What pedals have you got that were disappointing to the hype?

[darkhorse]

I had a lot of Big Muffs from then to a few years back, never was really happy with any of them, Fuzz seemed like a great idea but very limiting from my experience at holding anything but basic 5th chords and 8va's, more for single riff lines and lead runs w the occasional double-stop.
I always preferred the better distortion units when they started coming out for their articulation and more refined voices.

For intense and controllable Fuzz I would opt for that new Levithan Fuzz by Wampler Pedals and a really great high gain is their Triple Wreck distortion w the fuzz boost, does that really intense fuzz Big Muff Gilmour gets but way better than a EH pedal. I dig Wampler's overdrives a lot. I have to say for a great sounding gain pedal I love that Ibanez Tube King red box, maybe I just have a good one but man some killer gains on that pedal if you like mean ZZ top variant tones. Also like it for a lot of Pagey tones. I love my various amp gain channels but sometimes it is a hoot to mess with a gain pedal.


For the guy who dumped the Whammy, I went a different direction in using that pedal. It does mean and just downright cool harmonizer mode effects of 4ths and 5ths without the usual hard set key or scale confinement of various harmonizer pedals.
I do a lot of fusion like Jeff Beck tones and I find that harmonizer thing on the Whammy priceless. It is also a matter of where you put the unit in the chain and so many users out there do not get this is not a polyphonic pedal and it glitches to hell and back when fed interval notes. I actually saw one of the notable review guys playing this pedal and playing chords commenting the way it glitched and burbled was a unique by-product of the pedal. Dumbest thing I had seen in a while. It is a monophonic pedal and he missed the whole band of harmonizer mode effects which are way cooler than the over done octave shift thing.
I was doing a off hand Dazed and Confused thing with the band using the Whammy on a octave down to up on the harmonizer mode (not the octave shift side) and that main sound riff just took people's heads off using that Whammy, sounded like you were bowing the notes w a string patch on top through some proper reverb it was hauntingly eerie.

You should hear Gilmour use the Whammy on that octave up shift side used very slow and dynamic during a solo on his last solo CD. Amazing, you will gain a new respect for the pedal. So it can be a cool pedal if you do something different with it.

The new one is better and has true bypass and that detune circuit which renders polyphonic tune changes. I think the octave shifting has been improved but as far as I know the harmonizer modes are still monophonic.
I just dig the harmonizer modes and got a 2nd unit missing that effect, the usual wornout wwwwweeeeeeoooo octave thing wears on you pretty quick.

I got an HD POD a few months back and do not have the massive selection of pedals I did have so I use the POD for a lot of effects I lack at the moment. It does a great Whammy Pitch Glide effect which I think might be a little less prone to glitch than the real deal. Setting the POD Pitch Glide at a fixed +/- .1 makes for the best chorus ever.

And I love all the wah options on that unit which allows you to switch to another wah for different levels of clean and gains. Since I never had a wah that suited all my tones, the POD has been very versatile. Does somethings very well. I have had a real love/hate conflict with the POD unit for months. All the overdrives and gains suck and I use external pedals for all that, but the wahs, pitch glide, some modulations, delays and reverbs are pretty damn good. Amp models are supurb but I do not try and run those trough my guitar head, I have a power amp rig in stereo set up for the POD if I want to mess with its amp models, they sound good but it is problematic of what you run them into and how.

[terr0rgasm]

As far as the DS-1 goes, I like its tone, and I use it in the studio to contrast against my Big Muff tracks, but My main qualm is the volume drop. The clean is always louder than the distorted even when gain and lever are pegged.

I have a DM-4, and I like the sounds I get from it and the versatility, but the stitches are obviously low quality....

I would really want to mod both of these to accomadate for these shortcomings.

[sameal]

every big muff I've ever played.


the double muff was a very underwhelming experience. honestly i could do what that pedal did with a zoom multi processor.

for distortion, the muff pedals are a big snore fest for me.


and the boss ns-2. it just choked. it didn't gate, it clamped. take your tone and cut the balls off.

