NPD and review - Subdecay Quantum Starlight Flanger

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NPD and review - Subdecay Quantum Starlight Flanger

Post by AngryGoldfish »

So I just received one of the new Subdecay pedals in the mail today and I thought I'd offer my opinions and experiences in case anyone was interested in picking one up while they were still in stock. Unfortunately, I do not have any recording equipment, so all you'll have to go by is my pretty picture and text review. I keep saving up for a Zoom Q3HD, but when I have enough I end up blowing it on a pedal. Pedals are so much fun and creative than a video camera. :grumpy: ... well, at least with my limited photography skills. :lol:

Anyway, so far I've only tried it in the loop of my amp, but it seems to like it there and I don't have any major urge to move it about. I had hoped it would feel at home in the loop because my amp has a well-designed valve buffer in it, while the signal chain from my guitar to the amp only has a cheapy transistor buffer at the end of the chain. The fewer pedals in that chain the better, in my opinion.

Overall, the sounds are a fine balance between metallic and juicy, which is what I was hoping for. With distortion it can sound both very clear and unobtrusive. With my favourite settings on the Starlight set, and a clean sound coming from the Memphis, I had anticipated the need to tweak my amps' controls when clicking to the drive channel of my Fryette Memphis, but the transition was smooth; there was no need to tweak or fuck about. I liked that.

The Random mode was definitely the funnest and also the most musical. I can imagine spending most of my time there. I also REALLY liked the fixed mode. It is a very unique setting that was an ingenious addition. It adds this subtle, but still obviously apparent, effect to your guitar tone and makes you appear to be playing through all sorts of different instruments depending on the position of the speed knob; which determines the resonance or 'pitch' of the sweep.

The classic flanger sounds are all there as well, as far as I know. This is the only flanger I've ever owned, and my previous experience with them is minimal, but it sounds good and that's what matters, right? If you want a classic flanger, sure, it can do that. I was able to copp the EVH and Mr. Big sound when running around the fretboard like a horny teenager. That's not what I'll be personally using the flanger for, but that type of thing is available if it's what you do.

It's hard to achieve a subtle flanging tone with a faster speed using the first few modes on the shape knob. Even with the regen all the way down, it's hard to avoid that seasick warble at faster speeds, and sometimes I'm just not in the mood for that. I think a mix knob would have been useful for these occasions, but I don't know whether such an addition would have been possible internally. It seems pretty tight in there. I think also if I took the pedal out of the loop then it wouldn't be so in-your-face.

And of course, as with any good pedal, if you tweak it enough you can bring up the speed without overpowering your signal with too much modulation. Some of you are going to love the intensity of the Starlight, but I am usually trying to find settings that sit in the background and add layers rather than hold at the forefront. To alleviate some of that deep warble, using the Tri/Sqr combination mode works. It becomes a little more metallic and mixes with your clean signal in a deeper way, and thus becomes part of your sound. The workmanship is also top-notch, obviously, but I don't need to bullshit anyone with those details.

tl;dr

Random and Manual mode are worth the price of admission alone. Classic sounds as well as intense sounds are all there, and it combines metallic intensity with a lushes juiciness that I haven't experienced with the vintage flangers I've tried.


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Re: NPD and review - Subdecay Quantum Starlight Flanger

Post by Schlatte »

Oh man... random mode sounds soooooo fun.... imagine: starlight on random into delay into gyroscope in stepped mode into delay... sweet Jesus...Alien Toanz!!
Damn... that thing is expensive... but of course very awesome.. ohhhhh GAS...
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Re: NPD and review - Subdecay Quantum Starlight Flanger

Post by coldbrightsunlight »

Nice review! The demo sounded great and random is what I'm most interested in, so hearing that's good...
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Re: NPD and review - Subdecay Quantum Starlight Flanger

Post by excane »

WOOO nice review. :thumb:

Had mine for over a week but haven't had time for a demo.

Don't tase me bro :)*
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Re: NPD and review - Subdecay Quantum Starlight Flanger

Post by AngryGoldfish »

Schlatte wrote:Oh man... random mode sounds soooooo fun.... imagine: starlight on random into delay into gyroscope in stepped mode into delay... sweet Jesus...Alien Toanz!!
Damn... that thing is expensive... but of course very awesome.. ohhhhh GAS...

My favourite setting so far has been random or step mode with a Randy's Revenge ring mod and a reverb. The flanger just kind of 'swishes' the ring modulated sounds and the reverb soaks that shit up. :cool:
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Re: NPD and review - Subdecay Quantum Starlight Flanger

Post by sylnau »

Thanks for the review. :thumb:
Same here I would place it in the loop of my amp (mine doesn't suck).
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Re: NPD and review - Subdecay Quantum Starlight Flanger

Post by new05002 »

just a word of advice on effects loops, sometimes tube ones suck balls and are completely inferior to ones done using basic transistors. Often the output impedance of the loops is so large that it is not helping to lower the impedance down to guitar level or below to effectively drive effects properly. just something to keep in mind
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Re: NPD and review - Subdecay Quantum Starlight Flanger

Post by AngryGoldfish »

Shut up, Nick. No one cares about your nerdy stuff here. Go back to your corner and build shit we love, K?

