Effects Bay

I’ve been extremely busy with the holiday action this year… been out of town for a week and I’m just about half dipped in egg nog by now. Things will get back to normal for me.. should be back home on the 2nd. Anyways, just wanted to Happy New Year to everyone, and have a safe and fun one. Any of you rockin’ tonight?

Musician’s Friend is currently offering 20% off their used gear, just use the following checkout code: USED Offer expires on 1/3, so you’ll need to act soon.

Popularity: 3%

A few days ago, @worshiprocker on Twitter was asking about the Tech 21 DD3X Double Drive 3X Distortion and the Fulltone Fulldrive pedals. I know I’ve talked about the Fulldrive in the past, so thought it was a good opportunity to talk about the Tech 21 DD3x Double Drive 3x distortion! This definitely seems like a interesting pedal, and please watch the reviews by Tone Factor!

Here is the official pedal description:

The uniquely designed DD3X Double Drive 3X Distortion Pedal from Tech 21 captures the lush, muscular power amp distortions of both Class A and Class A/B tube amps. The tones can be used individually or you can feed one into the other for massive cascading’ distortion and limitless tonal variations. The 100% analog Double Drive 3X is a 3-channel, fully programmable version of its single channel predecessor and features active 3-band EQ. The expanded tone section gives you even greater flexibility to create incredible and original tones. You can store three custom sounds, even on the fly, by simply tweaking the knobs and double-tapping on a footswitch. How easy is that? And, with both Drives at minimum, you can program a clean boost up to 10dB for blazing solos.

DRIVE A controls the amount of Class A power amp output stage distortion (like Vox AC30®-style amp), rich in even harmonics. The amount of harmonics is dynamically controlled by the input level and their ratio by how hard you pick.

DRIVE A/B controls the amount of Class A/B power amp output stage distortion (like Fender®/Marshall®-style amps), rich in odd harmonics.

The signal path of Drive A runs into the signal path of Drive A/B. This results in an electronic multiplication, rather than addition, of the amount of distortion to achieve a cascading effect.

Now, I found a great series of reviews on this pedal by Bobby Devito for ToneFactor!

You can pick up the Tech 21 DD3x Double Drive 3x Distortion pedal for $179.00 at Musician’s Friend.

Remember, if you like reading about these pedals and seeing videos reviews from others, please subscribe to the RSS feed and get notified via email when there are new postings!

Popularity: 5%

Viewing Amazon deals this evening, I came across an interesting listing of pedals that I’ve not personally heard about. These are Eagletone pedals. If you have any experience with these pedals, please let me know about them! I couldn’t find any YouTube videos on these either??

Anyway, there are some great deals on these pedals at Amazon:

Eagletone Chorus Pedal – Lists at $189.00 is on sale for $49.95
Eagletone Delay Pedal – Lists at $189.00 is on sale for $54.95
Eagletone Distortion Pedal – Lists at $189.00 is on sale for $49.95
Eagletone Flange Pedal – Lists at $189.00 is on sale for $54.95

We’re looking at 70%+ off list price on these pedals. Love to hear your experience with these pedals and how they sound, please comment to this post!

Popularity: 8%

I’ve been hearing a few people talking about the Vox V845 classic wah which is based on the original design in the 60s, so I wanted to see how it compared to the classic Vox V848 Wah. First of all, here is the official pedal description:

The Vox V845 Classic Wah Wah Guitar Effects Pedal is based on the specifications of the original pedal developed by VOX in the ’60s. The V845 Wah-Wah offers guitarists the same legendary Wah-Wah tone in a new sturdy but very affordable design. The fitted AC power connector saves on batteries and the outer case is coated with tough all-black finish making the VOX Classic Wah-Wah a perfect choice for your pedal board.

VOX developed the world’s first Wah Wah effect during the ’60s to give guitarists the ability to sound like a trumpet being muted—an important musical ingredient of the day. VOX’s original Wah Wah pedal quickly gained widespread popularity and its unique sonic characteristics have encouraged further experimentation by guitarists ever since.

I was able to find a comparison video between the V845 and the V848 by KAZAHANAFX

You can pick up the Vox V845 Classic Wah for $69.99 at Musician’s Friend.

Remember, if you like reading about these pedals and seeing videos reviews from others, please subscribe to the RSS feed and get notified via email when there are new postings!

