I'm looking for weird guitar pedals to be ultra creative with. I am not looking for anything transparent. I want pedals that will take me to outer space, underwater or inside the brain.
Some of my current favorites are the Digitech Space Station, Memory Man, Alesis Ineko, Electro Harmonix Ravish Sitar, Maestro Wah and surprisingly... the Behringer Time Machine.
Take a look at Z-Vex stuff... outside of the array of fuzzes and distortions (some of THOSE which are even a bit odd) - there's some sonically crazy stuff happening.
Even the pedals which seem "normal" on the surface (like the Fuzz Factory) can do some bizarre stuff when the knobs are jacked all the way to one side...
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Electro harmonix bassballs, auto filtersweep device aka poor mans Sherman. Bought one at a yard sale without knowing what to expect and was pleasantly surprised.
Don't know if he's still making them, but look for some Frostwave stuff.. any of it.
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"Seriously, there's a certain kind of creative inspiration that can come from exploring the outer limits of a musical instrument. Now days the limits are so vast that it can be difficult to set boundaries." --spargee
I'm looking for weird guitar pedals to be ultra creative with. I am not looking for anything transparent. I want pedals that will take me to outer space, underwater or inside the brain.
Some of my current favorites are the Digitech Space Station, Memory Man, Alesis Ineko, Electro Harmonix Ravish Sitar, Maestro Wah and surprisingly... the Behringer Time Machine.
Any ideas?
I've had my eyeballs on a WMD Geiger Counter (Civilian Issue)
Man, my wish list has ballooned thanks to your responses. I really appreciate it.
I used the Behringer Time Machine again yesterday. I gotta say, for $75 it is the cheapest weird pedal I own. I'd love to see what people can do once they start modding that tin can.
subdecay proteus
dod gonkulator
prescrition experience
early EH elctric misstress
boss ph-2
love pedal pickle vibe (not to far out but it inspires)
catalinbread semiphor trem
snarling dog whino wah
Roger Linn Adrenalinn
prescription COB
maestro ps-1 phasor (again .. not too far out but very inspiring sound)
dod grunge
wet reverb
line 6 dl4
catalinbread echo
hook them all together and turn a few on.. rearrange and do it again
Death by Audio - Robot
Electro Harmonix - Micro Synth and Ring Thing
Ebow
Line 6 DL-4, MM-4, and FM-4 (with the expression pedals, of course)
Those are the ones that come to mind immediately. However, rather than looking to a single effects pedal to come up with far out sounds, I tend to enjoy using a combination of effects to produce other worldly tones. For instance, play some chords through an EHX Big Muff into a Boss OC-2 Octave pedal into a Flanger. The Big Muff creates all kinds of harmonics which further confuses the Boss OC-2 which doesn't know how to react to chords anyway, so it'll jump all around looking for the note. And then the Flanger takes all that chaos, and puts some kind of order back into it with it's sweeping sonic signature.
My strongest recommendation for a strange delay that is moderately affordable is: Waitstates by Sound Substance.
My friend Dale builds them in Richardson. It is an ADA delay, that is a digital chip-delay that has digital to analog converters w/ up to 770 ms of delay w/o an expression pedal (with the expression pedal it's up to around 1000) In addition, the pedal has a triangle wave LFO clock which you can use to modulate the speed or the repeats. It self oscillates in at least two different ways. It can simultaneously, self-oscillate and repeat
Good luck finding one, if you do they go for $250-300, but its far cooler than a lot of competitors and way more transparent.
Listen to my signature line track, Chickory Chestnutt Cathedral for an example of many of the things it can do.
Also on this track, I used the Moogerfooger Phaser MF-103. It like many of the Moog pedals can get extremely weird. It can be pushed into ring modulation by adjusting the rate of sweep to the highest settings. It can phase imperceptibly slowly. It also can pretty closely emulate the Mu-tron Bi-phase (and far beyond), because you may plug any type of waveform into the Sweep-in jack which allows you to have two separate simultaneous LFO's: one controlling the first 6 stages of the phaser, and the second controlling the last 6. There can be so much movement in your signal, that it would even make Mellon Collie discombobulated.
Don't even get me started on the Moog Ring Modulator and the Cluster Flux.
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"Stupidity is one of the building blocks of the universe" - Frank Zappa
weird can be cool but seems to have limited musical application
I have always liked ring mod effects but everytime I get one I cannot seem to get anything usable out of it. Wanted to try that Lovepedal Believe as it seems to be very usable but cool off tones.
Manzanera used a Boss DS-1 on that track . . . I couldn't imagine it, but who knows.
Congrats Baskervils on your excellent taste.
If you want weird and adjustable you need to go the Moog route. Mr. Eno himself is a lifelong Moog user (mostly the keyboards and synths).
If it weren't for Eno, I don't think that guitarists would be half as pedal obsessed as they are now. Think of his work designing the Frippertronics unit, of his work designing the Edge's sounds, manipulating Belew's synthesized guitar on "Remain in Light," etc. He's pushed innovation in guitar sound.
In addition to the Moogerfoogers, you'll also like the Sound Substance WaitStates (which I mentioned before), the Fuzzmulator, and the BlueZdrive (which can almost made a guitar sound like a distorted cello with the right tweaking)
I don't think that particular pedal was used (although distortion and filters are definitely wiggling around), but weird definitely has it's place in pop. What is interesting about Eno is what is treated in his songs and what isn't. Some elements are left fairly bare while others are put through the ringer (literally).
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