SURPRISE pedals!

[hbombgraphics]

got a digitech bass driver
was making a cheap bass board for my daughter
it sounds flipping legit on guitar
very surprised
tons of good drive tones in it pretty sweet pedal
may make the working board this weekend which means it would bump off some legit dirt
plus it has that line out so it is a sweet emergency pedal


very pleasantly surprised by the tones

[Clockworker]

Bit of a necrobump.

Anyway, I bought 6 shitty cheap Behringer distortion pedals some time ago. I thought "How bad can they be?" My initial reaction was, pretty bad. 3 of them were okay, one of the three more useful, and the other three were pretty shit, with one of those three being awful. I was bored of my normal pedals and busted them out again, and I've begun to quite like some of the ones I'd written off. To be precise, the biggest turn-arounds in opinion for me are the Distortion-X XD300, which works nicely as the first distortion in the chain, and the Distortion Modeler DM100, which is the one I thought was awful. I still need to play with it more, but I'm liking it quite a bit now.

[neoflox]

I am sure this will light some candles here, but I love the Harley Benton Ultimate Drive, which is a rebranded Joyo drive pedal with obsessive compulsion roots…

NSFW: show

fr**kish bl**s alpha drive

… it is my main bass drive pedal. I recorded my last album solely with this pedal and even put a second one on my board recently. Tried Darkglass, the Boss Bass-od, Catalinbread SFT, EBS stuff. This is it. wide range of dirt, loud, lots of mids, still half-way transparent. A total no-brainer for $30 new.

[BoatRich]

I am sure this will light some candles here, but I love the Harley Benton Ultimate Drive, which is a rebranded Joyo drive pedal with obsessive compulsion roots…

NSFW: show

fr**kish bl**s alpha drive

… it is my main bass drive pedal. I recorded my last album solely with this pedal and even put a second one on my board recently. Tried Darkglass, the Boss Bass-od, Catalinbread SFT, EBS stuff. This is it. wide range of dirt, loud, lots of mids, still half-way transparent. A total no-brainer for $30 new.

The OCD is one of my favorite pedals ever. I just got rid of mine for another driving notion, but I'll be grabbing a Joyo for sure.

[chutneyfarmer]

This is a thread where we discuss pedals that surprised us. Pedals that you expected to not like, or only kinda like, that turned out to be way more useful than you ever imagined. It may not be the most original of threads but, well it's here now

Mine:

Zvex Box Of Metal: got it in a trade recently as I'm actually quite a fan of the Zvex stuff and have managed to pick up some of their pedals for reasonable prices. I'm more of am overdrive and fuzz kinda guy so wasn't expecting to have much use for a high gain distortion. Well, it turns out this thing is a shoegaze monster!! The EQ is perfect for sitting the guitar in the mix and the noise gate is way more useful than I ever imagined it would be. Glad it's on a footswitch too so it can be turned off for feedback or just letting the notes ring out. Given the sheer amount of gain on tap, I usually have the gain set to minimum, but it's plenty!

Since posting this, I have discovered the joys of running the BLUE box side of my Reuss Evil Twin into the BOM, with the gate on and set a little more sensitive than usual. Amazing for abrupt explosions of noise and stutters!!!

[goroth]

Bit of a necrobump.

Anyway, I bought 6 shitty cheap Behringer distortion pedals some time ago. I thought "How bad can they be?" My initial reaction was, pretty bad. 3 of them were okay, one of the three more useful, and the other three were pretty shit, with one of those three being awful. I was bored of my normal pedals and busted them out again, and I've begun to quite like some of the ones I'd written off. To be precise, the biggest turn-arounds in opinion for me are the Distortion-X XD300, which works nicely as the first distortion in the chain, and the Distortion Modeler DM100, which is the one I thought was awful. I still need to play with it more, but I'm liking it quite a bit now.

XD 300 is a boss xt-2. Which in turn is a rad pedal.

I've got both and can't hear a difference.

[rustywire]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed53uohqGbw[/youtube]

LAL MC. Traded for mine when the only demo on yt was Kayzer's, June-July 2013.
In the video, from about 2:21-2:27 is what intrigued me most. Dialing in that resonance with a looping bassline or rhythm part is remarkable in the distortion it creates almost like a blend of square & saw synth bass...with depth. I knew to expect some interesting textures via knob sweeps, but it was only the tip of the iceberg.

[Pepe]

XD 300 is a boss xt-2. Which in turn is a rad pedal.

I've got both and can't hear a difference.

Funny to see how much love the BOSS Xtortion gets these days. Back then everyone hated it. I loved it on the spot.

[Ev_O)))]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed53uohqGbw[/youtube]

LAL MC. Traded for mine when the only demo on yt was Kayzer's, June-July 2013.
In the video, from about 2:21-2:27 is what intrigued me most. Dialing in that resonance with a looping bassline or rhythm part is remarkable in the distortion it creates almost like a blend of square & saw synth bass...with depth. I knew to expect some interesting textures via knob sweeps, but it was only the tip of the iceberg.

Very much this, those surprise filter latching-ons are amazing. The pedal could be kind of subtle yet wig out on a random note and it's gorgeous.
The opening riff is what drew me in though for sure, it love it for a bit of unique weirdness that is still decidedly musical and subtle. Great pedal, does a LOT of shit I didn't expect.

[goroth]

XD 300 is a boss xt-2. Which in turn is a rad pedal.

I've got both and can't hear a difference.

Funny to see how much love the BOSS Xtortion gets these days. Back then everyone hated it. I loved it on the spot.

I think the name was a misnomer. When I was buying my first distortion pedal the xt-2 had just come out and I tried it, an mt-2, a bd-2 and a death metal. I was looking for a good chunky metal distortion and couldn't get it out of any of them. I thought the xt-2 would be brutal but no. I remember liking the bd-2, if only it had like 3 times the gain. I didn't know what stacking was then. Ended up finding a guyatone metal monster at a little store run by one dude. Random. But I was pretty happy with that sound.

These days I love (as you know!) the lofi low gain od on the xt-2. But I didn't do lofi or low gain when I was 15.