Popularity: 8%

Today’s pedal line is from Justin Vigeant. If you have a pedal line (doesn’t have to be in a board) for your rig, please email me a photo, bio, description of pedals and routing to . Every Friday I’ll showcase a pedal line submission. Make sure you include any links to your band or music page.

Clockwise, from the right corner:
1. Boss Tuner TU-2 (can’t live without)
2. A Homebrew Electronics (HBE) Germania 44 Treble Boost. I like the Lo-Fi setting, which sounds like an old Range Master treble boost. In front of the OD, it sounds amazing. Behind the OD, its muddy.
3. HBE Power Screamer OD w/ Fat Boost (the toggle switch on the left) and a 10db volume boost. As you can see, I keep my Gain around 9 o’clock.
4. Roan Tone modified Duncan Shape Shifter Tremolo. The mod allows you to set the tap tempo when the effect is bypassed (hard to imagine they weren’t originally designed that way). This pedal has a ratio option, where you can set the trem speed to double, triple, or quadruple what you tap. It is VERY handy for getting those 8th and 16th note speeds.
5. Boss DD-7 Delay with an Boss FS-5U tap controller. I use only the analogue setting on this pedal; though sometimes I will use the “hold” (basically a loop) setting to create a wall of noise if the situation calls for it. I also use the loop when I play solo acoustic shows.
6. BBE Sonic Maximizer Stomp – really gives the signal a lot of clarity before going to the amp.

This is a fairly simple setup I’ve gone with. I’ve found (especially as a singer) that with too many pedals, you can get bogged down in tap dancing and forget about rocking out.

I have been playing guitar since I was 11, so that is roughly 25 years. Only recently have I really done research on amps, pickups, effects, and the like. My two main guitars: an American Series Fender Telecaster (w/ Rio Grande Dirty Harry pickups) and a Gibson SG Classic (P90 model). I play through a Peavey Classic 50 410 and a Fender Blues Jr 112 (for those gigs where you have to load in up 2 flights of stairs).  I listen to mostly indie-alt rock and alt-country. Favorite guitarists would include folks like J Mascis (Dinosaur Jr), Jay Farrar (Uncle Tupelo & Son Volt), Doug Martsch (Built to Spill), Brian Henneman (Bottle Rockets), and Neil Young.  My band is called Poiema and we can be seen and heard on MySpace (for now)…

Thanks for looking!
Justin (on Facebook)

Popularity: 4%

Currently, Amazon has a good deal on the Mod Tone Harmonic Tremor pedal. This pedal normally lists for $99.95, but is on sale for $65.76 and can ship free with FREE super saver shipping.

Here are the specifics of the pedal:

The ModTone Harmonic Tremor is a split bypass boutique style pedal that recreates vintage style tremolo units or pulsating vibrato effect. Housed in a sealed corrosion resistant metal chassis that’s built to last, each ModTone pedal features period correct vintage style components,  smooth linear taper pots that enable you to custom tailor your sound for maximum performance, high impact switches built for the floor and top quality jacks for optimum tonal transfer.

I found another great video demo by gearmanndude:

You can pick up the Mod Tone Harmonic Tremor for $65.76 at Amazon.com

Remember, if you like reading about these pedals and seeing videos reviews from others, please subscribe to the RSS feed and get notified via email when there are new postings!

Popularity: 6%

Today I wanted to talk about the Fulltone GT-500 FET Distortion + Booster and Overdrive Guitar Effects Pedal. This pedal uses the FET, and since I’ve been personally interested in building pedals, I wanted to see what FET was.  Basically FET is a type of transistor, it stands for Field Effect Transistor. There are two type of transistors, FET and bipolar. FETs come in two different types (MOSFET and JFET). MOSFET should sound familiar to some of you. Okay, so I have a definition, but I’m still confused on why one is preferred over the other? My basic understanding between FET and bipolar shows that they basically do the same thing, but why is FET preferred in pedals?? If you can enlighten me, please feel free to comment.

Okay, enough nerd talk, we have the Fulltone GT-500 FET Distortion, Booster and Overdrive, so let’s look at it more closely. I’m a big fan of Fulltone products, and this pedal seems pretty special. In a sense it’s two pedals in one enclosure allowing you to control what pedal is in front of the other with the selection switch. This is a pretty cool concept.

