I Bought A Bunch Of Pedals

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MrShake
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I Bought A Bunch Of Pedals

Post by MrShake » Tue Mar 21, 2023 6:58 am

No more rehearsal room means no more rehearsal rent. Since we're shifting to "headphones and eDrums", I spent last month's space rent on some preamp pedals, a few utility effects, and a couple splurges on "always been curious" stuff.

I'm on gear lockdown til late April.

Image

Preamps:
Mosky "Classic M-shall" - I've always been a Fender amp guy, so it's been fun to experiment a bit with this, and getting a touch of that Marshall tone. I haven't spent as much time with it yet, but it seems like it will go well with an IR box as a down and dirty way to do Marshall-style recording tones on the cheap.

Horse "AC Tone" - lots of bands that I love playthrough boxes, but I don't have much hands on time with them. So, like Marshalls, it's a new territory for me. Looking forward to getting familiar with it, I realize it's a vague approximation, but it was pretty easy to dial in a Brian May style crunch sound right out of the box.

Joyo "Oxford Sound" - what I said about vox's goes double for oranges. I see them behind many of my favorite players, but I do not quite know how to use them yet. That said, just about every setting I tried on this one sounds great and familiar and like it will be lots of fun to play with. I'm thinking this might be my punk rock bass tone.

Utility Pedals

Maxcheer "Classic Chorus" - the one with the fist. Same as the Joyo/Kmise/etc, apparently a clone of the Ibanez CS9. I wanted another utility chorus to drop in when I need one, a different flavor than I already had. Works great, sounds great, bit of a treble boost when engaged, which is actually really useful for my style.

Unbranded "Digital Delay" - Again, same as the Joyo/Kmise Digital Delay, I believe. Good. Useful. Straightforward. Repeats have a slight decay, so almost closer to a DD-2, not as crisp as a DD-5. Super-helpful little delay pedal, especially at $17.


All the talk about the Marshall pedal reissues re-stoked the fires of my interest as a '90s alt-rock/punk kid. So...

"MIAB"-alikes

Kmise "US Dream" - the one people seem to really dig. Apparently a Suhr Riot clone, big and chunky. I've been using a Rat for "Marshally punk sound" with the punk band I kick around in, and I think this will replace it. I think that so much I bought a second one ("Saphue" branded) for just that purpose when one dipped on sale. Bigger and thicker than the next pedal, great for thick "wall-of-grunge" sounds.

Unbranded "Crunch Distortion" - blah blah, Joyo/Kmise/etc... you get it. Apparently mostly a MI Audio Crunch Box. Way hotter and sizzlier than the US Dream. Digging it for straight up "hot metal" vibes (gasp, even a splash of chorus and digital delay!), not my usual wheelhouse, so it's a trip to plug it in and instantly start playing "flashy licks" and getting all kinds of squeals and harmonics in a good way. One showed up dead, got a replacement in 2 days and no problems.

AKLOT "High Gain Distortion" - are you seeing the pattern of me buying the cheapest version of the Joyo rebrands? I wanted a Shredmaster. I'm cheap. I won't fully utilize a Shredmaster. But I want to dink around with one. Bingo. EQing it around the fixed bass point, I was "Chunk Chunk"ing away like Jonny Radiohead before letting that big G-B-C-Cm ring out. Maybe more useful than I'd predicted, so the BYOC kit is on my list.

BBE "Blacksmith" (aka Crusher) - I wanted a Guv'nor/Drivemaster. I don't know if this is dead-on, but it does the job I bought it to do. Bought one on clearance, arrived DOA, vendor did a great job replacing it quickly. Once I had a working one, it's been the most particular, but the most rewarding. It's super easy to dial that tone knob in on the US Dream, this takes more work, but it's super-versatile. Feed it to a Fender-style preamp and it's crunchy Marshall vibes in a click. Not metal or hard rock here, it's getting me what I want for recording punky/grungy stuff. Unless I eventually score one of those Marshall reissues down the road for a deal, this will take care of pretty much all I'd want a Guv'nor for.

Phew, I think that's it. Would love to hear your thoughts. If not just to justify what I've done.

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sal paradise
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Re: I Bought A Bunch Of Pedals

Post by sal paradise » Tue Mar 21, 2023 7:30 am

I’m in love with your efforts & your desire to try out all these sounds.

