Getting into pedals and stuff (finally?)

[BigB]

Here's some famous famous/good examples of fx.


FLANGE
- Van Halen  - And the cradle will rock (Blatant example) (MXR)
-Black Label Society - Crazy Horse (MXR)

- The Beat - Mirror in the bathroom (EHX Electric Mistress)

Whammy pedal (Digitech)
-Can be heard in Tom Morello's Like a Stone solo with Ausioslave

Can be heard on almost any Tom Morello stuff, really :lol:

Chorus, phase and flange are kinda related at times.  I find chorus very usable but some people hate it found it does sound very 80's.

Chorus and flange are more than closely related - technically they are the same effect (add a very short delay and modulate the delay time), the flange having some feedback in addition -, and some pedals give you both.

The phaser is a bit different, as the name implies it doubles the signal with a copy that goes more or less out of phase (well, not totally neither). Vibes are a close cousin, but I never bothered to find out the exact difference.

So when you combine a fuzz with an EQ to take out that uber fatness out of the sound (...)

That's basically what Gilmour does with the Fuzz + (Treble Boost or OD) combo - using the hi-pass of the second to tidy and tighten the fuzz fat excess.

i would warm against too much too soon. you might not even like effects and what they do to your sound and playing.

+1

anyway, these little boxes work out quite expensive if you buy a load of them. why not get a small rack, like a low-end tc electronics thing? and then you can experiment to see what you like.

-1 ;)

The TC Electronic Stereo Chorus Flanger is a great pedal on it's own, but is nothing like an EHX Electric Mistress (flanger) or Small Clone (the famous "Nirvana chorus"), and you just can't tell wether you like Chorus or Flange trying only the TC or one of the EHX. Same goes for ODs (a TS is not a Timmy is not an OCD etc), Fuzz and just any effect, really.

my message: its fun to experiment with these things, but go easy at first ;) buy secondhand.

+1

Really you have to try a lot of things to find out what works for you.

[gwEm]

a 2ndhand  G-Sharp or whatever costs the price of a single stompbox and you get reverb, various types of delays, chorus, flanger etc.

can't go wrong really.

[JimmyMoorby]

Gotta say all this talk of pedals ive indulged in 3 today !

- Greenhouse effects Stonefish Chorus/Vibrato
- Mr Black Supermoon
- Boss NS2 (I love ISP but im on a budget and new theyre 160 picked this up 2nd hand for 50)

Almost £400 in total arrrgghhhhhh im a bad man but i am also happy!

[juansolo]

one thing I can't live without for a while is the juansolo baby boobtube I bought from Twinfan
it's a tube driven vox stage with a pentode tube
technically, a very simple circuit that works as a clean preamp or as a clean booster

I use it as a clean booster in front of my modded jmp
I use a low setting so it won't drive the amp too hard (I believe it can boost up to 55db+ in front of the amp)
I set the amp to a mild crunch gain, almost clean with low output pickups
the pedal in front of it adds a nice organic sparkle and a slightlty smoother reponse
I actually forget it is on, but when I turn it off, it's like I'm losing 10% of my tone
when I need high gain, I just turn the od pedal on
my heavy tones are a lot fuller with the overdrive and boobtube combined and a mild gain setting on the amp than having the overdrive alone and more gain from the amp or from the overdrive

but the boobtube sounds great as an actual gain booster as well, although it doesn't distort by itself
if I set the pot to around 60%, I get a very warm and full drive from the amp, kinda like Soundgarden or something
I can't get that with overdrives or with with solid state clean boosters like my zambelli catalinbread picoso clone or the mxr custom audio I had
it' like it expands the raw signal frequencies instead of just amplifying a certain range, which usually results in a "hard" and bassy tone
it seems to add lots of harmonics

it also sounds great as a clean preamp straight to a power amp

 8)

Got an original Boobtube up cheap if you're interested... Quite a different flavour with that one :) http://juansolo.demon.co.uk/stompage/forsale.html

[Mr. Air]

Like Eric said earlier the Mooer effects are worth checking out. They are cheap and good value for money. You should try before you buy though which is a golden rule I guess, but I haven't always followed it  :oops: :oops: :oops:

Another recomendation from me is the TC toneprint line. I got the HOF reverb and it is very nice considdering the price tag.The Flashback delay is supposed to be really nice as well.

[Alex]

I used to have more pedals and got rid of quite a few. I've become so purist over the years I don't even use boost pedals for high gain anymore, only occasionally for leads.

Different amps and guitars do make a difference on how you perceive all your pedals, and very much so. Maybe what you really need to consider is upgrading the Valveking first. To be honest, I remember the VK as having a nice CLEAN channel and not a very good OVERDRIVE channel! Blackstar, Orange, Laney and Marshall all make some good amps that are affordable and offer more over the VK. 2-3 pedals can easily rack up the cost of a Laney Ironheart or Orange Thunder.

