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

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

I love his demos, but smug riffage is totally his schtick!

i dunno if smug is the word i'd use, maybe... too slick? he's def my go-to pedal demo guy - really his main problem is that he makes everything sound great

I am of the considered opinion that the EQD Pyramids is hot useless garbage. Those dudes have totally lost their way at this point imo. I love weird, but not weird for weirds sake.

Yeah, I'm sorry to say that their modulation units are all pretty underwhelming.

I like EQD's Grand Orbiter a lot - it's really the only one that's come close to sounding like the Doppelganger.

btw, harman is shuttering DOD and Digitech, so get your Whammys and FreqOuts while you can.

I am not distressed by this. Digitech is no loss.

There will still be tons of DOD on the used market.

I was Freqout was on my list of things I thought I might want so ta for the news.

So, I had three VooDoo Lab Pedal Powers and twentysome odd pedals. And, I was sitting there Sunday afternoon noodling away at my Tele, stepping on different things, just feeling pretty aimless and undirected in general. It occurred to me: maybe the tone I'm chasing isn't in a pedal. I've been exclusively playing a Telecaster for literal years now. I love the sound, but it made me wonder what else is out there.

So, I said fuck it, gathered up a literal bag of pedals and one of the VooDoo Labs (the GC close to me will buy them as used gear, which is cool).

Went down to GC and just started plugging in different stuff.

Some things occurred to me then:

1) I hate all the guitars I tried by Schecter, Ibanez, and Gibson. SGs are the fucking worst. Ugly guitars, play like shit; literally nothing redeeming.

2) Fender has lost its damn mind. Chinese made "modern" Teles with a humbucker in the bridge? Yeah, $500. That is so wrong, it's almost funny.

3) I played a Rickenbacker. Sadly, it seems the legend and prestige, along with the actual awesomeness of the guitar, merits the ungodly high price tag. It was fun to play though, for sure.

In the end, I stuck with Fender. This GC had a few of the single coil/humbucker combo Duo-Sonic reissues left. So, with the trade-in discount I got, it was around $450 (my credit covered most of that). I got the sparkly mint green one. It's a rad guitar. Made in Mexico, got the humbucker in the bridge for maximum dynamic range. Really just a great sound going through my AC15. I did away with all but one of my drive pedals, so I'm now just cranking the Duo-Sonic to full volume and adjusting pedal/amp settings to get the dynamics I want. I'm still at like fifteen pedals, but I'm at least back down to a non-ridiculous setup. And I've already gotten an entirely new perspective on my amp, so yeah: all's well.

Clarification from upthread - DOD/Digitech will continue production going forward, but a key player in their resurrection (Tom Cram, who is a super nice dude) and the rest of the forward looking team are being let go.

bummer... Tom was the keystone in the recent DOD/Digitech renaissance. Guess they figured he’d done enough.

Just ordered a BigSky! Can't wait to hook it up to my synths.

After the news of the changes at Digitech, I decided to go for the markdown open box Obscura delay because it may not be around for much longer and it's pretty awesome. The Tape mode is delicious and definitely worth it. The subdivision options are a bit clunky to access, but that can be worked around with some skillful tap tempo practice. I'm a delay whore, obviously, and the Obscura is absolutely solid.

That Carcosa fuzz they have is pretty cool too.

The Carcosa hasn't left my board since I bought it. I'm selling my Obscura to a friend; it's a lovely pedal but it got replaced in my toolkit by the Meris Polymoon and I don't see it returning.

And as jjjusten said upthread, DOD/DIgitech isn't going anywhere, it's just not going to be doing anything new which is a shame.

I bought a TC Flashbackx4. Found a used one for $150. It's rad AF. The ability to store a preset on each footswitch, which can then be changed with tap tempo makes basically three delays in one.

So, this is just an in general inquiry to anyone who feels like responding. . .

(and I should preface this by saying that, in my experience, most fuzz pedals sound pretty much the same. . . I'm not saying that I'm right about that, I've just not got the nuanced ear that I guess it takes to distinguish between them)

I'm in the market for a fuzz pedal. My general ideas wants about fuzzes and would be something along these lines:

— I just want to step on something and get distortion right away, mostly for leads and single note lines. Right now, I have two Boss drive pedals that I use for these purposes: an SD-1 and a BD-2. I'm very happy with these pedals, but I would like something that just breaks up immediately and is a little more hot.

