Effects Bay

This morning I was poking around looking for various ZVex products and I found one that I wanted to take a closer look. Heard good things about it, but never really looked too closely. I’m talking abou tthe Zvex Lo-Fi Loop Junky Looper pedal. There are some great digital based looper pedals out there, and I wanted to see what the deal is with this.

Here is the official description:

This is the ZVex Lo-Fi Loop Junky Looper Pedal. It’s really low fidelity… the recording of your guitar is filled with hiss, moan, distortion and warped-record strangeness, but everyone will be able to tell the loop from your real guitar. Because the processing of your direct guitar is done with my new bootstrap circuit, with the very highest impedance circuit ZVex has ever developed (even higher than the super hard-on circuit) your direct guitar will have detail incomparable with anything you’ve ever heard. The juxtaposition of your direct guitar against the smashed, distorted, shimmering/warbling recording of the loop mechanism will make it clear once and for all who is the guitarist and what is the machinery.

THERE IS NO ANALOG TO DIGITAL CONVERSION. It’s pure analog storage, just like the old bucket-brigade technology, for 20 seconds straight. It would take 25 800ms analog delay pedals to hold the loop that this thing can play.

I found this video by GuitarGearComMx. Side note.. big fan of Interpol!

You can pick up the ZVex Lo-Fi Loop Junky Looper pedal at Fat Tone Guitars for $369.00.

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I’ve been really getting into pedal hacking and I’ve been a little obsessed over the idea of making pedals one day. The pedal hacking community is incredibly kind and helpful, and it’s really easy to get the bug and desire to make something.. and if all goes well, works with your guitar.

A couple of days ago @4ntwaan let me know about something that Zachary Vex of ZVex has been up to. At the 2010 NAMM he was talking about the Inventobox, basically a pedal hacker’s dream box. It allows you to wire in pots, drop in ‘modules’ or craft you own circuits into the pedal.

Here is a video where Zachary explains the Inventobox:

As you can see, there is some great cool potential here. I’ve been planning on making a prototyping board that interfaces with a bredboard and pedal enclosure (ala Beavis Board) and this is definitely the hi-tech version of this. Awesome!

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Today I wanted to talk about the ZVex Super Hard On boost pedal. I just recently picked up the Analog Man Beano Boost, and I’ve been really digging the clean boost action, so I wanted to take a closer look at the ZVex Super Hard On (SHO). It’s very similar in the sense that it pushs your input signal to the ceiling which gives you a great natural break up (assuming you’re pushing a tube amp). This pedal is extremely simple with only one knob.

Here is the official pedal description:

The ZVex Super Hard On w/LED Boost Pedal is a boost pedal and more. Ignite your rig to get the best tone it’s capable of. The boost pedal is so transparent no one will be able to tell you’re using a pedal. Perfect for making the most of a classic amp and guitar, because it simply makes your guitar bigger and pushes the amp harder, causing natural overload. This sound can be the solution to the ‘disappearing guitar’ effect you get sometimes on stage when you stomp on your distortion and sound weaker. When cranked, it sounds much louder than a fuzz or distortion under stage conditions.

I found another great video by gearmandude showing what it can do:

You can pick up the ZVex Super Hard On for $239.00 at Fat Tone Guitars.

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I’m still on a big ZVex kick, and since I just wrote about the ZVex Box of Metal, I thought it would be appropriate to mention the ZVex Box of Rock distortion pedal. ZVex is a great name in the world of distortion boxes, and this is no exception!

Here is the official pedal description:

The Vexter Box of Rock is a silkscreened version of ZVex’s first distortion pedal, highly specialized to simulate the “everything on 10″ sound of a classic Marshall amplifier. Use your guitar’s volume control to adjust the amount of distortion you need, all the way down to very clean and clear with most drive settings. The silkscreened ZVex Box has one “Distortron Engine” stomp switch—that’s no typo, but what Mr. Vex himself calls his distortion circuit. The Box of Rock also contains an extremely high-headroom, unity-to-50X gain booster with nominal input impedance and low hiss.

ZVex Vexter Box of Rock Distortion Guitar Effects Pedal Features:

• Drive, Tone, Volume, and Boost controls give you easy control over your distortion
• Silkscreened model allows for a few visual tweaks
• Gives you great classic amp tone through any sort of amplifier
• Powered by 9V battery or 9V adapter (adapter not included)

I found a great video by ProGuitarShopDemos:

You can pick up the ZVex Vexter Box of Rock Distortion for $199.00 at Musician’s Friend.

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Last week I brought up the MXR Fullbore Metal Distortion, but today I thought I’d bring up the ZVex Box of Metal. This is another high gain distortion pedal with noise gate built in specially designed for “metal”. Metal isn’t my thang, but I know a lot of people would eat this pedal up in a heartbeat!

Here is the official ZVex description:

The ZVex Box of Metal is an aggressive high-gain distortion pedal with a highly effective built-in switchable gate which dramatically reduces noise and unwanted feedback. Its gain and tonal characteristics are somewhat similar to high-gain tube amplifiers that have been the staple of hard rock and metal sounds since the 80′s. On the right, the guitar effects pedal has a true-bypass switch with an indicator LED to bypass the entire effect. On the left is a gate switch, that is only effective when the pedal is on (the gate cannot be used separately.) When the gate’s LED (on the left side of the pedal) is on, the gate will be active whenever the pedal is turned on. The gate is very useful for cleaning up any noise between palm-muted chords and lead phrases, but may be switched off to initiate feedback or to stretch out soloed notes that are fading into noise. Switching off and on the gate is silent so the gating action of the distortion pedal can instantly be changed during any part of the performance to fluidly integrate soloing and palm-muted chords.