[darkhorse]

Originally Posted by sameal

every big muff I've ever played.


the double muff was a very underwhelming experience. honestly i could do what that pedal did with a zoom multi processor.

for distortion, the muff pedals are a big snore fest for me.


and the boss ns-2. it just choked. it didn't gate, it clamped. take your tone and cut the balls off.

Ditto to that brother on all counts. I hate most NR pedals. One of by worst experiences was trying out a new HD500 POD and discovering that most "user" presets were a hiss fest being choked off by an overt noise gate. Terrible. Took some time to understand that pedal and isolate what it does superbly to the not so good, for muff fans, it has a really terrible model and some buzzy dists.
The myth of muff, that was my issue, have not thought about one in many years. For those who want that super driven Gilmour thing or massive articulate pedal gain and things in between. The Wampler Triple Wreck kills. Spits muff gass out the end.
Wampler Pedals are big on my fav list of exceeding my expectations.
Electro-Harmonix even the new stuff, not so much.
I know some are big fans or use the DDLs but I have not owned a little Boss pedal in a long time either.
I just wrote a article on true-bypass and buffer pedals noting the problems of some battery powered buffer circuit pedals.

[sameal]

yep. gate pedals pretty much blow. I'd rather lug a full gate rack unit honest. it would at least do whatever i was after in the gate pedal. give me some control. electro harmonix pedals 90% of the time just don't do it for me. the micro qtron is the only one i hang onto.

the line 6 pod x3 live was disappointing in a studio aspect. i guess thats why they called it "live". normally I'm pretty happy with line 6. that little echo park pedal they made was fantastic!

dod pedals! they only sound good when you use them for something completely different then what it was intended for. good for experimenting and lo-fi, but not much else.


i do love the interfax harmonic percolator clone for distortion.

[darkhorse]

I guess I have been lucky but I have not used a NR pedal, ever. Even when I design something in the HD500 POD I seldom use the gate.
I heard the ISP units are really good. I just hate what the gate does to the dynamic and feel of the tone. Anyone know of some articles where various NRs are compared and evaluated? I would like to know what ones they consider usable,

Have not heard of that Dist pedal. God I love overdrives and dist pedals, just puts the fun in playing. I just saw where MF has a new Wampler distortion unit, I got no email advance or heard of it anywhere. Forget the name at the moment. Looks pretty sweet. Love the Wampler pedals, great stuff.

[string6theory]

Sitting unused in a box...

Boss - DS-1
Fulltone - Distortion Pro
Keeley - Compressor
Z-Vex - Super Hard On


Still in circulation in different setups (bold current favs)...

Kord - SDD 2000 Digital Delay
T-Rex - Replica Delay
EH - Deluxe Memory Man
EH - 16 Sec Digital Delay
Boss - DD5

ProCo - RAT
Analogman - King Of Tone
T-Rex - Moller Overdrive
BK Butler - Tube Driver w/Bias
Mesa - V1
VS - Route 66
Boss - BD2
Ibanez - Tube Screamer
Dallas Arbitor - Fuzz Face
EH - Big Muff Pi
EH - Micro Synth
Tech 21 - Comptortion

Roger Mayer - Voodoo Vibe
EH - Holier Grail
EH - Electric Mistress
EH - Ravish Sitar
Dunlop - Cry Baby
Heil - Talk Box
MXR - Phase 90
Analogman - Chorus
Pigtronix - Attack Sustain

Boss - NS2
MXR - Smart Gate

[dubmunkey]

Originally Posted by string6theory

Sitting unused in a box...

Boss - DS-1
Fulltone - Distortion Pro
Keeley - Compressor
Z-Vex - Super Hard On


Still in circulation in different setups (bold current favs)...