— I don't like how Big Muffs sound. To me, that is a way too harsh sound. There is no amount of highs that can be rolled off to make that pedal sound like what I'm shooting for.

— I had a Fuzzface once. It was one of the red mini ones. To me, it sounded just like the nano Big Muff I had for a while.

— Ideally, whatever fuzz I end up with would be a very smooth sounding distortion. What I think I mean by that (because, I am not entirely clear, to be honest) is that I would like a nice mid-focused tone. Not necessarily mid BOOSTED, but at least a flatter, non-scooped EQ profile.

Right now, I'm considering one of the Fulltones: 69, 70, or the Soulbender. I did have their Secret Freq, because of the lure of the "Freq" knob. But, that proved to be more of a straight ahead high gain overdrive / distortion pedal. And the "Freq" knob was a little too much for me, as it started to sound like a wah or other type of filter and lost quite a bit of its musicality because of that. I'm definitely open to other options, though.

Fuzzes I've played in the past (and reasons for disliking them) are:
*Nano Big Muff (too scooped, too shrill)
*Dunlop Fuzzface Mini (same)
*Catalinbread Karma Suture (the pink one; it was decent, but would get fizzy sometimes)

I'm playing either my Fender Mexican Telecaster or Mexican Duo-Sonic into the normal channel of my Vox AC15. And I run the Fulltone Full-Drive 2 MOSFET in vintage + MOSFET mode as an always on boost.

Any thoughts?

You should get a distortion not a fuzz. I think you's be happier.

I was in the same boat as Austin - just could not get a musical sound from a Big Muff or whatever (yeah all this sound is grebt but where's the NOTE?).

So I agree with EZ. Amp distortion or Blues Driver breakup generally provides enough dirt for my needs; oddness can come from somewhere else. Distortion plus mild phaser, for example, or overdrive plus flange, gets me "dirt plus weird" as well as a fuzz can in most cases.

I get that. I really do. But if there's one sound I just cannot get behind, it's overdriven and distorted tones into modulation. I have never liked it, don't like it now, and never will like it. So, that's out of the question.

Another thing I'm considering is the MXR Variac Fuzz.

Also, EZ, do you have any specific recommendations for a straight ahead disto pedal? Presumably something with more detailed EQing possibilities than the average two or three knob drive pedal?

Also, I recently bought an MXR Doubleshot distortion used and it was not that great. One channel was like the Secret Freq, in the sense that the mids were so boosted, it bacem like a filter effect. The other channel was just too fizzy, and no amount of turning the highs down could help with that, unless the gain was all the way anticlockwise (which, at that point, it just became a boost, which defeats the purpose).

I think fuzz and distortion are hard to recommend. “Too fizzy” is what I look for in a fuzz!

Honestly, pick up a good Rat or Rat clone. Everyone makes variants of that circuit; look for one that has a voice you like and/or tone shaping that will help you get it where you want.

Fuzzrocious Cat Tail is a great Rat clone with lots of options for dialing it in to your tastes.

Have you played with EQ pre fuzz to get what you want?

Yardbox! I used it in place of amp distortion for a while, and it worked equally great for leads and chords.

agree RAT is the gold standard. also despite my current mixed feelings if you like fuzz but want something closer to distortion, Catalinbread Katzenkönig is fantastic.

I think what you think you know about categories of effects is messing you up. Don't read, try stuff out and buy what you like. Dunno how to help you if you can't try stuff out!

Try running the fuzz into the BD-2 set on mild breakup. This will smooth out the harsh tones from the fuzz.

And +1 on the Rat, they can sound halfway between a fuzz and an OD. But still try the stacking option above, you’ve already got drives and you can get a muff for like 50 €/$.

