs. I had a Vintage Microtubes Deluxe once and it excelled at getting my dinky little practice amp into tube amp territory. You could poke around at their offerings. However, they're pretty expensive - some even say overpriced. I thought maybe they'd be cheaper in Europe since they're from there, but it doesn't look like it.

German and tasty

http://www.stompbox.de/images/description_basstard.jpg

I am covered on the fuzz end (Z. Vex Wooly Mammoth). That Okko looks about right -- thanks! Darkglass mania is in full effect in Europe right now -- in a year or two you'll probably be able to pick 'em up cheap on Reverb, but right now, it's all backordered and full price and no thanks.

hello pedal geeks i know nothing of this world but i'm looking for a chop trem. is hummingbird still my best bet? any more affordable options?

hummingbird is choppy but doesn't have tap tempo if that matters to you. it also has two speed sets and you have to flick a little switch to go from one to the other. i have one i'm not using if you're interested in a trade. you can email me at naamme at gmail if you want.

I will still defend the Boss TR-2 as a really solid tremolo. It can go from slow and smooth to quick and choppy and everything in between. No tap tempo, but enh, price is right: $100 new and usually much less than that second hand.

Has anyone had any experience or knowledge running your guitar through bass effects? In the past, before I upgraded to the Earthquaker Spatial Delivery, I preferred the bass input on the Boss AW-3 Dynamic Wah and I currently prefer the bass input on my Boss BF-3 Flanger. It should be said that I do play very heavy gauge flatwound strings. I currently have these on my guitar — just tossed out the high e string. I'm chasing a bit more of a heavier chorus tone and the MXR Bass Chorus Deluxe is looking pretty enticing. Any thoughts?

I’ve got some trem ideas - if you want full chop, the Idiotbox Mad Doctor/Cyclops/Flash Stutters are optoisolator based and cheap.

I love the Mad Doctor - I have a mental oscillator drone box that has a stereo output so I can have two different fx chains in the output and sticking the Mad Doctor in one means that it accompanies itself.

If you're willing to put up with LED-induced epilepsy, the EHX Super Pulsar can do it all - chop, wobulate, anything.

It's not my personal jones but my longtime guitarist is a big Fulltone fan. Deja Vibe, Supa-Trem, or heck, both.

I am at work without earphones so I can't hear all the demos of the new Earthquaker Pyramids Flanger. From the smug riffing of PGS Andy, to the chummy banter and noisy explorations of Juan Alderete and his scraggly-haired buddy, to JustNick's sober 16-minute judgement of the device. These must wait for me.

How do they sound? It's certainly more expensive than I was hoping for from an EQD flanger, but I guess everything just costs $300 these days.

pgs andy is a saint how dare u