Kord - SDD 2000 Digital Delay
T-Rex - Replica Delay
EH - Deluxe Memory Man
EH - 16 Sec Digital Delay
Boss - DD5

ProCo - RAT
Analogman - King Of Tone
T-Rex - Moller Overdrive
BK Butler - Tube Driver w/Bias
Mesa - V1
VS - Route 66
Boss - BD2
Ibanez - Tube Screamer
Dallas Arbitor - Fuzz Face
EH - Big Muff Pi
EH - Micro Synth
Tech 21 - Comptortion

Roger Mayer - Voodoo Vibe
EH - Holier Grail
EH - Electric Mistress
EH - Ravish Sitar
Dunlop - Cry Baby
Heil - Talk Box
MXR - Phase 90
Analogman - Chorus
Pigtronix - Attack Sustain

Boss - NS2
MXR - Smart Gate

Which DMM do you have?

The arbiter Fuzz Face really dissapointed me

I've heard good stuff about the Vex, a shop near me has them ill have to give it a try

The also do these tiny little pedals by mooger/mooer?!? Anyone got any of these?

[fastlanestoner]

DIGITECH Whammy. I've tried a few models and was disappointed by all. Not a huge fan of Boss either

[string6theory]

Originally Posted by dubmunkey

Which DMM do you have?

The arbiter Fuzz Face really dissapointed me

I've heard good stuff about the Vex, a shop near me has them ill have to give it a try

The also do these tiny little pedals by mooger/mooer?!? Anyone got any of these?

The FF is a touchy unit to dial in a sweet spot (without over-fuzz), and I'll sometimes tweak the battery "sag" off the Pedal Power 2 Plus and/or guitar volume knob. I find it's best in a chain on it's own or in combo with just the Cry Baby.


It's the older/larger (classic?) EH DMM enclosure, but no tap tempo (which I would love).

[dubmunkey]

Originally Posted by fastlanestoner

DIGITECH Whammy. I've tried a few models and was disappointed by all. Not a huge fan of Boss either

It was good for synthy kind of effects, i used to have this ridiculous chain which created this mad rhythmical techno sound.. Of course I cringe now

But otherwise yes it weren't great

[dubmunkey]

Originally Posted by string6theory

The FF is a touchy unit to dial in a sweet spot (without over-fuzz), and I'll sometimes tweak the battery "sag" off the Pedal Power 2 Plus and/or guitar volume knob. I find it's best in a chain on it's own or in combo with just the Cry Baby.


It's the older/larger (classic?) EH DMM enclosure, but no tap tempo (which I would love).

Think i was running it too hot, sweet spots are a key lesson and took me ages to realise guitar volume made the difference

I have a deluxe too, it looks like the original (knobs down the side) but must be reissue but can't seem find any modern ones with the knobs down the side... Could well be my favourite pedal though.
.

[sameal]

tried out the pro co rat awhile ago. it wasn't what everybody made it out to be honest.

it stomps all over the big muffs in my opinion.

[QUOTE=darkhorse;8310930
Have not heard of that Dist pedal. God I love overdrives and dist pedals, just puts the fun in playing.[/QUOTE]

the harmonic percolator is a rare pedal that steve albini uses. some guy disassembled a few originals and made a direct clone. it's set up different then alot of other distortion pedals, probably my favorite.

http://www.theremaniacs.com/percolator.html

[Jazz Noise]

Very few Harmonic Percolators are close to the originals. The HFE matching is quiet a finnicky process and as a reflection of this there are many different schematics using different feedback resistors and caps. Whoever is making these is obviously putting in alot of work as the transistor voltages are critical to the sound.

I saw a video review a while ago of the Barge Concepts clone where they got Steve Albini to A/B the two, though Steve did not particularly favour the BP model. There's quite a few weird tonal artifacts the original units seem to make including suboctave sounds around the 5th fret and microphonic feedback.

It's on my build list for when I have 100 man hours to dedicate to being utterly pedantic and nerdy.

[sameal]

Originally Posted by Jazz Noise

Very few Harmonic Percolators are close to the originals. The HFE matching is quiet a finnicky process and as a reflection of this there are many different schematics using different feedback resistors and caps. Whoever is making these is obviously putting in alot of work as the transistor voltages are critical to the sound.

