Since keyboards have become more of a medium of choice for me I've found myself on the lookout for interesting processors that won't break the bank. Cue selecting the Behringer button on eBay FX searches.
When I saw this I had nothing more to go on than the legending, with patches named things like 'sine', 'env up', 'step', etc. I figured I might be looking at something similar to their Bass Synthesizer pedal. At £12.95 delivered it'd be hard to go wrong, regardless.
Boy was I pleasantly surprised when I plugged in and played the default patch (accordion, of all things!) on my Yamaha 8-bit sampler through the 'chorus' that the pedal just happened to be set to: substantial thickening with a bit of pitch detune ensued; more or less exactly what I'd hoped for: a cheap way to make cheap sounds sound fancier.
I had hours of fun with this yesterday. I particularly like the 'step' mode, which allows you to dial in a kind of sequenced tremolo-type (?) effect. A rhythmic pulse of some kind or another, anyway, that immediately brought inspiration that could be the foundation of a tune - basically the desired goal of plugging into these boxes, in other words.
The fun doesn't stop with running through and tweaking the presets, though. There are three modes which affect them too: tape, digi and analog (sic). Switching between 'tape' and the other too yielded the most variance, but there are doubtless many subtle shades in there, especially when switching polarity from 'neg' to 'pos' via the second switch.
The unit's not without its downsides, though, and I'm not talking about the supposedly rubbish enclosure, upon which I have no intention of ever stomping anyway; its five knobs are quite tightly spaced, making adjustment a wee bit tricky, particularly if your right-hand fingernails are as long as mine are at the moment. Both the mode switches are a bit fiddly too due to the small footprint they inhabit. Also the mode knob is continuously variable rather than a detent type, making it a bit uncertain whether or not you're on your desired mode. I assume this is a cost cutting measure that it'd be boorish to quibble with at their original price point.
If ever there was a candidate for rehousing in a better laid-out enclosure with more substantial switches it's this pedal, but to suggest it isn't perfectly usable as is in a home/studio environment would be plain ridiculous. Can't recommend it enough - if the price is right - for anyone looking to fatten up or modulate wan keyboard sounds.
Probably works with guitar too, but I haven't tried it yet.
Ah, the FX500. Yes, it was ready to go on patch 40 as soon as I switched it on. For those who don't know, the Soft Focus patch is the key to sounding like Slowdive. I'm not at all familiar with their oeuvre, but I'm going to go ahead and pronounce them rubbish on the basis that I've never been moved to listen to them! Your opinion may differ (as no-one ever says via indecipherable acronym).
This one was a bit more expensive at £62 delivered, but pretty cheap for what it is - an early digital multi-fx with (I think) 12-bit processing offering that perennial smokey-mirror sound usually classed as 'graininess' or sometimes 'warmth' (which the hype police warn me should only ever be applied to true analogue gear).
I'd watched a couple of YouTube demos of this unit, all of which fixated on the Shoedive connection, and thought it might be a sound investment at the right price as I've recently developed a bit of a Yamaha bug. Personally, I think the Soft Focus patch sounds pretty gawd-awful on guitar, making it an indistinct smear half-heard several rooms away, but I think it could sound nice as an auxilliary reverb in a mix, which will be my most likely application.
I did scroll through the presets with my guitar plugged in, and, while some of them sounded okay through my Valve Jr. none of them really fired up my imagination. That said, for travelling light purposes, it'd do at a pinch. The tremolo sounds decent, especially compared to that of some of its close contemporaries, as do the delays, reverbs and modulation effects. Shame it doesn't include a post-input loop for overdrives/distortions/fuzzes - or even other effects not included, such as a wah-wah pedal - because the on-board digital versions tend to sound very much of their time. Obviously you could run pedals into the front end, but that would most likely require endlessly tweaking the input level depending on your pedal combinations (or lack of any) for each song.
All in all, I'm a bit underwhelmed by it at this point, but I've yet to try it in a mix or with other sounds than guitar, where it may well come into its own. Also, I will say that the user interface is less intuitive than other similar units I've used; I had to dip into the manual to learn that the 'recall' button is the key to switching from one patch to another. This is actually a good thing if you've been editing a patch and haven't saved it, but still....
I've noticed an upward trend in prices of small fx units from this era - not really surprising as the grey pound premium generally tracks the gear of thirty years previous, give or take - so now might be the best time to scoop them up if you come across any at bargain, or even fair, prices. Especially if you love Slowdive!