I found a cool little video (by  bigcitymusic) showing what it can do:

I thought that was a little too short, so I found another by MusicPlayerNetwork:

You can pick up the ZVex Box of Metal for $219.00 at Musician’s Friend!

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I have a friend that has been talking about the Zvex Box of Rock for a bit. I definitely like the Zvex stuff (I have posts on the Fuzz Factory and the Mastotron Fuzz). I’ve also seen the Zendrive listed on a few gear pages. So this was a good opportunity to kill a couple of birds with one stone. Again, I have to thank Gearmandude for putting together a great comparison video on the two pedals and running them through their paces.

I thought these two pedals sounded great, but both shined in some cases, and both fell short in other areas, but it comes down to the application of the pedal. He mentions that he probably won’t be able to use these, since he plays through a gained up amp. This is really important to understand when buying distortion / overdrive pedals. If you’re using the gain stage, you’re already dirtying the signal and saturating the headroom (of tube amps). If you’re playing a clean amp, then this is completely different, you get the distortion voicing and boost. Overall, I like the Zendrive’s tone for rhthym work, but the Box of Rock sounded better for leads in my opinion (I also liked the boost of the Box of Rock).

You can pickup the Zvex Box of Rock at Musician’s Friend for $199.00. You can also find the Zendrive on eBay (courtesy of Pedal Nerd) in the $200 range.

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• ZENDRIVE EFFECT

I was looking to do a write up on a bass pedal this afternoon, and stumble on something that bass players and guitarists might find very cool. This is the ZVex Mastotron Fuzz pedal. I saw some mention that the Mastotron Fuzz was being used by a few bass players, so I wanted to take a look, oddly all the clips were with guitars, and I was impressed. If you’re looking for a HEAVY fuzz tone, this could be the box you need. I was impressed with the solid low end and options for dialing in that fuzz. Good to get some wool in there.. or to go total stoner heavy. I’m liking it!

I’m definitely liking the ZVex stuff (recently did a post on the ZVex Fuzz Factory), so it was nice to look at another pedal in their line.

Here is the official description:

The Zvex Vextron Mastotron Effect Pedal is a new, heavy silicon fuzz effect pedal design that includes a couple of unusual features- source impedance control, subs control, and pulse width control. It works equally well with bass and guitar, and can easily be interfaced with digital devices like recorders as well as keyboards. The controls: * Relax/Push: This knob introduces source inpedance to the signal going into the Mastotron. When fully up, the signal goes in raw…when turned down, source inpedance is added as needed to soften the input for active pickups. * Fuzz: This wide-range knob lets you set just how fuzzy your Mastotron gets. * PW: Pulse Width control. You can swing this from square wave on the left to narrow pulses on the right. * Tone: This shapes the treble without sacrificing the heavy subs. * Vol: Output volume. * Subs Switch: 2-1-3, Lets you set how much sub content is in your fuzz. It’s pretty dramatic…3 is huge, 2 is medium, and 1 is absolutely none left. Totally twinky. Try 1 with the tone turned down.

I found two videos related to this. I thought they both showed what it can do in different ways. Also, showing some of the limitations, etc.

and

You can pick up the ZVex Vextron Mastotron Fuzz pedal for $149.00 at Musician’s Friend.

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I think I can relate my interest in fuzz pedals with the amount of coffee I have in me. The less amount of coffee.. the more interested I’m into searching for fuzz pedals to talk about. So, here I am with my first cup of joe for the day, and I found the Zvex Vexter Fuzz Factory. I’ve always been interested in ZVex pedals. I like how they look, and of course, how they sound. I wasn’t too familiar with their flag ship fuzz factory, so I started to do some research.

Here is the official description:

The Vexter Fuzz Factory from ZVex is a 5-knob fuzz pedal with 2 NOS ’60s germanium transistors, and it comes in a hand-polished aluminum chassis with hand-silkscreened, 2-color text. Though the circuit isn’t modeled after any one specific classic fuzz, it delivers tones straight out of the 1960s. These 5 knobs control the Fuzz Factory’s parameters at various operating levels, letting you shape your own personalized fuzz effect. ZVex designed the Fuzz Factory to consume less energy than other effects pedals. When on, the Fuzz Factory’s current is less than 3 mA. This fuzz pedal is hand-painted and assembled, and each is unique.

Fuzz Factory Controls

Volume: Output level
Gate: Squelches noise after end of sustain. Turn to the right to eliminate squeals, hiss, and buzz, stopping just as they disappear, or use to tune in exact feedback pitch. Turning to the left opens gate.
Compress: Adds attack characteristic when turned to the left, which gets softer to right, and suddenly pinches tone when all the way right. Also tunes in fat, feedbacky fuzz. Lower the Stability and see what happens to this control.
Drive: Increases distortion when used as a “normal” fuzz and adjusts feedback pitch and tonal thickness.
Stability: Use to control feedback pitch. This is one of the more finicky controls, so it will take some experimentation to get it right.

I found this great video, and was quite impressed with the diversity of this pedal from traditional fuzz face tone to craziness. I’ve always like the option to be able to tweak things and get crazy sounds, but I definitely find myself using the more ‘practical’ settings in the end. I thought the tone of the fuzz was good and the ability to add gate was interesting as well.

The ZVex Vexter Fuzz Factory Guitar Effect Pedal is currently available at Musician’s Friend for $179.00.

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