UGLIEST GEAR

[rfurtkamp]

The Parker Fly stuff is all about function IMO - how it sits, how it sounds, how it plays.

I came very close to buying one when they came out several times.

They sounded right, they felt right, they looked stupid.

The looking stupid I could care less about, but they were always a bit more than I was willing to pay for what they were.

[Jwar]

Anyone meantion Tortuga Effects yet? Everything they create is beautiful vomit. They need to fire whoever does their design work. Seriously.

http://www.tortugaeffects.com/TortugaEffects.html

[Dungus]

Anyone meantion Tortuga Effects yet? Everything they create is beautiful vomit. They need to fire whoever does their design work. Seriously.

http://www.tortugaeffects.com/TortugaEffects.html

Yeah, looks like another Clip Art Dad on the loose.

I forgot whay Strymon was before they were Strymon, but those pedals were honking.

[OddKnowledge]

I forgot whay Strymon was before they were Strymon, but those pedals were honking.

Damage Control, i think.

i like how they kept their knob layout, but changed everything else.

[Adamadamadam]

This has been up on the local CL for a very long time.

$600 and it's yours.

[blakestree]

That's the kind of guitar I would pay $100 for.

[echorec]

I think about starting this thread every time a particularly hideous pedal shows up in my Reverb feed, but then I think it will just turn into a flame fest. Or someone will criticize a really great design, because it's too colorful/ornate/atypical for the market (I'm talking to you black/grey monochromatic motherfuckers who hate everything with personality). I also consider that someone will rip a popular brand and then a designer/builder will get sour over it. Oh well.....fuck it. I'm in!

The Bearfoot-custom-sea-themed Mini Vibe pedals are the ugliest pedals ever rolled out. These had to be painted by someone's wife or children. Not only are they sinfully disgusting, but as customized items, they actually cost more than the stock pedals, which are already overpriced.

[lordgalvar]

I like those actually...too bad they are that company. They are cheesy weird enough to be kinda neat haha. (Says the guy with a 2' fiberglass whale in his living room)

I'd rock those if they were ring mods.

[blakestree]

They are cheesy weird enough to be kinda neat

[echorec]

All of the EHX pedals with a label on the face and bare metal sides are ugly, lazy, and generally embarrassing. The Stereo Polyphase may take the cake as the ugliest of them all because of its bizarre teal-gun metal grey marriage. What the fuck? You've got psychedelic pinwheels beneath rows of dots. Did they go to Wal-Mart at 2 a.m. and steal that pattern from two different Trapper Keepers? (We like dots and we like peppermint suckers, so let's do both.) The artwork reminds me of junior high folders from the 80s, but the ugly bare metal against the second-class art says to me, "Fuck it, we give up. Who cares? Let's just throw shit together."

Either paint the boxes or don't, but why would you release something that's the worst of both worlds? You can do brushed aluminum and make it look less cheap (Fairfield Circuitry). Decals or specialized printing also works (Alexander, Hologram). Everything doesn't have to be silk-screened to Catalinbread standards. You should not, however, slap a poorly-designed sticker on a rough box. The reissue EHX boxes look like someone took metal out of a scrap bin and then just stuck a jumbo label on them. They're so tacky, unprofessional, and half-assed.

[rfurtkamp]

^Didn't that last sentence just describe EHX in general?

[repoman]

The normal barefoot effects are pretty damn ugly too

[repoman]

^Didn't that last sentence just describe EHX in general?

not really

EHX makes good stuff for really affordable prices a lot of times, and they take risks releasing some pretty whacky stuff

shame they started looking crummy
The way the early memory mans and POGs looked was cool

[echorec]

^Didn't that last sentence just describe EHX in general?

Ha. Perhaps. (I can't imagine using 90+% of their products: Nano line, the Soul Pog, their dirt boxes, etc.) I don't have the hard feelings for them, that many seem to however. I haven't bought anything recently from them, so I haven't had any warranty nightmares or SMD drama.

When I started exploring experimental sounds around 2001, EHX was a very big deal. I wouldn't discover Z.Vex until a year or two later. I imagine you can remember those days, when you could drop the name of one or two boutique brands at a guitar shop and no one knew what you were talking about. If you could name 5 pedal companies people thought you were a guru.

When I purchased a 90s Polychorus, 1970s Stereo Memory Man, and a Holier Grail, my friends acted like I was being ridiculously eccentric for wanting stuff outside the Boss/Ibanez arena. Everyone I played with or around in high school had 0-3 pedals (a DS-1, perhaps a Dano Fab Tone, and something like a Soundtank for modulation, or a CE-3 for Brit Pop/radio-friendly alternative)

My treatment of EHX is not dissimilar to my attitude for the Rolling Stones. I just keep enjoying their hits from 30+ years ago (V1 Small Stone, big box Micro Synth, Brian Jones, Mick Taylor) and pay no mind to their recent efforts.

[rfurtkamp]

Heh, back then I was using off the shelf stuff and some what was then vintage stuff nobody wanted.

The boutique crowd didn't have much sway in this part of the country (where they were still boring as hell) and by '98 when I left Chicago for good it was some vintage shenanigans and Boss and whatever new major thing was trying to start/reform - Dano's big box old metal monsters showed up cheap and were monster hits. I remember buying a few EHX restart pedals throughout hte 90s and cringing at the chickenhead knobs and dismal pots on the Russian stuff - I have one that still works from that era. They weren't even worth fixing then!

If we wanted experimental sounds there were so many rack units for cheap that the boutique stompbox thing just didn't really enter into it. Could get Lexicon stuff on the cheap - their failure was spectacular and GC etc was blowing out the Vortex et al for what seemed to be an eternity.

I didn't bother with the boutique thing until 10 years ago or so (by that point a relatively mature market), when stuff was starting to appear that wasn't just classic OD rehash or the occasional Zvex thing.

Was a different time before the net (especially broader retail and YT and streaming audio worth a damn) flattened the world.