I saw a video review a while ago of the Barge Concepts clone where they got Steve Albini to A/B the two, though Steve did not particularly favour the BP model. There's quite a few weird tonal artifacts the original units seem to make including suboctave sounds around the 5th fret and microphonic feedback.

It's on my build list for when I have 100 man hours to dedicate to being utterly pedantic and nerdy.

i kinda figured it wouldn't be 100% clone, but the pedal is alot of fun. good distortion ranges too.

i mean you could never imitate the wear and tear the electronics have had/have not had and such, but the pedal is alot of fun and alot of tone.

[Jazz Noise]

It may be a 100% clone. All I'm saying is that if it is the guy is half crazy, half genius and very dedicated! It's not really about unit age, it's just the way it's done up is pretty strange - it's actually not too disimilar from a Fuzz Face. If the Fuzz Face had been munching DMT for 20 years solid by the time the late 80's rolled in, that is.

http://i476.photobucket.com/albums/r...ter_rev1_1.png

http://fuzzcentral.ssguitar.com/fuzz...pschematic.gif

Note that Q1 is of opposite polarity to in the Fuzz Face, so the emitter and collector get swapped. The feedback is also localised to each transistor, so there's no overall negative feedback - meaning stability is largely determined by the individual transistors. Some of the same batch will simply work better in this situation than others. The clipping diodes are also there for added sexyness.

[doorknocker]

Originally Posted by rksguit

Yes Yes,I had a buddy years ago,who swore by his Bee Baa,as it could be used,as a gain boost,independently of the fuzz,I seem to remember.

It has a seperate treble booster function which works good but I generally don't like treble boosters. (On a side note, I recently read that the most famous treble booster example - Clapton using one with his Les Paul and Marshall combo on the Mayall 'Beano' album - might very well be a myth.)

I just got a D.A.M Tone Bender 1.5 (a.k.a 'The Goldbender') after a 4 month wait. Expensive but fantastic! It's close to the Fuzz Face circuit but with that unmistakable thick Tonebender rasp. A very different sound from the BeeBaa but if there's one thing these pedals have in common, it's a lack of that fizzy, thin sound that so many modern distortion and even emulations of classic designs have.

http://www.macaris.co.uk/colorsound/.../pro-mk15.aspx

[sameal]

Originally Posted by Jazz Noise

It may be a 100% clone. All I'm saying is that if it is the guy is half crazy, half genius and very dedicated! It's not really about unit age, it's just the way it's done up is pretty strange - it's actually not too disimilar from a Fuzz Face. If the Fuzz Face had been munching DMT for 20 years solid by the time the late 80's rolled in, that is.

http://i476.photobucket.com/albums/r...ter_rev1_1.png

http://fuzzcentral.ssguitar.com/fuzz...pschematic.gif

Note that Q1 is of opposite polarity to in the Fuzz Face, so the emitter and collector get swapped. The feedback is also localised to each transistor, so there's no overall negative feedback - meaning stability is largely determined by the individual transistors. Some of the same batch will simply work better in this situation than others. The clipping diodes are also there for added sexyness.

that's pretty interesting! i had no idea it was so closely related to the fuzz face. i wonder if i picked up a few more of these babies i'd like the sound of one over the other......or maybe the ones that don't work so well get tossed.

I'm pretty sure it's just this guy building them so there isn't a q.c. department.

he disassembled several units just to be able to get values to build a few units, he may indeed be crazy!

[Frank_Case]

Originally Posted by darkhorse

What pedals have you got that were disappointing to the hype?

Fulltone Distortion Pro. Somebody else mentioned it as well. I bought a very early one brand new directly from FT after reading the hype in GP magazine and just never warmed up to it. I then sent it back for a chip upgrade which was advertised as an improvement but instead made it worse by making it too brittle. It's just not a nice warm touch sensitive peddle like my FT '69.

In the end I gave it away.

[Frank_Case]

Originally Posted by darkhorse

I had a lot of Big Muffs from then to a few years back, never was really happy with any of them

I had the same experience with my big muff. The problem seems to be that the mids are too scooped which I believe is what EH says it is supposed to do so I can't really fault them for it. For certain things it's absolute gold but I just can't find use for it as an all around peddle.

