Gear you (thought you) fell in love with but never did

[PanicProne]

Inspired by the "Gear you fell in and out and back in love with"-thread and fueled by my own current frustration I though I'd do a thread on the gear you reaaaally wanted and even though you loved but never really did. This is not to bash on builders etc btw. We all know what we like etc is really subjective, right? Anyways, I'll go first.

File under: my love/hate relationship with Subdecay
I brought out and fired up my Prometheus DLX tonight. I have the first version too, which was one of the first "boutique" pedals I got (after my Micro POG, Fulltone '69, if that counts, I think) and I love it. However, I was super psyched when the DLX came out, intrigued by all the functions and all the cools sounds I was gonna get out of it and bought it almost right away. As much as I wanted it too though, it never clicked with me and I couldn't for the life of me understand it. I'm in general not I guy who knows or understands gear, I just learn to use it and enjoy the sounds and inspiration I get out of it, but this time it felt really hard. I've had it up for sale at least a couple of times through the years but no one has jumped at the chance, so I've kept it. So I brought it out again tonight, first time in at least two years and it's the same old story. I WANT to like it and get inspired and love some of the cool sounds other people get from it, but it just doesn't work for me. (It's been the same with thw Quasar DLX. I LOVED all the demos I watched, went to try it in a shop and... nothing ). I think this is it once and for all. I'm getting rid of it. It's sad cause it is a cool piece but nope, no. Not for me and that sucks.

[Chankgeez]

Neo Ventilator (first version)? Didn't play nicely with fuzz. For what I'd use it for a cheap rotary chorus (or some approximation thereof) is fine.

[retinal orbita]

Envelope Filters. I have bought and flipped like 10. I don’t even want to use it in the funky bass way, but more in the Bill Laswell kind of way, or paired with other stuff for weird effects.... and I never click! Every time I’m like “I should buy another envelope filter” I think about all the flips....

I thought I would love that Outer Rings and I flipped it IMMEDIATELY. Did not care for it at all.

I bought a Data Corrupter thinking I was a “PLL guy” and the only thing I really clicked with was the square wave fuzz on it. But I really loved that but not enough to justify keeping it.

[cantremember]

Same thing for me with the data corrupter and even the purpll and 4046. I guess I'm also not really a PLL guy.

I thought I was gonna be really into the cooper fx arcades and demedash t120 dlx but I couldn't really get passed the noise they made when. Also not a huge fan of the Cooper gen loss but I do really like the CBA version.

[Blackened Soul]

For me it's all the "fun" pedals like: Ring mods, PLLs, feedback loops, reverse delays, oscillating fuzzes, synth pedals, pattern tremolos, harmonizers, whammy pedals.. while I found them all fun, I never found a musical use for them other than for noise and cliche types of sounds.. and I fell even more out of love with them once "pedal culture" caught on and noise became normal, where you would read posts on forums like "I can't finish my noise track until XXX pedal gets here" THE HELL YOU CAN'T! it has made a lot of the things I use to love feel blasé and pedestrian. I feel the same about modulated reverb and delay pedals made FOR ambient players.. it's like training wheels, it makes it all very boring. and it shouldn't, and shouldn't be.

[Jwar]

Oscillating fuzzes. At first I was "wow this sounds crazy", then because I can't tune the fucking things well, I was like "woah, this actually sounds like it's going to blow my ears up and kind of terrible". PLL's and I don't get along for that very reason. I kind of hate starve pedals too. Fuzz starve pedals. I like the way some of them sound but it's not many of them.


I HATE ring mods. FUCK ring mods. hahaha.




Reverse delays are fun as fuck. Turn your mix down and play over it, that's the way I do it and I love it.

[odontophobia]

glitch stuff.
Have had GB24, Ct5, Tensor and I just can’t do it.

[Schlatte]

Flangers. All of them.
I love phasers, tho...

Wah pedals are also completely uninteresting to me. Thought it would be cool to have one, couldn't get myself to like it. Took it apart and made a dual expression pedal out of it to use with a - guess what - phaser

[frigid midget]

I gave up on weird/fun effects altogether, I've come to terms with the fact that I'm a bread and butter kinda guy when it comes to pedals. These days my entire board consitst of straight forward work horse pedals, each with 3 controls max.

It's a lame cliché, but an abundance of options and tricks actualy limits my creativity a bit, I always end up tweaking the damn pedals more that I'm actually playing my guitar. It's not even just option anxiety either. Being stuck with a bunch of plain old analog delays and fuzzes and a couple of boss pedals forces me to squeeze the most out of your arsenal and discover hidden sounds that end up sounding more unique than what I'd get by just going "bleep" on that hip new $300 glitchstutter pedal that all the other cool kids are doing "bleep" with

There's obviously limits to what you do with an old school 'dad rock' pedalboard, and what works for me won't work for everyone...ymmv and all that

[coldbrightsunlight]

For me it's all the "fun" pedals like: Ring mods, PLLs, feedback loops, reverse delays, oscillating fuzzes, synth pedals, pattern tremolos, harmonizers, whammy pedals.. while I found them all fun, I never found a musical use for them other than for noise and cliche types of sounds.. and I fell even more out of love with them once "pedal culture" caught on and noise became normal, where you would read posts on forums like "I can't finish my noise track until XXX pedal gets here" THE HELL YOU CAN'T! it has made a lot of the things I use to love feel blasé and pedestrian. I feel the same about modulated reverb and delay pedals made FOR ambient players.. it's like training wheels, it makes it all very boring. and it shouldn't, and shouldn't be.