Here is the official pedal description:

The GT-500 Effects Pedal from Fulltone is a discrete FET Hi-Gain Distortion and Overdrive Booster in one box. You could think of them as 2 separate pedals, or think of them as stages to be linked together for endless combinations. The Hi-Gain side has Volume, Distortion knobs, Bass, Mid, and Highs minipots. Its Booster Side has Volume, Overdrive knobs, Bass and Highs minipots.

Hard-clipped distortion—the way most guitar pedals achieve distortion—at one point in a circuit can be cool, but stage after stage of FET (GT-500) is very real, very amplike, and has ridiculous amounts of sustain even at low volume. It does the great chunky low-string rhythm stuff and cleans up incredibly well when you turn down the guitar’s volume. The Fulltone GT500 contains 9 FETs, 2 Mosfets, and 1 Transistor with no opamps or clipping diodes used.

What’s special about the EQ? The Hi-Gain side has a discrete Inductor-Driven Midrange circuit—never been done in a pedal before. There’s a wah-wah inductor inside the pedal that gives the Midrange control its ability to drastically increase or decrease the entire Low Mid, Mid, and Hi-Mid frequencies, to comical proportions. All this is done without any opamps—this has 100% discrete matched FETs.

This Mid control mixed with a strong Bass and Treble control help give the Fulltone GT-500 the ability to dial in more variations than a simple tone control, which can only roll off the Highs.

The Series Select Switch allows you to choose which pedal comes first (allowing you to instantly change the order of the 2 circuits). For example: A clean boost slamming into the front end a Distortion sounds way different than a Distortion followed by the clean boost, and when the EQs of the respective sides come into play, it’s a wide-open canvas. Regardless of which side of the effects pedal is designated as first in line, you can still use each side by itself, completely independent of the other side.

I found a great video by Tone Factor going into some great detail of what this pedal can do.

You can pick up the Fulltone GT-500 FET Distortion + Booster and Overdrive pedal for $199.00 at Musician’s Friend.

Remember, if you like reading about these pedals and seeing videos reviews from others, please subscribe to the RSS feed and get notified via email when there are new postings!

Popularity: 8%

I thought I was done finding awesome deals on BBE pedals, but I came across another one on Amazon. Here is the BBE Orange Squash Fet Compressor Pedal. This pedal normally lists for $169.00, but is now on sale for $119.99. I was unable to find any video demos of this pedal, but here is the official pedal description:

The Orange Squash is a compressor patterned after an old favorite that levels out louder signals while boosting lower signals to provide a smooth sustain without changing the original sound. Robust build quality and rugged engineering ensure that the Orange Squash will stand up to the abuse of life on the road. Other features include hardwire bypass, LED operation indicator, non-slip rubber bottom, easy-access 9v battery compartment and included external power supply.

You can pick up the BBE Orange Squash Fet Compressor Pedal for $119.99 at Amazon, and this pedal ships FREE with super saver shipping!

Popularity: 4%

The following is a guest post review of the Boss AC-3 Acoustic Simulator by Andrew Elmore. If you are interested in guest posting, please contact me!

The Boss AC-3 is an acoustic simulator pedal and its use is quite simple. It is an average Boss stompbox that uses Boss’ new “COSM” modeling system to make an electric guitar sound like an electric acoustic.

The AC-3 has five control knobs and can be a little tricky to squeeze a good sound out of it, but once you find that sound you don’t really need to change it again. The first is your average level knob, which is skirted by a reverb knob. The confusion here is that the reverb knob is also an overall level / clarity knob, and when it is all the way down, there is no sound coming out. For maximum quality i usually leave both these knobs cranked all the way. The next two knobs are essentially low end and top end filters, labeled “body” and “top”, respectively. The final and rightmost knob is the COSM Mode selector. The AC-3 has four different acoustic guitar models to choose from. “Standard”, “Jumbo”, “Enhance” (Enhance was not included in the AC-2 to my knowledge, just the AC-3. It magically seems to cut through the mix extremely well when playing live with a band) and “Piezo” which in my opinion sounds the least like the average acoustic electric.

The AC-3 has 1 input and two outputs, “Line Out” and “Guitar Amp Out”. Personally I use the Line Out when the pedal is in my chain because it sounds more robust and full. I use an Ibanez AX-S 42 which, although it may look like an SG, sounds suspiciously similar to a Les Paul. Don’t get me wrong, I WISH I had a strat, tele, or jazzmaster, but alas I was young and foolish… (My amp is a Fender Frontman 212R 100w solid state with beautiful shimmering cleans and a craptacular drive channel i never use) Anyway This pedal sounds great outta my humbuckers but sounds EXACTLY like an acoustic when using single coils. It’s uncanny.