:hug:

In all seriousness, I don't notice a tonal change when I put the loop into bypass mode, so I assume it's doing a good job buffering the three or four pedals I keep in there at any one time. Isn't there more to it than just maintaining low impedance, though? Shouldn't the resistance be dynamic and not constantly low?
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Re: NPD and review - Subdecay Quantum Starlight Flanger

Post by new05002 »

dont confuse resistance and impedance in this context, the output impedance should ideally be 0 but will never be so low. The output impedance is the impedance which is placed in series with your effects in the loop and if its large it will result in loading down the signal and this effect is frequency dependent with varying impedance for low mid and high frequencies. Large output impedance also lowers possible drive to effects. Now if ur effects have high input impedance then there is more tolerance with how high the output impedance of the loop is. If the input impedance of ur first pedal in the loop chain is sufficiently large, say 1M for instance, then your loop impedance can probably scale as large as 50k to 100k maybe even more without much problems happening. After the first pedal, its irrelevant because the next part in ur chain has to do with the output impedance of ur first pedal and input impedance of 2nd pedal so on and so forth.

I design my loops to have output impedance in the order of 20k Max so it should work well with any pedals in ur loops regardless of design.
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Re: NPD and review - Subdecay Quantum Starlight Flanger

Post by sylnau »

new05002 wrote:just a word of advice on effects loops, sometimes tube ones suck balls and are completely inferior to ones done using basic transistors. Often the output impedance of the loops is so large that it is not helping to lower the impedance down to guitar level or below to effectively drive effects properly. just something to keep in mind


Mine is a tube buffered Effects Loop (Bogner Duende). It sound great that way (I don't know anything about electronics).

Back to the pedal... how is the speed (can you ha ve a very slow sweep)?
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Re: NPD and review - Subdecay Quantum Starlight Flanger

Post by new05002 »

sylnau wrote:
new05002 wrote:just a word of advice on effects loops, sometimes tube ones suck balls and are completely inferior to ones done using basic transistors. Often the output impedance of the loops is so large that it is not helping to lower the impedance down to guitar level or below to effectively drive effects properly. just something to keep in mind


Mine is a tube buffered Effects Loop (Bogner Duende). It sound great that way (I don't know anything about electronics).

Back to the pedal... how is the speed (can you ha ve a very slow sweep)?


No worries, i was merely commenting on this statement

"I had hoped it would feel at home in the loop because my amp has a well-designed valve buffer in it, while the signal chain from my guitar to the amp only has a cheapy transistor buffer at the end of the chain."

As this may or may not be true, its quite easy to design a nice buffer using BJTs or FETs that has low output impedance across a wide bandwidth.
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Re: NPD and review - Subdecay Quantum Starlight Flanger

Post by AngryGoldfish »

new05002 wrote:dont confuse resistance and impedance in this context, the output impedance should ideally be 0 but will never be so low. The output impedance is the impedance which is placed in series with your effects in the loop and if its large it will result in loading down the signal and this effect is frequency dependent with varying impedance for low mid and high frequencies. Large output impedance also lowers possible drive to effects. Now if ur effects have high input impedance then there is more tolerance with how high the output impedance of the loop is. If the input impedance of ur first pedal in the loop chain is sufficiently large, say 1M for instance, then your loop impedance can probably scale as large as 50k to 100k maybe even more without much problems happening. After the first pedal, its irrelevant because the next part in ur chain has to do with the output impedance of ur first pedal and input impedance of 2nd pedal so on and so forth.

I design my loops to have output impedance in the order of 20k Max so it should work well with any pedals in ur loops regardless of design.

Hmmm... interesting. I did not know this. I'll have a look in my Fryette manual and see what it says my output impedance is and then what the input and output impedances of my effects are.

sylnau wrote:
new05002 wrote:just a word of advice on effects loops, sometimes tube ones suck balls and are completely inferior to ones done using basic transistors. Often the output impedance of the loops is so large that it is not helping to lower the impedance down to guitar level or below to effectively drive effects properly. just something to keep in mind


Mine is a tube buffered Effects Loop (Bogner Duende). It sound great that way (I don't know anything about electronics).

Back to the pedal... how is the speed (can you ha ve a very slow sweep)?

Emmm... that is something I forgot to mention. I would have liked less speed and more attention on the slower regions. I don't really need another modulator that goes to really fast depths, so I would have prefered something that went insanely slow instead. It's slow enough for pretty much any task, but I did feel like I wanted more when I was tweaking and messing around. Don't take that as a negative, but if you are specifically looking for insanely slow speeds this wouldn't be ideal.
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Re: NPD and review - Subdecay Quantum Starlight Flanger

Post by new05002 »

you probably wont find out the impedance its not something people usual report in manuals.
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Re: NPD and review - Subdecay Quantum Starlight Flanger

Post by AngryGoldfish »

Image

Sorry, I'm a bit hyper tonight. :p
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Re: NPD and review - Subdecay Quantum Starlight Flanger

Post by new05002 »

AngryGoldfish wrote:Image

Sorry, I'm a bit hyper tonight. :p


plus there isnt 1 impedance, its more like impedance vs frequency hahahahha
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