So, it's been a tight year here, and that means cutting back on gear. A bass cab and a pair of sale Behringers were all I purchased in 2021, so my wife splurged and got me a stack of budget pedals. Some she knew I needed a couple for a specific purpose, but some were the kinds of things I could just have fun screwing around with for not much money. She thought it would be more fun to get me a lot of weird and engaging new toys than one fancy-pants item. It was a really nice treat, I really appreciated it, and on top of it all, she got a couple of daisy chains and a box of pancake patch cables, too.
I know it's been tough all over, it feels a little gauche to post this, but I figured it might be a chance for us all to appreciate the little things -- 'cause even cheap stuff can be good for making music. Especially when we stop caring about what it costs and just listen to what it does.
I'm 39, so I started playing in the early-to-mid '90s, when Boss was about as good as it got. We felt like DOD was what you got when you couldn't afford Boss, and you only played Rocktek if you really had to. And good luck in a pre-GC world, where it was the Musician's Friend catalog or whatever your local Mom and Pop would get in stock. (Mine was Music House in Northern KY.) The cheap stuff was cheap because is sounded bad. So please filter all views through my old man lens. The fact that most of these even exist is bonkers to me. Cloud yelling over.
Behringer DR600 -- I just needed a reverb with stereo outs for my live board. It's time to retire my RV-2 from live service, I love it too much to risk some a-hole with a loose beer too close to the gear. This was just the cheapest stereo verb I could find to suggest to her. Actually, of all the pedals, this is the least impressive tonally. It's a little tiny bit dull and middle of the road. But it fulfills exactly what I need -- plate reverb with stereo outs for the end of my spacey garage-punk board for aggressive volume situations. It doesn't NEED to be a Strymon. Despite being a little underwhelming back to back with my other reverbs (RV-2, Hardwire RV7, '80s rack stuff), it's still absurd to me that a multi-mode reverb like this under any brand is out there in pedal form for only $35. The Behringer Super Fuzz on my board hasn't crumbled under live use, and I'm screaming and sweating and stomping around in Doc Martens, so I'm not afraid like some people are of Behringer pedals auto-destructing because of the housing being plastic. But I'm not wasting my nice stuff on a $40 gig. Not unless there's some musician there I want to impress.
Eno BF-2 -- The definition of "brazen". My fave modulation sounds are Electric Mistress and BF-2. I have originals of both, but wanted to change it up from the Donner Jet Convolution on my live board. With price jumps lately, even a MIT Boss BF-2 is inching toward a C-note these days. After a few years of only playing the EM type out of being too lazy to swap it out, I was shocked at how distinctive this flanger sound was as soon as I plugged it in. I haven't done an A/B shootout with my MIJ yet, but I don't really care. This is exactly what it says it is. A purple flanger with four knobs that says BF-2. I love it.
Behringer UV300 -- Been wanting to try this for ages, heard almost nothing but good things. Really fun, way easier to dial in a gentle sway than I thought. Didn't think I'd have much of a use for it in my stuff but it turns out I was dead wrong. Love the unlatched mode for other, deeper settings. Lots of fun. Will probably float between boards for a while 'til I find it a permanent home, but already getting much more playtime than expected. Otherwise I would have bought one sooner. Considering the "slow rate" mod. Maybe I'll wait a month or two and get a second one as a surgical volunteer.
Eno Myomorpha -- The biggest disappointment so far, but only in that it arrived impaired. Signal path didn't seem right, like there was a "full fuzz"second guitar way in the background of what I was hearing out of the speaker. Seemed like a circuitry problem, bad trace, etc. Wanted one of these to stick on a little ambient/experimental board for goofing and for my synths. I've had two of these in the past and loved them. Broke the switches on both completely through my own fault after crappy gigs. Hard wired them into Turbo Rats and gave them to burgeoning bassists. I remember them sounding great, so as long as the replacement they send doesn't have the same problem this one did, it'll be shortly remedied, and it's about the best $30 I think one can throw at a new distortion pedal. But one of the other import cheapies might be better
Behringer UV300 -- The biggest surprise. Not something I'll use much at all, but waaaaay fun to screw around with. As the guitarist in a 2-piece, I see why this kind of sound was such a popular choice for a certain Mr. White. It adds a lot of crazy beef for a lead line in a bridge or something. I was glad to discover I wasn't crazy and that the general perception matched mine that the Octave 2 control is too subby to be real useful in a guitar rig. But damn, that Octave 1 is a blast through my Bassman Ten 4x10 or my Kustom 2x15. It's eventually getting a long-term home at the front of my "grunge board", ahead of a Rat, Muff, wah, and tremolo. Curious to see if a compressor affects it much. Perfectly sums up what my wife was wanting to get for me this year -- not a(nother) pricey 'verb or gnarly buzzy fuzz, but something cheap and outside my usual wheelhouse that makes me want to play music. And with a discount code they offered her for getting the reverb and vibrato, it was technically $9.
Flatsons Compressor -- Seems to be a popular cheap alternative under whichever brand name. I don't know a thing about compressors, really. I know I need them when I play a solo set for the clean stuff. I have a DynaComp on my"bass and 12-string" board, and a CS-3 on my "Boss board". But I've been wanting to finally master the Slow Gear clone I have, and decided this was what I needed in front of it, and good to have a well-regarded, tiny, very inexpensive compressor on hand. It's already proving to be incredibly useful on that little ambient/experimental/synth/cheapos board, feeding into the Slow Gear, into the Rat, then some flange and a dose of reverb. Maybe once I better understand the Attack knob I'll finally become an ambient master.
Anyway, it was a really fun way to spend Christmas morning, and there are two more on the way, so I'll see how these settle in for the time being. But frankly, more time on what I have and not what I want has made me want less, and be about happy with what I have. Half of these filled a hole on a board I use, the other half get to float for new ideas. And frankly, I'm happy to spending a little more time on actually playing guitar than getting lost in the minutae of the tools I'm using to do it.
Happy Holidays, everybody. Merry Music-Making from a grouchy old '90s punker kid.