So, what I did was went to Guitar Center first thing after work yesterday, because GAS, and found a used MXR Custom Modified Overdrive. Wow, that thing can get LOUD. But anyway, I liked how it colored my tone just being used as a boost, so I put that first in my chain after my tuner. Then I switched the Full-Drive to stack on top of the MXR, but what I did is just dime the Drive and Boost knobs and keep the boost always engaged. So, when that gets fired up, it's a decent-to-good faux fuzz. It sounds kind of like this.

The MXR Modified OD had some sort of damage to the power input to where any of the smallest little jostling would disconnect the power and the pedal would go out. So when I would step on it, sometimes it would stay on, sometimes not. I returned it. Too bad, as it's a solid drive pedal.

Anyway, as is abundantly clear by now, I will lay down and spread my legs for just about any delay pedal ever. I was very excited to see that the Guitar Center I was returning the MXR to had one of the newer-ish TC Electronic budget delays in the case. The one I was eyeing was the Gauss Tape Echo, so I went for it. And, let me tell you, for a $70 tape echo emulator, it's fucking sweet. I like it even more than the tape emulator modes on the Flashback. It can go fully wet, has up to like three seconds maximum delay time, and gets into self-oscillation. I've been looking around for a good delay where I can set the repeats just on the verge of self-oscillation, just drifting off slowly and dissipating in fidelity along the way. The Gauss is definitely capable of that. It does have a bit of a volume drop when you engage it, but other delays I've played on tended to do that too (Electro-Harmonix Memory Toy, Malekko 616 LoFi, Wampler Ethereal, and some others), so I'm used to it. Overall, it's a pretty great sound and hard to believe the price.

Matt at idiotbox has finally finished up mystery effect #6. #5 was a blast of a light ring mod so can't wait to see what this one does.

In my constant dealings rotating and trading in pedals, I ended with the TC Flashback 2. It was cool! The Mash function was hard to deal with. It did something different with every different mode and / or TonePrint, so it was really difficult to pin down just exactly how it worked. In addition, it treated the (standard size) footswitch essentially as an expression pedal, so it had a learning curve, to say the least. The more of these newer delays that I play on, the more I realize how much the Carbon Copy Deluxe really is ideal for me.

So, I took the Flashback 2 back and got a Rat. It sounds really good! I was surprised, honestly. Definitely a more high gain distortion than I would normally play on, but the Filter knob can really cut out the fizziness that I don't like.

I stopped into the Guitar Center by my work down in Lake Forest the other day and they had a TC Mojomojo Overdrive in the used case for $30, so I decided to get that to go after the Gauss Tape Echo and make up for the volume drop. Just using it as a utility clean boost and it works well to get the Gauss back to unity.

Unless somebody does a cheap bit crusher or lofi delay anytime soon, I actually feel like my pedal chain is pretty solid at this point.

Rat is good on low-gain too.

It really is! I am very pleasantly surprised. It sounds good on my Telecaster, which I have really heavy flatwound chrome strings on. I also have pretty thick flatwound chromes on my Duo-Sonic, but I have a package of NYXL 11-56s sitting around that I may put on it tomorrow, just to do something different. I've been playing flatwounds on both of my guitars for months, so perhaps I should switch things up.

Downsized again yesterday and traded a bunch of pedals for a Catalinbread Bicycle Delay. I literally have no idea what I'm doing. Still, that thing is rad. It's like a seriously weird delay and ring modulator in one. I actually kind of love it.

Back down to about twelve pedals now. A few months ago, I was running three maxed out VooDoo Lab Pedal Power Plus units in excess of twenty pedals. That was just out of control. I'm not sure what I was trying to do.

So, wow. I got curious about getting a Boss Slow Gear type auto-swell pedal. I looked into the new TC Electronic Crescendo thing, but some of the reviews indicate that it has a volume drop (which seems to be a common occurrence in a lot of TC's newer budget line, unfortunately). Also considered the Malekko Sneak Attack, but it's kind of beyond my budget for that sort of thing and does a lot of other stuff that I'm not necessarily wanting. So, I finally just looked at a proper passive volume control pedal and ended up going with the Jim Dunlop Volume (X) pedal. Why didn't I get a volume pedal years ago!?? It is so useful for my style of playing! Really a ton of fun to play on. It's been a long time that I've had a new pedal that just makes me want to sit down and noodle around with. I've been so focused lately on creating really structured songs that revolve around my looper that I've not just played around with sketches and let my mind wander. It's been really refreshing. And it's such a simple thing. I've convinced myself that I'm not coordinated enough to manipulate something with my feet while I'm also manipulating my guitar with my hands that I have been afraid of getting something like a volume pedal. And, thankfully, I was wrong. It's come to me a thousand times more easily than I had envisioned. Really been having fun doing slow major seventh swells into the Bicycle Delay. After first getting the Bicycle Delay set up and messing around with it, I was kind of worried about practical application of it. But after getting that Volume (X) pedal dialed in, I've found something that is inspiring and sounds very cool and different.