[Jazz Noise]

Alot of the early (Read: Most all) transistor distortion units are based on a vague version of the Long Tailed Pair which the Fuzz Face implemented first - the main reason being that Ge Transistors were crap for gain, so using them in this configuration got you to the point where an old style single coil (Typical around 300mV) could actually overdrive something. Nowadays a single Silicon NPN is more than enough, especialy with modern high output pickups.

Look at the Tone Bender, Octavia, Fuzz Face, Fuzz Factory..you'll see a pattern emerging! Most differences in tone are simply due to biasing and filter values, and sometimes Transistor HFE. The rest is, as they say, mojo!

[string6theory]

Some great info exchange in this thread... I'm learning a lot, thanks all!

[darkhorse]

Originally Posted by Jazz Noise

Alot of the early (Read: Most all) transistor distortion units are based on a vague version of the Long Tailed Pair which the Fuzz Face implemented first - the main reason being that Ge Transistors were crap for gain, so using them in this configuration got you to the point where an old style single coil (Typical around 300mV) could actually overdrive something. Nowadays a single Silicon NPN is more than enough, especialy with modern high output pickups.

Look at the Tone Bender, Octavia, Fuzz Face, Fuzz Factory..you'll see a pattern emerging! Most differences in tone are simply due to biasing and filter values, and sometimes Transistor HFE. The rest is, as they say, mojo!

Any of you fuzz lovers tried the Wamper Leviathan Fuzz??? I dig Wampler pedals so much, been wanting to try this one. I have not used a real fuzz pedal in a long time. I know Brian's Triple Wreck Distortion is a face melter. An articulate distortion with wide voice potential combined w a fuzz boost yet retains guitar tone and quality. Say, what is that translation of mV to ohms. I am used to knowing the resistance of pickups in ohms.

[Jazz Noise]

It's a little more complicated than that.

The Ohmage is the source impedance, which is an inverse expression of the maximum amount of current produced by the pickup. Voltage = Resistance x Current dictates that High Z pickups have poor output current, they need a very high resistance input or they simply lose all their power trying to "push" the input. Low Z pickups can drive either a high or low z input, they have ample current for both. The same way you could have a Shetland Pony or car pull a buggy but only the car could pull the caravan, it's all down to power and power transfer.

Think of the speaker in your guitar cab. 8 Ohms. Simply no way you could plug your guitar straight into your 4x12 and drive it, to get 1 volt across it you need 1V/8ohms = 0.125 Amps. If you look at a 1Meg pickup you see V/R = I or 1/1000000 = 0.000001 Amps. That little Shetland just doesn't have it, bless him.

This is way outside of the scope of this conversation, though, and actually pushes on my knowledge limits - but from my understanding this is where power laws kick in and P = I^2/R tell us that the power loss over an 8 ohm load as heat is huge (I is current, R is speaker resistance or load or whatever). Our guitar, if we do power calc might be able to put out a nano Watt of power so it will simply be turned to heat. A little heat. A baby seals dying breath kinda heat. So we use High Z inputs to match our High Z pickups and we let active stages attempt to deal with the big 8 Ohm baddies.

Quoting a voltage figure, you can see, obviously requires a known resistance since we don't know whats getting transferred or not (Measuring over the speaker example above would give you a worthless result). When you see someone saying their guitar produces 300mV (0.3 V) assume they mean to a 1M Ohm input, minimum. Near infinite resistance is preferable but difficult to obtain without disconnecting your test leads.

A Digital Multimeter bypasses this entire conceptualisation process, thankfully, but you asked! There are better men for explaining this than I.

