Electro-Harmonix Micro Synth

What a cool pedal! I'm very happy with the stuff I have on my board right now, but this thing--despite its ridiculous size and persnickety power requirements--is a very unique, funky and fun piece of gear. 

Its technology owes less to actual synthesis and more to octave generators and a kind of square-wave distortion. The filter is more of an envelope-style phaser. When these three elements interact, the result is a potent sound--if not altogether reminiscent of a synthesizer. There's nothing else quite like it. 

This is one of those pedals that made me realize the analog "mojo," collectibility, and rarity do not mean that something is going to work in my setup. There came a time when I realized that I needed to start painting in primary colors rather than to try and collect every obscure shade under the sun. So, while my pedalboard is still laughably (to some) oversized and very complicated, it is comprised of stuff that functions as part of a whole unit rather than as atomized bits of wierdness. And the Micro Synth--to me, anyway--is not a primary color.

I've found that most of what I used this for is covered in the much smaller footprint of the EarthQuaker Devices Bit Commander. It's missing the filter sweep, but I get that from other pedals that have more control. Still, it's an EHX classic in its quirkiness, design, and sound.

Earthquaker Devices Blacklight Rainbow Machine

For a couple months there, the Rainbow Machine became the shorthand answer to the question "what's a weird x-factor-type pedal I can throw in my signal chain?" And this distinction was deserved.

But I quickly realized that it isn't that musical of an effect. There are lots of delays that modulate pitch of their echoes; it's just that few of them commit so completely to the modulation as the Rainbow Machine. I think that this is a very cool pedal with a great design, good marketing, and a clever idea, but--despite its inclusion of a "Magic" footswitch--it's a lot of space and money to spend on something that is so instantly identifiable as the crazy effect.

If this is the sound you're after, you can get there with a number of other delays. Any delay that allows you to patch effects into its feedback path will get you there; the H9 will, too. This is still a great bit of gear with a lot to offer, but it didn't last long on my board. Despite its awesome glow-in-the-dark paint! All of this added up to a really great novelty pedal--not one that would ever see regular enough use for it to stick around.

Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail Reverb

An entirely serviceable reverb pedal. There's not a whole heck of a lot to say about it, as it doesn't do anything remarkably well, nor does it leave much of an impression. I've since switched to the spring tank in my Blues Jr. and more out-there reverb offering in the Eventide H9.

The one thing I really liked doing with the "spring" mode on the Holy Grail was to run it before fuzz and overdrive. Reverb into a Tubescreamer-type OD does some really cool stuff, and it gives it that much more surf-y goodness.

Still, I have a massive soft spot for EHX, and could throw together a suitably weird, cheap, fun, and good-sounding board of nothing but their products in an afternoon. And this would be on that board.

Electro-Harmonix Deluxe Memory Boy

Dunlop Crybaby Wah

I bought this because I liked the paint job. Pure and simple. I have no memory of what happened to it...It's a Crybaby, so who cares?

I have a difficult time with wah pedals. They just encourage me to be the kind of musician that I don't want to be, so I use sweepable low-pass or high-pass filters instead. A slightly different effect than the band-pass filter used in wahs, it definitely "feels" different than this staple in the pentatonic noodler's arsenal, which is why I keep buying and selling Dunlop pedals.

Morley Optical Volume

Electro-Harmonix Deluxe Memory Man XO

Blackout Effectors Twosome Fuzz

Moog Sub Phatty

Earthquaker Devices Bit Commander

Digitech Jamman XT

Electro-Harmonix Memory Boy

Electro-Harmonix 8 Step Program

Moog CP-251 Control Processor

Moog MF-107 Freqbox

Moog MF-102 Ring Modulator

Line 6 DL4

There's not much to say about this pedal that hasn't been said before. I thoroughly enjoyed the looper--as so many have--and was not particularly impressed with any of the delays (as so many are not).

The looper convinced me that I love and need complex loopers with multiple switches and functions. The workflow on this pedal is so smart that it forced me to look into the Boomerang III, which represents a distinct upgrade from the DL4. Still, I miss how simple and software-free Line 6's pedal is, and that it belongs to a class of pedal that has now advanced several generations. That might seem like a bad thing, but the fact that the DL4 is still on a ton of boards is testament to its utility, and to the lack of substance behind the claims that it is poorly built.

Boss OC-2

I picked this up for $30 or so from a local shop. I really liked it, and it seems as though the OC-2 is a really popular pedal among bass players--especially in conjunction with a ring modulator and a low-pass filter.