If you had time, it would make an awesome blog.
I have nothing to offer anybody, except my own confusion?

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Re: I Bought A Bunch Of Pedals

Post by fuzzjunkie » Tue Mar 21, 2023 8:36 am

Would love to hear your thoughts. If not just to justify what I've done.
Seems like you spent so little getting the sound sources you wanted to experiment with that there’s no need for justification. (Your significant other if you have one may have a different opinion).

I’m not interested in tiny pedals myself. I grew up with big Electro-Harmonix, Mu-tron and A/DA boxes. I have modern versions of some of those on a more pedal friendly modern board, but none are matchbox sized.

Your board has reminded me of an idea I had before the pandemic to build a board with only single knob pedals:

A one knob fuzz to start - those are a Fuzz Face variant. Than an overdrive or amp-in-box. (EarthQuaker makes a few single knob dirt boxes) A Rangemaster style boost is another essential. The MXR Phase-90 is a classic that would have to be included. There’s a one knob spring reverb called “the Boing” that seems absolutely necessary unless there’s another option. Then wah-wah is essentially a one knob EQ filter. The rest gets a little trickier. Tremolo and compression have some options. Not so much for delay, chorus, flange or Univibe circuits. There are a couple of Octave and ring-mod fuzz types that I would probably skip. Then there’s the Ditto looper which could be fun.

A couple of dirt boxes, a wah, a phaser, and a spring reverb should be plenty for a board like that. Stick a looper in the mix and there’s plenty you could do with it. Hendrix and Page had less to work with.

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Re: I Bought A Bunch Of Pedals

Post by jorri » Tue Mar 21, 2023 9:46 am

Took a chance of a mosky recently as well. It was the magnetic delay. Well id run out of funds for a DMM and then thought "screw it, i used to have a modulated pt2339 delay, what was ever wrong?". £20!
Been considering a few preamps too just to see what they do. Im pretty pleased with the AMT vox so became pretty interested in the Mosky/etc. pedals.

All as good as anything else, but quarter of the price or so for obvious reasons. Make that about 25x less than a digitech bad monkey at the moment.

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Re: I Bought A Bunch Of Pedals

Post by MrShake » Wed Mar 22, 2023 8:13 am

Thanks for the support, gang. I know I've banged this drum before, but when I was learning how to use effects (and even up until about 10 years ago), trying a new "classic sound", much less "artisan alternative" was a $75-$100 drop - if the pedal was even still in production. "I was to see if an Ibanez CS9 works for me" was guaranteed to be a money-losing proposition if ai didn't. I've got scads of decent-to-nice stuff, but this "sampler" thing has done wonders for my playing and experimenting.

And that "more than Hendrix and Page had" is a very good point. Having cut my teeth in the "American punk-descended underground, 1990s edition", I always chuckle at some players' quest for a "perfect tone", when it's often based on some broke-ass R&B/rock player who was just using whatever they could wrangle together. Now, we've got totally worthy options to play so many "classic effects" with such a low financial barrier to entry - not just "what your local shop has, brand name or not".

And as far as the preamps, the Moskys work great so far, but I only got those 2 because they were cheapest. My Mosky Rat and D+/250 BOTH have "incorrect pot taper" issues. They're on my "maybe" list for the cheapie imports, but I've had nothing but success with the Horse and Joyos. These Mosky preamps totally get my recommendation, but something about those other issues on the other pedals rubbed me the wrong way. That said, I'm glad the delay works for you. Of all these cheap options, I think it's the delay pedals (some even 1000ms!) that blow my mind the most, remembering how much more expensive my 1995 DD-5 was than every other pedal in the shop. I got a cool looking one from iSet, just a basic 3-knob, probably descended from the Donner, for $17. And the Kmise was the same. They do about what one would use a DD-3 for.

Buy 'em all for the cost of one Bad Monkey!

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Re: I Bought A Bunch Of Pedals

Post by sal paradise » Wed Mar 22, 2023 8:46 am

Damn, the M-shall is £23 posted from China… JMP Love Pedal is about £150 used, if you can find one in the UK.

You & your bad influence on budget sounds :D
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Re: I Bought A Bunch Of Pedals

Post by MrShake » Wed Mar 22, 2023 10:05 am

sal paradise wrote:
Wed Mar 22, 2023 8:46 am
Damn, the M-shall is £23 posted from China… JMP Love Pedal is about £150 used, if you can find one in the UK.