Finally, I think compressors are ... cheating. Just focus on clean and proper playing at even volume.

[Lew]

Not sure I see much point in spending the dosh on a pedal switcher. Sure it can make a board neat, clean and idiot proof but it takes up a bunch of room on the board and you still have to put your foot on a switch. I dunno, guess I'm missing the point?

What would be cool and something I'd buy is a unit like the gigrig that had actual room for the pedal to go inside the enclosure. It could be wired up neatly and out of sight and save a bunch of precious room rather than add to it. You would make it taller rather than longer so you could have the pedals on a pull out tray on the bottom. Maybe I should make one and start a company, anyone in?  ;-p

Regarding pedals; up until the last year or so I just used high gain amp heads with a dd7 in the loop but I was never really happy, the closest I came was a FryetteUltralead that in a fit of total stupidity I sold to MDV. I've had occasional pedals but generally didn't bother with them. But two things changed over the last couple of years I started getting heavily into different music and tones and I've been using what must be one of the most basic amps ever - 100W/EL34 with bass-treble-volume-master volume so it's been out of necessity.

My advice is try as much as you can before you spend the money simply because what you think you want based off youtubes/forums might not actually be what you need to get that sound for your rig. For example... I was 100% dead set on getting an OKKO Dominator and John was kind enough to send me his along with a few other high gain boxes and the Dom absolutely did not work with my rig but what did work was the last thing I expected it to - his Mesa in a box - really tight, percussive, grindy and transparent with 100% usable gain. Out of the 8 or so gain boxes I've played through in the last months only 3 of them actually worked with my set-up even though they were great pedals in there own right. I can't big up John (Juan) enough for the help he's given me, sending me pedals to try out and talking stuff through over copious e-mails.

[Toe-Knee]

regarding a pedal switch if you want it just to turn your boost on and maybe switch in a chorus or something on clean sounds whilst also changing the channel of the amp this can be done incredibly easy with a few jacks and a 4pdt footswitch.

With regards to effects whilst i enjoy building them occasionally I generally don't use them as i prefer the customisation of rack effects units and the fact that they take up less space.

I also tend to go for the more extreme sounds which is harder to do with most stomp boxes.

[GuitarIv]

Woah, huge response here!

I read a lot of great things about Juansolos stuff on the forum and quite a lot folks round here seem to have at least one pedal made by him. You doing this as a professional business Juan?

:)

I must say I'm a little bit overwhelmed right now by all the answers I got, so I'm gonna try to make a post addressing everything:

First of all that Strymon sounds amazing! It definitely has an 80's vibe to it but I always liked the music from that decade, so I wouldn't mind using a Chorus, especially now that I know what it does exactly. However like others have pointed out there seems to be so many choices of effects that I think it would be a bit OOT to try everything out. And then again saying I'm a simple guy when it comes to my tone, meaning straight Clean/Distortion I think I'm not trying to incorporate lots of new stuff, just make my clean channel cleaner right now if that makes any sense. Something that makes it sound more sparkling yet still nice when strumming, juicy is a word that comes to my head. Just like the Holydiver saturates juicy as opposed to the Painkiller that saturates harsh, I would like to make the cleans more juicy and wet. Any ideas what could help besides a slight delay so that the cleans sound a bit fuller?

Regarding Fuzz I'm really not a fan of it, but I have an old Vox Solid State Foundation Bass head that belonged to my grandfather and that I play my guitar through sometimes, that thing has a built in Fuzz and I think that'll be everything I'll ever need in terms of that particular sound :P

Jimmy: Thanks for all the sound samples, will definitely check those out!

Regarding Tubescreamers, I can't live without one anymore. I have an Ibanez TS9-DX for my Valveking and the Digitech Bad Monkey for my Orange Micro Terror, the mid emphasis you get together with a tighter sound and more distortion that your amp doesn't give you is amazing. And I must say although the Bad Monkey was less than half the price of the Ibanez I like it even more. It can get a bit artificial sounding when you crank the gain too much but that's certainly not a thing I do with a TS type pedal anyway and having the option of regulating highs and lows separately is a great thing.

I do like things simple and 3 EQ knobs on an amp are more than enough for me if it does it's job well. I also love to keep the amp tamed regarding distortion and squeeze the rest I need out of a booster, pickups and my playing. Just makes everything sound more defined.

Tekbow: thanks, will look at that. I'm actually not quite happy with the Crybaby I have, it just seems to miss out on some frequencies I'd like to capture. Again a typical case of a blind buy that went wrong  :?