While some of your specific examples I do like, this is the general gist of the things I end up not enjoying. When I look at my boards it's generally the 'classic effects' that stay around. Fuzz, delay, and pretty ordinary phase/flange/wah/vibrato pedals.

But all of the things on that list can be really fun and useful in some circumstances. It depends on the intentions and methods etc. I like modulated reverbs but I don't play ambient guitar musak. I just think they sound neat. Sometimes I like to get my Tom Morello on with a whammy (and the rest of the time it's a nice octaver for less show-off sounds).

Sometimes I pick up these effect-y things, plug them in and immediately fall into the 'suggested mode' and get annoyed. Sometimes I use them for something unexpected and love it.



I had this for years just with complicated pedals in general. I thought that was what I liked - so many controls, must be loads of sounds in it. Gradually I realised I like simpler things that sound good when you step on them.

[qersty]

Whammy pedals, like I think it is cause I listened to alot of whammy pedal music as a kid but whenever I use one it feels very wrong and generic. Like once I have successfully used octave up whammy and not felt like a total korndog. I love pitch shifting otherwise it is just the implementation of it in the whammy format...

Big Muffs too! I used to basically used one as a preamp in highschool cause 'twas the doom thing to do but man I didn't actually like it. Muddy and too compressed no sizzle at all, really awful fuzz for my playing. I kept using it too even after getting better dirt pedals cause I just had to have a muff even if i think old school fuzzes play way better

[Tristan]

Wow, I agree with pretty much all of you actually!
- Subdecay Quasar DLX and Prometheus DLX (I think it is in the waveforms and the fact that the sound never gets fat/juicy/deep/bubbly enough)
- rotary
- flangers
- PLL's
- ring mods
- feedback loops
- oscillating fuzzes
- most Big Muffs

@retinal orbita:
I totally hear you with the filters, I did not keep most of them either as I am also after the spacey bubbly sounds and not the funk a ton junk.
One important revelation was that the standard advice of putting the filter before drive was complete bullocks, it sounds much much cooler after any type of drive or fuzz pedal.

The filters that actually stayed with me are the Iron Ether Xerograph Deluxe (my all time favourite), the Moog Drive (solid option) and the Dr Scientist BitQuest (still pretty good).
They are all quite capable of achieving non funk a ton sounds combined with a drive/fuzz pedal and a guitar/bass.

I think some filter nerds at some point decided that the ripple effect was a problem or defect or something as I keep on reading that in synth related articles but basically that ripple effect is exactly what I love about what is a good filter for me, it must bubble and flutter a bit for it to get a synthy spacey sound with a stringed instrument (in my experience/opinion of course).

[mathias]

Feeling this thread. I thought it was just me that couldn’t get things to work (or that I hadn’t practiced enough to get them to sound good, which may be the case with wah pedals)

I do like a good Univibe clone set slow, before drive (because it typically has no headroom at all), rather than phaser or flanging. That’s about as much warble and modulation as I typically need. I still can’t get into a flanger, even when I want some Byrds-esque folk rock chords swash.

Complicated pedals like the Ct5 are fun and can have unexpected serendipity. But I don’t enjoy finding a sound and later losing it because it just has knobs and not presets — being a time-based effect makes this doubly difficult because you won’t play the same thing with the exact same trigger time again. (I’m finding the Mood to have far more usefulness in terms of dialing it in and getting a particular thing to work. I dig its controls scheme and labeled knobs.)

The complexity thing is my chief reason for sticking with simpler, single purpose pedals rather than multi-effects. I’ve got a BitQuest but I don’t know if it meshes with what I typically play — I’m not trying to get a ring modulator in there or whatever, and I’ve got other reverb choices. And as much as I want to try something like the Drolo Molecular Compactor, I’m worried that I won’t find usefulness (It justify its cost) in its many modes.

(Edit: I’m also talking guitar for all of these — I know a lot of people are also expecting these pedals to perform on bass or synth or whatever, but I’m basic. My bass goes into amp and amp goes brrrr.)

[tremolo3]

Tensor, just like everyone else lol.

[retinal orbita]

@retinal orbita:
I totally hear you with the filters, I did not keep most of them either as I am also after the spacey bubbly sounds and not the funk a ton junk.

I feel like if I had bought a DOD reissue - real simple two knob with that sweet green paint job I might have clicked but I never see them for sale anywhere. But I also don’t have any real use for one, I just like the idea of them.

I have also NOT lost my passion for Ring Modulation, I know that’s not the point of this thread but it’s seemingly the only effect outside of distortion (and obv delay) that I am using on a regular basis.