The OC-2 is terrible on chords, though it makes no claims of polyphony. Still, it's good fun to listen to the pedal glitch all over the place while attempting to latch onto one note. For analog low octaves, this is a classic, and tough to beat.

Built like a tank, my OC-2 was ancient, battle-tested, and perfectly serviceable. When it comes down to it, I had so many pitch shifting devices (and plans for more!) that my focus turned toward collecting high quality and flexible "primary colors" with which I could work. And that means flexibility with sound, routing, and controls--none of which are offered in the old-school Boss OC-2.

Iron Ether Xerograph Deluxe

In my search for a great filer, I came across the Xerograph. I moved from a Moog MF-101 Low Pass Filter to the Xerograph, as Iron Ether's offering is a fraction of the size of Moog's, and the power requirements aren't nearly so stringent. Though this was a high quality pedal, and I loved the acid-etched enclosure, I ultimately moved on it pretty quickly, as I had trouble getting sounds that I liked out of it. My aim was to produce sounds mostly with guitar, and, as it turns out, the range of the Xerograph's filter is much better suited to static, dub-style bass than it is to the range of sounds that I threw at it. It was really excellent at what it did, but--once I started to assemble the Moogertron--the MF-101 made a return as an indispensable part of my studio.

Dr. Scientist Bitquest

Well, this thing's pretty wild. I came across a great deal while investigating bit crushers, and snapped it up.

The great news is that this pedal circumvents many of the problem of digital multi-effects. Though I love the sounds I can coax out of my H9, I do struggle with the workflow. That's not an issue with the ingenious layout of the Bitquest, as it gets really close to the analog knob-per-function of much simpler effects. The build quality is killer, and--though I'm a pedal nerd--I really love all of the case candy and swag that comes with the Bitquest.

Not all of the modes are for me, I'll admit: the notch filter, the flanger, and high/low pass filters haven't blown me away yet, but that's probably more a function of having owned some really high-quality units that do those effects in the analog realm. 

Having said that, the other modes are excellent! The bit crusher is intuitive, simple, and utilizes mix tone and volume controls in addition to the required bit depth and sample rate controls. In "clean" mode, you can also dial in an LFO to modulate the bit depth, which takes an already out-there effect and pushes it beyond the limits of what's possible with other comparable pedals. 

Surprisingly, the delay is my favorite mode. I'm an unabashed delay nut,and--considering how many delays I've owned--I didn't expect to be blown away by the last mode in a digital multi. There's a modulation control that has an effect on the repeats that I've never heard. They glitch out, collect bizarre alien artifacts, chatter at you, develop strange rhythmic ticking...none of it is predicable, and all of it is weirdly musical. My favorite technique is to crank the repeats so that they go into a gentle oscillation that never quite runs away, set the delay time to maximum, and layer sound over one another. You can then manually manipulate the modulation control to introduce the weird to your "loop."

With a bunch of useful and out-of-the-box inclusions, as well as "clean" and "dirty" (featuring an over-the-top digital distortion), the Bitquest comprises an indispensable toolkit for noisemaking. Its modes are a little off the beaten path, and even standard inclusions (delay, reverb) have peccadilloes that push them out of the realm of the normal. And that's what I'm after! This one's here to stay. 

Electro-Harmonix Big Muff Rehouse

Eventide Pitchfactor

There's only one thing that Eventide could do to pry this processor away from me, and that's to package it more conveniently, and to include in that package algorithms from their other Factor pedals...which is exactly what they did when they released the H9.

Though I didn't have use for all of the Pitchfactor's algorithms, the ones that did work for me really worked for me. Harpeggiator, Quadravox, HarModulator, and (sometimes) Crystals are all bonkers in their own right, but--when combined with other effects--they transcend guitar-based music, pushing the sounds I hear coming out of my amp past what I thought was possible with mere wire, wood and electromagnets.

That is not my hand!

