July 2011 Pedal Gallery

My neighbour told me that I've been neglecting the blog of late, so I've just taken a few happy snaps of the pedals that I keep under my desk. This is most of my current working collection. I've built loads more than I have here at the moment and have discovered Circuit Snippets to be a great collection of unusual circuits for processing audio. Whoever the guy is behind it, must be some kind of genius!

Not much has been going on, trying to get motivated to finish my pickup ring templates, and in turn finish modding my Les Paul.

Home made fuzz pedal - A blend of a failed Ampeg scrambler followed by two cascading Germanium Transistor boosters.

Fuzz face clone - Easy face with tone control - Substituted Soviet era transistors for recommended.

Psychtar - From circuit snippets.

DOD stereo chorus - With vibrato mod (my design).

Bronx Cheer - Another pedal from Circuit Snippets

Ibanez  DE7 - Cheap good sounding delay.

Zoom H4n - Not a pedal, but has loads of FX. Good as a Rocktron substitute.

Danelectro Cool Cat Chorus - 18v model. Yard sale bargain.

MXR Blue Box - Two octaves down with lots of fuzz - Great square wave tones.

Fuzz Face Clone - Another fuzz face clone - Soviet GT404 Germanium Transistors. Volume control only.

Belcat Tremolo - Nice cheap variable wave shape tremolo.

Boss SD-1 - Modded clipping stage - Can't remember which mod...

Digitech Bad Monkey - One has been modded to let more bass through - Can't remember the cap value, probably .1uf

Sovtek Big Muff Pie - Indie rock staple. Fuzz Fuzz Fuzz. Works best with low output pickups.

Sovtek Small Stone Phaser - Nice sounding phaser, but has a tendency to generate nasty clipping on the front end if modded to compensate for the volume drop.

Fulltone DejaVibe - Nice Univibe clone. A bit expensive, but worth checking out.

Jim Dunlop Octavio - Fuzz Octave - Unpredictable insane fuzz. Very pronounced octave effect. Sounds different on every guitar.

Legacy OC-100 - Boss OC-2 clone - Might be cheap, but it tracks as well as any pedal. Works great with my stereo flying v!

2009 - Zoom H4n

The name of the device sounds somewhat like a disease doesn't it?
 
Well I did buy it around swine flu panic season.

This unit is pretty much the single most handy bit of kit I've ever owned.
The mics are pretty good, it's battery powered, takes line and guitar level plus has phantom power(don't expect your batteries to last if you're running a Rode Nt2a).

I use it all the time from recording my daughter's growls in the bath to (you guessed it) recording instruments.
Instead of going through the process of booting my PC and loading plugins, with the H4n I'm off and taking musical notes in seconds. Half the time I just sit it on my lap and record the unplugged guitar sound.
Nice and easy for the times when you've got your groove on, but probably not going to remember every little riff.

That's me pretty much every time I play... Well the times my mojo is in gear anyway.

The H4n doubles as an FX unit and Triples as a USB interface.
Zoom is known for it's long history of effects units, I think the first one I played with was a 9001 back when I was in highschool(wasn't mine). The effects models in this unit are ok. Nothing amazing, but they will get you some amp models and phase effects with a minimum of wires. Think of the fx as a bonus chocolate served with your latte.

The USB interface was touted as USB2, but it really is not any better than a usb1.1 device.
On all three of my computers(all quite powerful windows machines FYI), the latency is so bad that you can't monitor your playing in real time. It's ok if you plan to monitor off your input, but forget about enjoying any onboard effects or using guitar rig in real time. Latency aside, it is a great feature to have if you're wanting to play along to more than four tracks.

I got my unit from USA when our currency was strong and the locals were selling it for double the price, and that includes shipping from the USA. I'd like to see the USB section updated for a future release. It's not essential, but if I was to purchase the unit for playing real time, I would be disappointed. As it is I have an excellent MAudio delta1010lt PCI card that has near zero lag.

Another thing to be aware of is the power supply. It's switchmode and on Australian power points, it generates a bit of a high pitched whine. This could be taken care of with a little filtering and it's not that big of a deal since the unit runs for ages on batteries if you don't plan on using phantom power.