I have a few more pedal reviews on the way – 4ms Atoner, Devi Ever OK and LP, possibly the squarewave parade StoshBox ST, Boss PS-5 – but I have to do up some sound clips still. So in the meantime, I thought I’d post up some of the effects I lust after. I’m unlikely to acquire most of these, so they’ve become perennial “I’m going to go look at that on the web” items for me.

Schumann PLL
Schumann Electronics

I’ve never entirely understood what it is, never heard what it sounds like, don’t know anyone who has one, but man do I want one. I mean, just look at it. I while ago, I went hunting around for analog variations on pitch shifters and harmonizers, and happened across the PLL. I assume it works much like a guitar synth, so I’m sure there are cheaper alternatives that are much easier to come by, but I don’t care because they won’t be as awesome as this. I’ve never been able to ascertain if these are still in production. It appears as though one can email the proprietor and enquire, but as I’ve not yet moved passed my pie-in-the-sky stage of lust for this thing, I haven’t wanted to waste his time. One of these days maybe.

Chaos Pedal and Dual Delay
Rock and Roll Workshop

I originally came across Rock and Roll Workshop’s site by searching for more information on the Chaos Cube, which I had seen mention of on some forum somewhere, I think in reference to alternatives to BugBrand’s Weevils (which, much as I’d like to get one, the cross-Atlantic shipping and currency exchange rates cool that lust pretty quickly for me. I am nothing if not semi-pragmatic in my lusting). The Chaos Pedal is a slight variation on the Chaos Cube and its form factor is much more desirable to me. That said, I’m not sure I have much room for chaotically modulated square waves in my music, so I’ve always held off getting it.

Their Dual Delay, however, is much more interesting to me, especially given that it is now in stock, which it wasn’t back when I first went to the site. I’ve been considering another delay pedal (I currently use my brother’s Ibanez DML10 Modulation Delay II from the 80s), particularly one that had a send on its feedback loop. That I can find, there aren’t that many delay pedals/tabletop units that have an effects loop in the feedback. There’s the Moog Moogerfooger MF-104Z Analog Delay, the Black Box QuickSilver and the Smart People Factory I-5. I may have encountered one or two others, but I can’t recall any names, so if you know of any please post in the comments. The Moog delay is out, since, at $700, it’s a bit steep for me. The Quicksilver is out. I actually tried to buy one from a shop that had it listed at the old price (around $170) but the shop recanted and offered it to me only at the newly inflated price that Ooh-la-la Manufacturing has imposed (around $400). I’m sure Ooh-la-la are good, honest folk, but no thanks. Until recently, I was planning on getting the I-5, but Rock and Roll Workshop’s Dual Delay offers much more utility (two delay lines being the biggest). So it goes on my list. It is only tenuously on the list, because it is realistic that I might buy one soon.

Custom Low-Fi Filter Pedal
J.Everman Custom Analog Effects

Something about the austere, craftsman focus of the J.Everman pedals really appeals to me. This filter sounds pretty good and its topology is both interesting and would be fairly unique in my rig. The custom model puts it over the top and on to the list because I’m a sucker for bespoke gear, especially when it offers lots of parameters for live tweaking.

Manecoloopers
Maneco

The Maneco stuff strikes me as ranking among the elite of bespoke effects units. They cost a moderately hefty sum, the manufacturer is from some far away land, and the waiting time post-purchase is crazy long. So I really have no intention of ever getting one, and would more likely opt for a Headrush or a Jamman if I was in need of a looper since they are both capable and actually accessible to me, but all of the Maneco things call to me. If I were to get one, I’d probably get either the Filter Eko 2 or the Microlooper, but really, I’m probably not ever going to get one, I just to like to sit on those rare quiet days and think about them.

That’s my list for the time being, it’ll probably change in six months time. If I have one wish for the product announcement season (NAMM, Messe), it’s that I hope one of the major manufacturers puts out just one thing I really want (because it would likely not be too expensive and would be easier to come by than most boutique gear). Most years, they don’t, which I find sad.

Honourable mention to the ToneCzar EchoCzar, because, I mean, Jesus, it’s shiny, and to the Death by Audio Overdriver Supreme, which didn’t make the lust cut mostly because it isn’t high on the obscurity factor and I’m seriously considering getting one.

And remember kids, guitar players are killing effects (just saying).

There’s a ten-year-old kid out there giggling right now.

Mr. Wiggler has the first to press preview of the new Metasonix box:

http://muffwiggler.blogspot.com/2008/01/new-metasonix-product-unveiled.h…

The name isn’t official, yet, but I’m sure it will be. It’s a two channel, valve-based guitar amp. Which isn’t so exciting to me, not being a guitar player and all, but since it’s been a long standing request among Metasonix fans, I’m sure there are people out there doing a dance about it.

The naked lady puzzle is still being assembled, three pieces left to go…

[edit]…and with three pieces left, they gave us the full Monty instead. The infinity boxes are my favourite. That and the addition of Puppy, the Fucking Fucker himself (see Dave’s funny cartoon Retarded Animal Babies for more).

Click on the image to see it full-sized.

Valve-based synth and effects maker Metasonix will be unveiling something new at NAMM next week. (more after the jump, but it’s NSFW) In the meantime, the man responsible for the graphics has been presenting daily puzzle pieces of its face.

umop metasonix page

Here’s my ongoing piecing together of the many bits (picture will be updated daily):

Click on the image to see it full-sized.

Pedal month continues with the Devi Ever Spectacular Aenima.