Gwem: I certainly dislike stuff that combines everything and does the job just ok than having one thing built specifically for one effect and excels at it. Still a good idea, I have an old Zoom effects unit lying around and I'll fiddle with it :)

Alex: the Valveking can actually get very decent sounding on the distortion channel with a few simple tricks. By using a patch cable to engage the effects loop and putting a dummy ¼” jack plug converter into the second input whilst having your guitar plugged in combined with a Tubescreamer makes everything tighter, more transparent and cutting. You can read it all here, this is an actual Wikipedia for Valveking users:

http://ultimate-guitar-valveking.wikispaces.com/Amp+Tricks+and+Suggestions

Tony, unfortunately I don't have the time getting into amps, if I had it I would build my own instantly :P

So I don't know how much I have addressed now and how much I have left out, as said I just want a cleaner clean channel, some say I'll need a compressor for that and my personal idea was to implement a Delay. Regarding the Octaswitch I will see what pedals I will get and if it will still be needed. I really love the idea of having a neat and clean pedal board that does everything I want by just pressing one button and the Octaswitch does just that.

Thanks so far and cheers!

[JimmyMoorby]

The Xotic EP Booster is great for adding to/'eqing' clean tones and as a booster.  Its what was used in the original echoplex for people like EVH, Jimmy Page and Eric Johnson and more recently Joe Bonammsa.
Delay, chorus and reverb work well.  I use all 4 for clean tones nowadays.
Previous advice still applies though dont take any ones word for any thing think very carefully before buying any thing.

[tekbow]

Regarding Fuzz I'm really not a fan of it, but I have an old Vox Solid State Foundation Bass head that belonged to my grandfather and that I play my guitar through sometimes, that thing has a built in Fuzz and I think that'll be everything I'll ever need in terms of that particular sound :P

I cannot desrcibe to you the utter sonic joy you are missing out on and how much stuff you probably like is hinged on a fuzz pedal. the problem is that calling a describing the world of fuzzes as "fuzzes" is like describing the world of cars as "cars". There are so many out there that perform differently and do different things. It's very personal journey and until you have the knack of using a fuzz (especially Ge fuzzes) they can sound like a box full of wasps. fuzz tones range from sparkling smokey grit to all out sonic assault

Tekbow: thanks, will look at that. I'm actually not quite happy with the Crybaby I have, it just seems to miss out on some frequencies I'd like to capture. Again a typical case of a blind buy that went wrong  :?

Here's one of the wahs the guy on ebay I mentioned is doing. It's actually based off mods he did to one of my boomerangs. He liked em so much, he kept notes and is replicating it. I'm pretty chuffed about it. It's called Tek3. Mine was Tek1. I also own Tek2 but we did something different with that one. Tek1 works a treat with gain. Even adds a little of it's own.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CzJVm7S1S_c

[juansolo]

You doing this as a professional business Juan?

It keeps us in capacitors. Well just about. We've ever actually made any money out of it to date (pretty sure we're still running at around £400 down). It's a hobby and we make odd pedals for people to make it a little cheaper.

[ericsabbath]

8)

Got an original Boobtube up cheap if you're interested... Quite a different flavour with that one :) http://juansolo.demon.co.uk/stompage/forsale.html

whoa, that's really cheap!
I wouldn't think twice if I had the cash right now
I'm drowning in bills these days, though  :(

by the way, I've been thinking of removing the socket from the baby boobtube and wiring a submini inside the pedal, as I'm always worried about damaging the big tube
is this going to affect the tone a lot?

[juansolo]

8)

Got an original Boobtube up cheap if you're interested... Quite a different flavour with that one :) http://juansolo.demon.co.uk/stompage/forsale.html

whoa, that's really cheap!
I wouldn't think twice if I had the cash right now
I'm drowning in bills these days, though  :(

by the way, I've been thinking of removing the socket from the baby boobtube and wiring a submini inside the pedal, as I'm always worried about damaging the big tube
is this going to affect the tone a lot?

We built one, though we put the submini on the outside as it can get quite hot. The problem you'll have is that I built yours all on the back of the socket as a challenge to myself, so it won't come apart easily, if at all. It'd be easier to make it from scratch on vero, which is handy, as we've done that here:



I could also come to some sort of arrangement for mine if you want... It was only built to see if we could. I already have a BBT.

[GuitarIv]

Jimmy: I'll do some careful testing and then I'll decide. Will get back to you guys with results :)

tekbow: I always thought about the "bees in a can" sound when thinking about fuzz, but I must confess I have never gotten any deeper into this subject and particular sound, so probably you're right. If I only had the time/cash to try everything out :?

And that Wah sounds amazing! Much better response than my Crybaby and it doesn't seem to cut as many frequencies with high gain. You certainly got me hooked here

Juansolo: will hit you up when I have the funds :)

Thanks again guys!