[famousbass]

BOSS SG1 Slow Gear, not a serious pedal, $20 worth of parts, $0 worth of use.
BOSS AC3 Acoustic Simulator (gone) terrible to the core.
BOSS AW3 Dynamic Wah (gone) hellova letdown. Sounds like an idiot disease took over your hands.
BOSS BF-2 Flanger (stolen) but not missed fart box of a thing.
BOSS SYB-3 Bass Synthesizer (donated) not bad, just not great.
BOSS LM-2B Bass Limiter, in a word, plastic.
Shin ei Wah (not the Fuzz Wah, that's a dream pedal)
Bootzilla Fuzz-Wah (gone) heavy monolith design. Doorstop perfect. Bootsy plays one? So what.
Sherman Filterbank 2 (gone) Took me an hour to find the envelope filter. Designed by a genius to suit himself. Not a professional musicians product at all where time is money. Bedroom Producer porn.
EBS Unichorus (gone) ordinary.
EBS BassIQ (gone) boring, boring, boring. Most heard comment from me, "Is it on?"
tc electronic ND-1 Nova Delay (gone) and the
tc electronic NR-1 Nova Reverb (gone) I was like the first guy in Sydney and so excited to get these and that excitement wore off the moment I started to use them in the studio.

I have some surprising pedals that almost made the list.

Bought a pristine collector's cabinet BOSS TW-1 Touch Wah and was astounded how bad it was. Until I got my hands on a BOSS TW-1 T Wah, great pedal. Seems like BOSS got it right when they dropped the ouch.
Same as the BOSS PH-1r Phaser, I've owned 3 for duplicate rigs but only one of them ever sounded right. The other two have been gobbled up by ebay.

[perform/record]

TC Helicon Create-XT and TC Helicon VoiceLive Touch.
Neither allow you to independently control reverb and or delay levels.
The volume parameter for both effects are 'hard wired' to the same volume control.
This made these unusable to me.
Both were sent back.

[darkhorse]

Man this is good stuff.
Might save some of us a wasted effort.
I tend to stick w some makers I like and so far things have held true.
Snobbish boutique user here.

Massive number of pedals on my board, not one Boss pedal to be found.
Some like them. I dot know how many times I wanted to see if I could hit the golf course water trap w that damn DS-1 I had. Everyone loved that pedal, not me. The Keeley mod kept me interested for a time but just was not tone voice I liked. I found if I tied a Rat to the DS-1 I could get the proper density to reach the water.

[aroman]

Big Muff.
Bought the small green little muff first, sold it and got a real one. Sold it too.

[Chairman Meaow]

Big muff also the biggest disappointment for me. I'm well happy with my setup - keeley ts9, a standard ts9, EH POG (great pedal!), crybaby (still the best wah), small stone, deluxe memory man, boss dd2 and a voodoo lab tremolo. Thought I needed some extra oomph, bought into the muff hype. Bought the standard big muff and my heart sunk. Have persisted, gigged it, jammed it, recorded with it but I have to let it go - it just plain brutal

[darkhorse]

Adding to my list of disappointments.
POD HD500

OK if you have nothing else or as a recording tool.

As an effects base, extreme negative. Delays and reverbs are OK, Some effects are OK others have issues that Line 6 does not care to fix or improve. Overdrives, pedal compressors, and gains are bad mimics of not so great pedals. If you think a Metal Zone with its 4 band stacked EQ paramatric can be rendered with standard tone controls good luck.

Amp models are OK run through a full channel power amp.
Rigging the 4CM into a guitar amp, negative.
Way to ruin a good amp and tone, cheap amp no effects, might be a novelty. Trying to integrate with external pedals or a board, the most frustrating thing ever.

A -4 to 6db drop on the unit's effects loops makes proper driving of external effects a huge negative, drop on main outs, mixer at zero "unity" is not unity.
Think not, Line 6 argued to death, hook up a db bench measurement test.
A 4 to 6 db drop across all outputs regardless of modes. An effort to hide and reduce the units noise floor.

Users compensate amp level and never notice as they are getting overdrive and gain from the model not the amp. A good way to waste a nice tube amp.

I regret so much investing in this unit, +a higher end expression pedal and a nice power amp. I will never get out of it what it costs.

Currently rebuilding my pedal board back to full range of options.