I’ve mentioned the Spectacular Aenima a few times here, mostly in relation to my live rig, but I don’t think I’ve yet done a full write up about it. Before I start, I’d like to clear up some apparent confusion noted in the comments of my EHX Holy Stain review. I’m not a guitar player, and while pedals tend to be aimed at guitarists, I don’t think my reviews will be at all helpful to anyone who plays guitar, since the sounds I’m running through these effects are all wrong (multi-frequency content, amplified sounds, etc), and I’m generally interested in noisy, unpleasant sounds.

Only semi-related, but I’ve often thought that guitarists are hurting the portable effects market and impeding innovation, since they are the primary focus for most manufacturers for these things, yet their needs are very different (and from view, much more limited) from those of the electronic musician. So we end up with a lot of mono effects, with few knobs for tweaking, and a form factor best suited for pedal boards. I think that’s changing slowly, but it’s often funny to see guitarists’ reactions to effects not explicitly made for them.

Back to the Spectacular Aenima. This pedal has been at the centre of my live show, and you can hear a lot of it in the two live recordings I’ve posted in the last six months.

I love this fuzzbox. It’s noisy, occasionally unpredictable, and a lot of fun to use. Mine is the Mark I version, with only three knobs. This version is no longer available as it has been replaced by the five knob Mark II version (which I think is currently only available through Analog Haven). The five knob version adds Devi’s 33 artifact, which is a kind of gated fuzz. I’m not sure how adding a gated fuzz will change the effect’s function, since the Aenima isn’t gated and a lot of its charm comes from all the hiss and noise it spits out.

One thing I really love about the SP AE is its extreme boost. You can get a lot of cool effects with it as it’ll boost really, really quiet signals, and they get distorted in a really crunchy squelchy way, more than louder signals. Here’s an example: I’ve run a loop through the Devi Ever OK (which is essentially a fuzz with a broken gate, I’ll have a review of it soon). You can hear the very sketchy input at the beginning, then I turn on the SP AE (without the feedback loop turned on) and change settings for a bit. Then at the end, you’ll hear the loop’s reverb tail out. The SP AE will self-oscillate when the gain is turned up, which you can also hear a bit of at the end.

Spectacular Aenima input gain test

The Spectacular side of the pedal is a built-in effects feedback loop, that can be controlled by an optical sensor (the SP AE also comes with a snaked LED that hovers above the sensor). Here’s an example of trying out different pedals in the SP AE’s loop (without altering the feedback intensity). I posted this a while ago on Devi’s forum, but it was lost in the recent phpbb upgrade. The source is a loop of an mbira recorded with a contact mic.

Spectacular Aenima loop test

0:00-0:46 Boss CS-3 compressor
0:47-1:23 Jomox M-Resonator analog filter
1:24-2:06 Ibanez DML10 mkII digital modulation delay

I like the Jomox filter the best of the bunch for a few reasons. I find that the filtering of some of the high frequency brightness is beneficial, as I found both the compressor and delay sections a bit bright for my tastes. The Jomox filter is great for tweaking, so I’ve generally stuck to using it with the SP AE. The compressor’s sustain makes some great rising noisy effects in between notes. When you start messing around with feedback settings with the delay it can make some mighty screaming noises. The utility of the optical sensor is really dependent on the pedal you use in the loop, since some pedals just crap out when pushed hard and offer little value.

All told, I can’t get enough of this pedal, and I probably overuse it as a result. It’ll pop up in some clips used for future pedal reviews, especially since I’ll often use it as a noisy boost for quiet effects.

As I mentioned a few days ago, I’ve been on a bit of an effect pedal binge the past six months, and I thought I’d share some of my experiences and, in most cases, sound clips.

I thought I’d start with a semi-review of the Electro-Harmonix Holy Stain, not because I like it, rather the exact opposite. First effect pedal I’ve bought that I’ve returned to the shop. I bought it yesterday as a frivolous birthday gift to myself (January 3, mark your calendars for next year). I figured it looked like a spot of fun and for $100, I had little to lose. Except that, for anyone but the most junior of novices, it’s of very limited use (I was initially going to say it’s useless, but it does have some utility contained within its blandness). Two boring distortion circuits (generic sounding, no control over fuzz, remarkably awful “dark” setting), two functional yet uninteresting reverb algorithms, a tremolo which, oddly and unnecessarily, mixes in reverb when fully wet, and a very limited pitch shifter.

I like multi-effects that offer something a little more than just chaining, some kind of interaction/control between the various stages, some kind of reason for these many effects to coexist, of which the Stain has none. It also only lets you mix wet/dry for the digital effects, so always passes through the fuzz/drive section unless in standby mode. Which would be okay for me if the distortion wasn’t so plain Jane.

I did like a few things on it – I found the distortion stage set to drive and warm had a pleasing quality (and made for some reasonable shoegazer fizziness when run into the roomverb), and I’d really like the pitch shifter if its range was at least +/- one octave (the pitch shift range is -4 to +3 semitones). I could see that 14-year-old kids learning to play electric guitar and on a limited budget would have a grand old time with the Stain, and I think that’s probably the target audience for this thing, so take my nay saying with some suspicion given that I’m old by comparison (and even older as of yesterday, hooray!).

No sound clips for this one, as I didn’t like what I recorded from it, and I’ve already taken it back to the shop. I exchanged it for the Boss PS-5 Super Shifter. I’ve never been big on Boss pedals, really, but playing around with the Holy Stain’s pitch shift reminded me that I could use one for my live rig and I’m familiar with the PS-5 enough to know that it will do the job I want it to. So on the plus side, I’ll likely do one of these entries for the PS-5, too.