JPF Home Page Forums Musician Gear and Techniques Guitars and Guitarist Forum Stomp Boxes (foot pedals) - a two part question

So PopTodd made me think with his recent RAT post. ...and being the Christmas season, where we have materialistic thoughts and greed prevails , I would like to ask this in two parts:

1. What is your favorite stomp box (foot pedal) that you currently own, and why?

2. What is the stomp box that you wish you had, and why?

Oh, this could be interesting, thanks for asking. I'll go first:
1. I really like the Fulltone OCD. I was mostly impressed with how clean the signal gets if you role back the volume on the guitar, and it has such a sweet, creamy tone.

2. It has to be the Electro Harmonix HOG (with expression pedal). I absolutely love that this pedal can make a guitar sound like an organ, flute, uilleann pipe, or other voicings without needing a hex/MIDI system.

I do not play guitar BUT the guys I know all seem to use this Line 6 POD X3 Pro.
http://line6.com/podx3pro/

Benefits are it has a USB so can be plugged direct into a PC.
It can also be hooked up to a mic via xlr and is suitable for processing both guitar and vocs at the same time. It has a whole host of FX and amp modulators....even a vocoder.
Most guys I know have at least one of the range of PODs in their arsenal

Hi Big Jim!
Line 6 does make some nice stuff. I have an old Line 6 AX2 212, that I rebuilt into a brown tweed on pine cabinet. It's incredibly light now.

I have a Danelectro Cool Cat Transparent Overdrive that I like. It gives a healthy boost and a mild overdrive that sounds good. It is well built and not expensive.

I think I would like a looper pedal although I am not sure what I would do with it. I enjoy seeing some friends set up a rhythm pattern and then play over it while the looper provides the background. The Digitech Jam Man or the Boss equivalent.

I rarely use stomp boxes. I usually just choose the appropriate amp (I have at least a dozen, most of which I designed and built) and then just crank it up until it sounds right. But when I do use a stomp box, it is usually either a:

1) pseudo-clone I built of a Tube Screamer, which, since it is built into one of my home built amps, has the input stage replaced with a spare vacuum tube triode that was in the amp and the output buffer deleted, since the next stage it is driving is a preamp that is less that 3 inches away;

2) or a National distortion pedal which originally sounded horrible but I rearranged the stages and made a few component changes and I think it now sounds great.

I don't know about your second question. Usually if there is something I wish I had, I just build one and try it out. That is why I have so much stuff, including a couple of Leslies I built. But most of these things don't get much use.

I've got to get in on this one.

The best pedal I own at the moment is a VOX big bad wah and it's great. You can dial in so many classic wah tones and it's great fun to play. I'm thinking about replacing the pot as I don�t think VOX blew the budget on the one they fitted and it's started to crackle just a bit so I'll fit a Jim Dunlop pot after xmas.

Pedal that I would love to have is not really a pedal. It's the Eventide Eclipse processor. If I had one of them I don't think I'd leave the house for a very long time.

Great thread Tom and it's cool to post on a thread that's got another Andy K on it it lol Hi Andy

I've recently seen a few folks at open mikes use looping pedals with their acoustics and lay a rhythm down live and jam over top of it. It really made me want one, but then I thought instead of mimicing what others do, I'd also like to consider the EHX Freeze pedal, and go ambient creative. The EHX HOG that I mentioned earlier has the freeze circuitry built into it too, so it could do that if I wanted.

Andy K 1 - I don't play out anymore other than at a couple open mikes, so I don't use my stuff much either other than to entertain my boring self. Do you have any recordings of the amps and effect thingies you've built?

I think there are a few here that would love to hear them, including myself.

Andy K2 - (I hope we don't get 7 more Andy K's. I don't want to call the ninth one a dog). THE INFAMOUS WAH!!!! How could forget that one. I have an old Cry Baby that's been with me for most every band I've been in. Still all original, and quite finicky now. It might be time for a thorough cleaning/parts update. I'm not familiar with the Eventide Eclipse at all. I'll have to read up about it. Thanks for participating!

Hi Andy Kemp!

Tom Tracy: Almost all the songs on my website have guitars which are run through my home made amps and effects.

For example, my most recently posted one, "Rhodania," has a Gretsch Country Club on the left played through a Vox clone I built, called the AK-30, with a few mods I wish Vox put into their amps. The channel I'm using in this song has a 7199 pentode input stage with the usual EL84's in the output. The Gretsch is running through the pseudo-Tube Screamer clone which resides in this amp, with the triode side of the 7199 being the input buffer for this effect. The amp has a single 12 inch speaker which is a Weber Blue Dog.

The guitar on the right in this song is a Fender Telecaster run through an amp I built called the AKM2 with no outboard effects. The AKM2 electronics were built on the chassis of the electronics removed from a 1954 Hammond M2 organ. The electronics use 6V6s for the output tubes. All but one of the tubes are octals, with 6SJ7 pentodes and 6SC7 triodes in the preamps and a 6SN7 for the phase inverter. The tone control includes a pushbutton selectable midrange cut modeled after the type used in the old Selmer Zodiac, though I designed it around inductors I had lying around and added a control for adjusting the depth of the cut (really a "Q" control). The amp has a single 12 inch speaker, which is a 1954 Jensen that came out of the same Hammond M2. This speaker has an electromagnet instead of the typical either alnico or ceramic permanent magnets used by most speakers. I have a control on the back of the amp that allows me to control the current flow through the electromagnet, which allows me to control the intensity of the magnetic field. The speaker grill and wood for the cabinet came from the same Hammond M2. Below are a couple photos of this amp.

My favourite at the moment is a Boss DD-7 delay pedal. I love the modulated delay it delivers. Sounds chorus like, but it is a rich textured delay. Check out this killer demo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zc2nVeqSJWA&feature=related

I'm up to get a Seymour Duncan SFX-09 Double Back Compressor http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5wRh1y7m6w and a Visual Sound Open Road overdrive pedal http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kw_66z3Rm54 . Love the sound and functionality of those..

I consider a Fishman Aura pedal to use with my Dobro, but I'm undecided.. I've heard they are good, but I've yet to see a good review on it, and they don't have them over here, so I'll have to import it if I want one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W83YpwfRRYM

Cool amp Andy