Pedals

[The_G]

Who else here is a pedals/hardware effects enthusiast? Which ones do you like/love most?

[mindstuff]

Who else here is a pedals/hardware effects enthusiast? Which ones do you like/love most?

Me!

Ever since getting the octatrack I've gone full OTB effects.
AcidBox III, Zen Delay, Deco, El Capistan, Big Sky, Timeline, Analog Heat, Pitchfactor

I have to say I'm a fan of the Tape Saturation on Deco and its doubler for wide stereo field.
My fav though is Erica synth acidbox and zen delay...when gain is pushed through them you get this amazing overdrive. Then I'd say my Analog Heat is my next fav.

One I have my eye one is Oto Boum which doesn't look available til summer.

[buffered]

Who else here is a pedals/hardware effects enthusiast? Which ones do you like/love most?

i use them alot. A good tip is to get a parametric eq pedal and put it in front of a fuzz or distortion pedal. You can get high variation in tone this way. Boss Ge 7 is a fairly good one.
Big fuzz fan. A fave is the Swollen Pickle.
For compression/boost, Boss CS-3 and the dd-7 for delay. Simple but robust.
Had a Neunaber Immerse 2 for reverb but to be honest, it was too good and transparent sounding. Have the eventide Blackhole that was recently released. Pretty good for creative use. Not natural at all, which is what i was going for.
I avoid all the strymon, meris, elektron shit.
Was looking at the Boum but the compressor is the only interesting thing on it.
Earthquaker have a couple of good boost/gain pedals. Was looking at the Arrows or Hoof distortion.
But yeah I just have fun with it. Some days it sounds good and the next it all just sounds shit. Depends on the source material and levels in the chain i think. In my experience anyway.

[kronk]

loads of pedals here.
pedals are up there in the cork sniffing stakes with analogue synths in certain circles
but i would say that the zoom ms50g & ms70cdr are the best bang for a buck in a pedal that you can get

[Lost to the Void]

Lots of pedals here.
Make my own as well.
Analog heat is nice. The only Elektron I've kept.
Mooer/Devin Townsend ocean machine is amazing.
It's a delay and reverb network.
It has a lot of nice features.
One of the good things is that any of the reverbs can have shimmer added to them, it is a separate feature that you dial in to each reverb rather than a specific reverb in itself, so you can get some crazy tones.
You can also swap the order of the FX in the chain live, and seamlessly. This allows you to build amazing textures and sound beds. The order in the matrix can be any order series and various parallel settings too.
You can let's say, have delay, reverb, delay, then switch the order to delay delay reverb and it seemlessly switches, all the tails continue, so you can shuttle buffers back and forwards between the delays and build textures. The delays all go to infinite and there is also a built in looper.
You can use it on its own just feeding back into itself.

TC electronic alter ego x4 is a nice delay array. Toneprint compatible. Really nice sound.

I have a lot of distortions and fuzzes and boosts and saturators.

I'm getting the Redpanda particle soon. Granular is a huge part of my sound and I need something that at least goes halfway to the power of ITB granular stuff.

Mod Duo X next.

[The_G]

Nice to hear. Hard to beat the value of software, but I love the immediacy of hardware effects. I just interface with it differently.

Right now I've got a Keeley Loomer for guitar, and a 1981 Inventions DRV, which is a preamp built on a modified low gain RAT circuit. Then I've got a Meris Polymoon (batshit delay) running into a Neunaber Inspire (trichorus/hex) into a Neunaber Immerse (reverb). And finally a TC PlethoraX5 multi-effects, which is one of my favorite pieces of kit.

I'm thinking of selling the Polymoon, but not sure what to replace it with. It sounds great and can get incredibly weird, but it's also one of those things (like Eurorack) where you can go somewhere and not know how to get back (and there's no patch recall). Fun for noodling, not so fun when you're trying to record or edit.

[kronk]

the loomer is gas, so good that kev shields uses it

[Amøbe]

I have begun spending my money on hardware (now I'm just looking for a studio), and I am legitimately excited about finally being able to use my guitar pedals again - I have some pretty cool distortion and fuzz in there!

I also have a silky smooth tremolo in there, but does that work well on electronic instruments? (I don't think you can clock it)

[willemb]

Ive got loads of pedals... possibly too many. Mostly cheap ones. Loads of behringer. The echo machine EM600 and reverb machine are nice because they are versatile. I think they stopped making the echo machine (i think a clone of line6 echo park), and prices have shot up like crazy, but not getting rid of it.

My favourite by far is the Electro Harmonix Germanium⁴ Big Muff Pi, and not just because of the name. I bought it because it was a bargain at the time, rather than having a specific purpose for it, it quickly became my favourite. In all the combinations of setups i make with my pedals, I always use this one somewhere (usually on the kick track). Its got great tone shaping with a separate distortion and overdrive stage.

My mixer by default also has sends to EH Cathedral and BOSS RE-20. Started overdriving the RE-20 recently rather than using it as a straight echo, getting some nice and gnarly rhythms going with it.

Also EH Flanger Hoax, but need a new PSU. It can be used as a flanger, but i prefer to use it as its own instrument, making whale sounds with the feedback etc.

[The_G]

the loomer is gas, so good that kev shields uses it

My only gripe with the Loomer is that it doesn't have stereo outputs, so the soft focus and shimmer settings aren't as good as they could be. But the modulated reverse reverb and fuzz are stellar. It's my single favorite pedal for guitar.