You & your bad influence on budget sounds :D
Hey, I'm just a journalist, reporting on what's out there!

And yeah, I don't know how these compare to upmarket alternatives, so take my findings with a grain of salt. I'm not a studio rat, I'm a rapidly-aging punker who just replaced the reel-to-reel 4-track at the end of the chain with a laptop for multi-tracking.

But these, they do the thing they say they're gonna do. How well, and if it meets ones needs is relative. But, like, the Marshall one sounds Marshally, same with the Vox and Orange, respectively. The American one really is great, from my perspective. Keep the gain below 10 o'clock, the volume at whatever you need, start the EQs at noon and gently tweak from there. Makes my guitar sound a lot like a clean Fender, much more than when I turn it off. Which makes a great platform for pedals, but could use a little more headroom for me. Super worth the tradeoff. The non-Fender variants seem like they're gonna be more "standalone tones" for me the top board in that pic has a Horse American Sound and a Sonicake IR at the end of it, permanently hooked up to a mixer channel to experiment.

I was noodling on my MIJ Boss and WFRI Rat and hand-wired Superfuzz clone today, just to keep myself honest. ;)

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Re: I Bought A Bunch Of Pedals

Post by jorri » Wed Mar 22, 2023 5:20 pm

The delay is apparently a clone of the Keeley Magnetic Echo... which is claiming to be an Echoplex but nothing like Catalinbread's attempts (i have echorec too..)- its really just a PT2339 with some tape qualities. DR J Shadow echo was one i had a while back with similar function minus tape tonality (but its really good for the price too..) and went analogue through 4 pedals to get back to a similar concept i suppose. Its my second delay for pre-drive.

I'm no Jimi Hendrix I play weird modular sounding ambient, shoegaze and everything that doesn't sound like a guitar haha. So the more the merrier (but could i do it with three pedals, probably if they are multi-delay/looper+multi-reverb+dual-drive, but i might have to turn many knobs to do it and won't sound as interesting lol). I said to my band members today I needed practice, but not guitar, i need to "practice pedals" so lots of them set differently are good and cheap ones allow a bit of doubling up for simple function.
Plus 3 i built myself which is easy enough for fuzz- a superfuzz clone is one of them.

So...what are the amp sims Joyo puts out, assuming everything is a clone? I mean they look similar to the russian AMT devices which are lesser known and yet well acclaimed (albeit many more metal-oriented ones than 'classic' type ones). That's my current Vox sim - an AMT with a tube in it.
And does anyone do a Superfuzz yet? Other than behringer?

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Re: I Bought A Bunch Of Pedals

Post by MrShake » Thu Mar 23, 2023 4:27 am

The amp sims all seem to be close copies of the Tech21 preamp pedals. There are apparently some small differences in EQ points and a few other changes, but as I understand it, that's where these come from, electrically. Never played those, so can't compare, but I'd imagine most of what applies to them applies to these.

And I've been waiting for bite-sized bargain Superfuzz. I don't know if it would be worth anyone's while with the Behringer being so cheap and available, but I'd buy three of 'em just for some small boards I've got.

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Re: I Bought A Bunch Of Pedals

Post by fever606 » Thu Mar 23, 2023 6:27 am

MrShake wrote:
Thu Mar 23, 2023 4:27 am
The amp sims all seem to be close copies of the Tech21 preamp pedals.
Have you found anyone copping the Leeds? The Marshall/Vox/Orange sector is well represented, but no one seems to have fallen on the Hiwatt yet...

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Re: I Bought A Bunch Of Pedals

Post by MrShake » Fri Mar 24, 2023 9:25 am

fever606 wrote:
Thu Mar 23, 2023 6:27 am
MrShake wrote:
Thu Mar 23, 2023 4:27 am
The amp sims all seem to be close copies of the Tech21 preamp pedals.
Have you found anyone copping the Leeds? The Marshall/Vox/Orange sector is well represented, but no one seems to have fallen on the Hiwatt yet...
Now that you mention it, I haven't seen any budget versions of that one... weird. I've always been attracted to Hiwatts, since I like clean headroom and big volume, but never thought about trying a simulation in pedal form...

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