Obviously being Boss it is not true bypass but isn’t really a tone suck. On the down sides, this little guy is pretty noisy when engaged, but roll back on the reverb a bit and it cleans up nicely. The noise isn’t straight feedback, it just sounds the way an electric acoustic does. Kinda hummy in the background for a split second after you stop strumming. I (Can’t believe I’m saying this…) actually kinda like it. It sounds more authentic. Also this thing is the hugest battery suck Ive ever seen. If you don’t power your pedals with some sort of ac adapter, brick, or chain, expect to be swapping out 9v batts like crazy. Anyway you can find the AC-3 online for around $80 to $100, and it’s a great and unique pedal to have in your arsenal. Peace.

About the author:

I’m a christian guitarist with a bad bad case of “Pedal Acquisition Syndrome” I’ve been playing for about 6 years. My current set up is as follows:
Ibanez AX-S 42 > Dunlop Standard Crybaby GCB-95 > Boss AC-3 Acoustic Simulator > Boss SD-1 Super Overdrive > Digitech Hot Head Distortion > Danelectro Tuna Melt Tremolo > Digitech RP50 Processor (Piece of crap, only used as a tuner) > Boss DD-7 Digital Delay > Fender FM212R
You can follow Andrew on Twitter (@AndrewElmore)

You can pick up the Boss AC-3 Acoustic Simulator pedal for $99.00 at Musician’s Friend!

Remember, if you like reading about these pedals and seeing videos reviews from others, please subscribe to the RSS feed and get notified via email when there are new postings!

Popularity: 7%

@HomeSickFrank asked a question on the EffectBay’s Facebook page about a pedal a friend told him about. This pedal would allow you to drop tune your guitar at a press of a footswitch, and asked if I’ve heard of such a thing. Well, I did see the Edge using a guitar that drop tuned by adjusting signal, but I’ve never heard of a pedal that did this. Frank later pointed me to the Morpheus DropTune Octave pedal.

Now immediately, I had doubts, specifically with ‘tracking’ or ‘warbling’ that octave pedals are known to have while the sustain dissipates or when there are chords vs. single notes.

Here is the official product description:

With the Morpheus Droptune guitar effect pedal, you can easily go from one pitch for a particular song to a different pitch on the next without having to retune your guitar or needing multiple guitars for various step-down de-tunings.

For example, play an E chord in standard tuning, then use this unique pedal to drop tune your guitar so the chord is changed to an Eb, D, Db, C, B, Bb, or A.

This lets guitarists get that heavy drop-tuned tone at different pitches without dealing with floppy string buzz, extra-heavy-gauge strings or carrying around expensive extra guitars. The same goes for foam-deadened acoustic guitars or electric violins.

If your singer has a bad throat night, you can drop-tune your guitar to accommodate him without having to change neck position or retune.

The Morpheus DropTune guitar pedal also features effect-toggling so you can instantly toggle back and forth between the dropped pitch and the EFFECT OFF for a cool up/ down pitch-shift effect during solos or power chord rhythm patterns. Additionally, the DropTune pedal has Full Octave Drop and a great-sounding Octaver.

Don t mistake this for a mere pitch-shifting stompbox—the DropTune uses proprietary polyphonic pitch-drop algorithms that maintain perfect harmonic accuracy and tonally correct overtones. The DropTune was developed by a team of guitar effects pros with over 50 years of experience at other companies where they created some of today’s most famous pedals.

With a cast-metal chassis; solid, positive-feeling steel switches; and non-skid rubber feet, the DropTune is solidly built for years of use and abuse. LED indicators are bright and easy to see.

Well, I still wasn’t sold. I need to see/hear if this thing has tracking issues. I came across a interesting video on YouTube by SweetwaterSound which shows the pedal at the Summer NAMM show.

I was pretty impressed with what I heard. I didn’t hear any tracking issues, and it seems to handle chords nicely. Love to hear your thoughts if you own this pedal!

You can currently pick up the Morpheus DropTune Octave pedal for $199.99 at Musician’s Friend.

Remember, if you like reading about these pedals and seeing videos reviews from others, please subscribe to the RSS feed and get notified via email when there are new postings!

Popularity: 5%