[mervv]

I've got the Mooer Ocean Machine also, and I like it a lot. Use it a bit like Steve described. You can also just plug one output channel into an input channel and make all kinds of crazy feedback sounds when you're changing the sequence of effects in real time and playing with the different parameters. Make crazy noise-->loop it-->make more crazy noises with different settings-->overdub your loop and so on until the end of time. I find it's a bit dull if you try to just set it and forget it as an insert effect, but it shines when you play with all the parameters in real time. I've gotten some really musical results with the pedal and an extremely simple sound source.

I got the Meris Polymoon just a couple days ago. I was on the fence a few months back because I heard some shit demos. Turned out the demos were just shit. It's seriously cool. Great as a delay but you can also abuse the different flanging settings and dimension knob to get some extremely huge, gnarly, rhythmic sounds. Really full-spectrum, in your face. I took a kick drum and turned it into an angry wall of morphing distortion. It made me think of some Rrose releases, like waterfall(birth), for example. A lot of fun.

I'd describe what I want out of any pedal as "versatile yet peculiar." If I'm going to use it as an insert that I setup and leave static I feel I should just use a VST since I'm very much based in Ableton. The benefit of a pedal for me is that I can "play" it.

On another note, I've thought about either an OTO Boum or Analog Heat for my live PA setup for a while. Does anyone use either or both of those in that way? Do you feel like it was worth it? And do you have a preference for one over the other? The Boum is more compact, which is a selling point if I'll have to lug it around, but the Analog Heat seems a bit more versatile for both live and home studio use.

[Lost to the Void]

On another note, I've thought about either an OTO Boum or Analog Heat for my live PA setup for a while. Does anyone use either or both of those in that way? Do you feel like it was worth it? And do you have a preference for one over the other? The Boum is more compact, which is a selling point if I'll have to lug it around, but the Analog Heat seems a bit more versatile for both live and home studio use.

I have the analog heat. I use it in the mastering room. It is very versatile, and has a lot of really nice features, so it`s more versatile than the Boum for sure *as a saturator*. For example the EQ curves and behaviour change, and are completely different, for each saturation circuit. It`s very clever, it has envelope followers and an lfo and such.
The Boum is great, I would say a little more ideal for live use due to portability, but a little more limited as a saturator, though it does have a compressor.
But I use a compressor for my live PA, just saturation doesn`t give me enough control of the dynamics. A compressor, driven to saturate gives me both the time domain aspect of dynamic control and glue, as well as the harmonic enrichment and analog clipping of saturation. The compression on the Boum is too limited for my needs, but it`s a great machine. Surgeon uses one for his PA, which I imagine has doubled their sales.

[Ben Kohonays]

Pedals are a bit like a crack addiction, you buy one thinking it can't hurt to just get ONE.......


I see them as my concession to modular. I really don't want to get sucked into that black hole so I avoid it by playing with the same concept in a slightly cheaper format (only if you're careful) and not having to figure out what 'skiff' means or fucking about with cases and HP measurements.

A good tip is to get a parametric eq pedal and put it in front of a fuzz or distortion pedal. You can get high variation in tone this way. Boss Ge 7 is a fairly good one.

I remember reading some audio blog or article (tape op? - can't remember) many years ago and they were basically saying that a lot of the main differences between different distortion/fuzz pedals was down to the way the manufacturer EQ'd either the input or output. To this end, Akai released the awesome G-drive distortion pedal, as shown here with 6-band graphic EQ on the input and the output:



I used to have one, but they were becoming rare so I sold it for a good mark up. Probably a bad move. I'm often stupid like that.

[The_G]

Haha good point. Like modular but more fun and less likely to destroy your finances and productivity.

[The_G]

Okay now I'm thinking I won't sell the Polymoon. Everytime it pushes me away, it grabs me again.

[Ben Kohonays]

Haha good point. Like modular but more fun and less likely to destroy your finances and productivity.

That's kind of how I see it, yeah.

[mervv]

Okay now I'm thinking I won't sell the Polymoon. Everytime it pushes me away, it grabs me again.

Yeah, it's a really weird piece of equipment. I can see how it would wear out its welcome after a while, especially if you're the type to try and limit your gear to things you use all the time.

I'm very creatively driven by happy accidents, so in that way I love it. It doesn't strike me as a very useful utility piece in that I wouldn't reach for it if I just wanted a delay. Nor would I recommend it to someone else for that purpose. So far I've used it much more as a sound design tool, putting it early in the chain and further modulating the result.

Even if you sell it you should take a few days and just fuck with it as much as possible on a bunch of different sound sources to build a nice library of loops and samples. After which you will inevitably decide to keep it...

[gedda]

Anyone here have any recommendations for ring mod pedals?

[kronk]

ive had the moog mf102 & dod gonkulator. the moog is nice but not worth the $s over the dod imho. the dod has a rougher and more interesting sound, made for guitar but works pretty well on synths

[Lost to the Void]

Anyone here have any recommendations for ring mod pedals?

So hard to get good Ringmods in the digital and pedal domain, and I love them.

The Gonkulator is great.

I found some more recently I added to my buy list, I`ll find the list and link it. BAsically I surfed the JRS youtube channel and found a bunch of useful ringmods.