Harpeggiator is a sequencer-type effect that comes on really heavy. It's one of those sounds that has so many possibilities that you couldn't possibly have enough controls to tame it; somehow, Eventide arrived at a great solution. Though there are two parallel arpeggiator lines, each has independent controls for a number of preset pitch, rhythm, speed, and effect programs. The pitch changes range from plus- or minus-one octave to skittery electronic melodies; while the rhythmic chops can be set to pulse along in quarter notes, eighth notes, sixteenth notes, or uncomfortable variations and combinations of all of them. The middle performance switch is configured as a "re-trigger" along the lines of the now-legendary Line 6's DL4 "one shot" switch in that it restarts the sequence from the first note whenever depressed. Both pitch and rhythm sequences also have a "random" setting--great fun for those of us interested in electronic aleatory music. There are also effects you can apply independently to each arpeggiator line: fuzz, glitch, and filter. With multiple iterations of each, and one setting that combines all three, there are literally tens of thousands of beats in this algorithm alone. Consider the global controls for mix, envelope/attack and independent tap subdivisions for the speed of the line, and you've got some serious firepower. This algorithm alone was worth the $300 this pedal can be had for (used, of course).

Quadravox is a complicated beast, but one that has no equal. It allows you to program the intervals of up to four pitch-shifted delayed notes. You can choose the rhythmic pattern in which they play out, so your delays can approximate the Binson Echorec sound (although uncompromisingly digital-sounding, and--if you like--pitch shifted as much as two octaves in either direction). The potential for tap tempo groove-oriented delays that sound like cohesive melodies is untapped, underutilized, and frankly limitless. You can even hold the performance switch to tell the pedal to "learn" the note that you're currently playing, and the algorithm will tune itself to that major key. Further menu diving is rewarded with options to choose the modal signature of your playing, the key, the tap subdivision or speed in milliseconds (depending on the mode in which you're operating), and the spacing of delays. A fun trick is to set up a strange series of intervals, then cluster all of the delays together. Play a note, and you hear your amp struggle to spit out a complex chord related to your playing only by whatever four inhuman interval leaps you cooked up. Nothing else like it.

I really don't understand HarModulator at all. I just know that it rewards knob turning with increasingly bizarre and sometimes unmusical sounds. The depths of modulation in this algorithm exceed the ability of a typical guitar amplifier to reproduce, ranging from +3 octaves to -3 octaves. With the right touch, you can achieve twin barberpole effects; vertigo-inducing delay lines a la Earthquaker Devices' Rainbow Machine; or a chorus/flange fat enough to choke Andy Summers.

There's a lot more to cover with this pedal, but I'll only mention the four programs I used most frequently (and the ones I continue to use on the hardware update: the H9). Crystals is the last of these. My tastes tend toward the esoteric, and I usually only buy pedals if they change the way I approach sound or instrumentation. Crystals forces me to play slowly, as its enveloping pitch-shifted reverb trails turn to mush pretty quickly during fast runs. This is a great effect for pads, and a great sound source for further manipulation from something like Red Panda Labs' Particle, the WMD Geiger Counter, A Korg Kaoss Pad, or any number of other noisemakers. Feeding a sonically rich and physically-impossible-to-achieve reverb trail like the ones Crystals produces into another devices means that you have control over the sound of space, and that you can further manipulate space in the digital domain. I love the questions my ears ask me when they encounter something that references a natural sound that is itself really unnatural sounding, then I pull them back unequivocally into the digital aesthetic. This sounds more like Squarepusher than like a cavern; more like a computer attempting to understand space than it sounds like space itself. Which is not what everyone's after, but...if it is, it's tough to beat.

Red Panda Labs Particle Granular Delay

You'll have to ignore the chubby baby hands in the photo. Kids are curious. 

Wow, what a sound! I really wish I had this one back. In fact, one of the purposes of this blog is to ensure that I keep track of all the things I've used, loved, discarded, and immediately wanted back. That's the pattern, anyway.

The Particle is an utterly unique, idiosyncratic, complicated bit of gear. It is certainly not for everyone, but--if you have a use for glitched-out, drill'n'bass, random grain-shifting-and-pitch-shifted delays, there's really nowhere else to look. It can loop bits of audio while either simultaneously freezing them forever or obliterating them with its cold-hearted DSP.

This is a great pedal to run after loopers, especially if you run a stereo looper. One of my favorite tricks is to run an uncorrupted loop direct to an amp or audio interface, and to run the other half of the stereo signal in parallel into something like the Particle. You retain the rhythmic and harmonic content of the original loop, but you can also blend it with the aleatory of random pitch-shifting and granular delays.

Though they don't fit into the lexicon of guitar pedal controls, the parameters here are as minimal as possible while still offering maximum control over the Particle's prodigious sonic gifts.

Made in Detroit, I'll encourage you to buy all Red Panda Labs products. I'm especially curious about their new Bitmap bit crusher...a future post, I'll bet.