Good times.

I think my GAS is slowing down, but I got a BOSS MD-500, and it's cool, but pretty overwhelming! So many options and routing options...

I don't even remember now the chain of events that lead to me having about $100 in store credit at Guitar Center, which they put onto a gift card for me so I could use it online if I wanted. I've reverted back to MXR and Boss' multi-mode reverbs, the M300 and the RV-6. I dabbled into all sorts of weird reverbs and delays over the past year (mostly Earthquakers and Catalinbreads), only to discover that I just prefer the variety offered on the multi-mode boxes, without diving too deep into something all-consuming, like an RV-500 or a Strymon. I love my MXR and Boss reverbs and I've officially bought each of those pedals twice now. Still, even though they are multi-mode, I can only use one at a time on each pedal, so I considered using my store credit to pick up another solid reverb. Really scoured the used listings on the Guitar Center website and finally came across an older version one of the Tech 21 Boost R.V.B. pedal. It's technically only a single "mode" reverb, but with six knobs covering some very unique parameters, it can go from a faux spring sound to a huge cathedral drone. I've hit a really sweet spot with it where, depending on how much modulation and delay I run into it, it almost sounds like I've got an orchestra backing me. I posted about this song elsewhere on here early today, but that aspect really comes to fruition on a recent recording I did here. I've always really revered the early David Axelrod albums on Capitol and the affiliated stuff he did work on (mostly thinking of the Electric Prunes album Release of an Oath). Other music nerds I've crossed paths with over the years —many of whom I've tried to get into Axe— would often tell me that the big string and horn charts playing those huge, yearning melodies was a bit cheesy and over the top to them. I never understood that, as it always seemed to me like such intentionally beautiful music; very much of a genuine origin with the committed effort of just trying to create something gorgeous and resonating. I never ever considered myself to be anywhere near understanding or even attempting to do something similar to Axe's music, but nonetheless it's always been a source of a lot of inspiration in making my own music. Mostly just inspiring me to not be afraid of making something that may be considered corny or sappy sounding; especially if I have a strong personal connection to the music. Getting the Boost R.V.B. pedal and recording that new version of that song has really opened my eyes and ears in a way I've not really ever experienced before. It's like I was searching for a pedal that would do what the Boost R.V.B. is now doing, but I didn't know that's what I was searching for until I got the pedal dialed in. Again, I'm not saying that music I'm making now is even anywhere near as competent —not to mention, as good— as the David Axelrod stuff I hold so dear; but I do feel like I'm taking steps towards that. I also recently finally stopped messing with autowahs and envelope filters and got a proper wah pedal. It's the Dunlop Crybaby 535Q in the mini housing. Still a lot to learn on that one, but I'm already glad I made the switch.

The Malekko swell pedal I had was pretty bad. The best thing for that sound was actually a preset on the Pod 2.0, so I assume that sound is included in the line 6 echo park which you can probably find cheap and in strymon and other mega delays.

Pretty happy with my volume pedal and, I have to admit, now that I've played on one, I can't imagine leaving that function up to an "auto pilot" of sorts. I like being completely in control of that.

Goddamnit, Moog discontinues the Moogerfooger pedals - https://reverb.com/news/moog-announces-end-of-moogerfooger-pedals-a-look-back-at-what-made-them-so-great

Idiotbox Mystery #6 seems to be a bit crusher with a frequency divider and maybe a detuner? If that's what Matt was going for the MWFX Glitch and Judder are both better, and there's a couple of wavetables on the Geiger Counter that achieve similar things.