Moog MF-104M

Simply the best. I could--in a pinch--replace nearly my entire pedalboard with this one unit. It does a ton of insane things, and it does all of them better than everything else.

Where to begin? I'll try and keep this tidy, useful, and concise.

1) The delay. From slapback to long, dark repeats, pseudo-reverb to pitch-bent squelches, the time control and rocker switch (used in conjunction with the feedback knob and the cv/expression inputs) already vastly exceed the possibilities of conventional three-knob delay pedals. Dialing in the minimum delay time with high repeats yields a plate reverb-type effect, while toggling back and forth between "long" and "short" settings delivers either bright, present repeats or soft, mushy and smeared darker echoes.

2) The modulation. Good grief. With six waveforms to choose from, tap tempo modulation rates topping out at speeds fast enough to draw waveshapes, and an "amount" control that ranges from imperceptible to nausea inducing, this has to be the most extreme, tweakable, flexible and highest-quality modulation section in a commercially available pedal. Try using the square wave (amount set between 6-7) as an octave effect that bleeps and bloops along with your delayed signal. This is chewy analog goodness at its apex.

3) The drive. I'm sure that very few people buy $600 delay pedals for their drive sections (The Deluxe Memory Man's "level" control excepted). Maybe they should. I use this pedal so that the drive section is always active--in spillover mode, stomping the bypass switch only activates the delay and modulation sections. The drive, output and mix controls are always active. You can change this so that none of the controls are active until you stomp; you could use this pedal as a true gain stage and a boost this way.

4) The looper. It isn't a looper in the true sense of the word. The only real analog looper I'm aware of is Z.Vex's excellent Lo-Fi Loop Junky, which has an entirely different architecture and purpose than the 104M. But--if you use the pedal in spillover mode--you can crank the feedback to "7" or so, play a phrase, bypass the pedal, and let the bucket-brigade degradation begin. Over enough time, your phrase will smooth out, thumping percussively along before turning into a grainy mess. I recommend setting the delay to the maximum possible to get as long a phrase as possible. You can--using the tap tempo switch--set "illegal" delay times beyond this pedal's 800ms maximum, but you get some aliasing and clock noise. As for the loop: I love to help it along by manipulating it with the time control, or by flicking the rocker switch back and forth in time with the loop itself. Both of these further destroy the your signal over time, devolving it into a progressively more interesting and musical phrase. You can, of course, play over this all the while, as the pedal is bypassed.

5) The flexibility. Besides feeling right at home in a modular setup, the 104M features a TRS jack for an effects loop, which is something I've never felt the need to use, as the repeats are already bonkers without external manipulation. I almost feel as though nothing is worthy to go in that loop, anyway. The cv/expression jacks in the back are incredibly useful, and control all of the parameters on the face of the pedal with the exception of 'drive' and 'output.' I've found that using an expression pedal to control the feedback is the most useful feature; since you have on-board tap tempo control over the delay time and the LFO speed, you don't really need to change them with what would be less exacting methods. I've also come to realize that the knobs themselves are easily manipulated with one's foot while playing. The ones I'd be most likely to change are the modulation 'amount' and the delay 'feedback.' Note that both are located at the bottom of the pedal, where you don't have to step over other controls. These giant Moogerfoogers--though they eat up a ton of room on any pedalboard--are so exquisitely conceived of, implemented and constructed that even things like accounting for my size-14 clodhoppers goes into consideration. These are pedals for big people as well as big sounds and big ideas.

Moog Minifooger Drive

Moog released this excellent line early in 2014. Every entry in the Minifooger series appears to be well-built, and they strip a lot of the modular features from their larger, much more complicated (and expensive!) Moogerfooger brethren.

The Drive entry is fantastic. I has all of the usual controls you'll find on a typical three-knob pedal; it also has a proprietary Moog low-pass filter that can be controlled on the front panel, or via expression pedal. This is where the pedal really shines. If--like me--you're not a big fan of pentatonic noodling that so many wah pedals seem to encourage, then the MF Drive's filter gives you a whole new take on what otherwise be a played and corny effect. This pedal sounds great, is built to exacting standards, and costs less than most boutique drives with far fewer tonal possibilities. I do wish that it had a little more gain on tap. It can get close to fuzz at the upper range of the gain control, but another 10-15% would allow the MF Drive to kick a lot of pedals off of a lot of boards.