"Alternative Modulation" ie vibes, roto sims, and filters...

[Tristan]

As for alternative modulation I'd also like to mention the (Deluxe) Pitch Pirate with square wave vibrato and crazy pitch modulation over an octave and more.
By the way, it depends how crazy you'd like to go because you could also start thinking about LFO modulated Bitcrushers or Ring Modulators and that kind of stuff.
Oh yeah, and random step phasing is pretty different sounding too, as is random step filtering which the other guys here already mentioned (Subdecay Prometheus DLX).

Lots of interesting 'modulation' is also based on granular synthesis, if you go down that road you'll get into the likes of the Montreal Assembly Goodbye 24 and that kind.
Which brings me to manual flanging because some of these sounds reminds me of that, these metallic kind of overtones that sweep through the pitch, lookup the Lastgasp Art Laboratories Misty Cave for instance.
Oh yeah, the Moog MF104M is also pretty crazy and unique with the different waveforms as square wave and random for the modulation.
I guess one of the tickets to not so commonly heard modulation is in the LFO / waveform that's moving / shaping the sound, square wave, pulse wave, sawtooth wave, random (s&h) and step waveforms make something sound different from more regular effects which are usually sine wave or triangle wave based.
You could for instance also buy a Copilot Broadcast and control the expression input of one of your pedals (if it has such an input) and make different sounds.

Talking about vibes I can't recommend the Micro Vibe much as it's pretty thin sounding in my opinion, it sounds okay on distortion / drive but clean it's not great at all so it's not very versatile.
My favorite vibe is the Black Cat Vibe, it also does a nice vibrato.
The Fulltones also weren't my cup of tea (a bit thin sounding still), but again, this could be the ticket if you mostly would use it with drive.
Same goes for the Roger Mayer vibes i.m.o.
The Mojo Vibe is pretty nice, only a bit midrangey and stiff feeling / sounding in my opinion, not as fat and organic as the Black Cat Vibe.

The Hughes & Kettner Tube Rotosphere is in my opinion one of the nicest sounding rotary pedals out there.
It's just so nice and raunchy.

[zRobertez]

Thanks for all the input, dodes. I'm thinking about trying out one of those Jimi Hendy vibes too.
And ilf obviously loves their filters, I can see now!

[dubkitty]

tremolo into a filter is the shit. it can really get you into synth territory.

[DarkAxel]

All my "alternative mod" has been replaced by a Mobius and I'm happier with this current setup.

if only it could run more than one effect at the time

[SmallEQ]

Source Audio has their Orbital modulation pedal which has two interesting settings, "Res 1" and "Res 2." Unfortunately, instead of digging into those two and really exploring their possibilities (giving more room for controls unique to those two settings), they tried to make it a jack of all trades, and work in settings for phase, modulation and chorus, and just give some general controls that apply to all of the settings. Plus the frickin thing seems to forget what it was set on last whenever you turn it off, which is a big pain in the ass.

Um, its not supposed to remember anything outside of whatever presets you have saved, so unless you use the save function before you turn it off, it won't remember anything. The resonator settings are really cool on it and you have more control over the individual modulations on that pedal than you do with just about anything outside a modfactor or a Mobius, not sure what other controls its really lacking.

[jrmy]

Source Audio has their Orbital modulation pedal which has two interesting settings, "Res 1" and "Res 2." Unfortunately, instead of digging into those two and really exploring their possibilities (giving more room for controls unique to those two settings), they tried to make it a jack of all trades, and work in settings for phase, modulation and chorus, and just give some general controls that apply to all of the settings. Plus the frickin thing seems to forget what it was set on last whenever you turn it off, which is a big pain in the ass.

Um, its not supposed to remember anything outside of whatever presets you have saved, so unless you use the save function before you turn it off, it won't remember anything. The resonator settings are really cool on it and you have more control over the individual modulations on that pedal than you do with just about anything outside a modfactor or a Mobius, not sure what other controls its really lacking.

Fair enough, that makes sense. Part of the problem may be that I'm not typically used to multi-effects that are set up like that. Just a design preference. As for the controls, the resonator settings are just really cool, and my gut reaction is tat they could have more knob-controlled parameters than what's offered... though that's a knee-jerk assumption on my part. I would love a frequency fine-tuning control, or an EQ/tone control? It's also worth noting that this as my first time using a Source Audio pedal, so my problems may have been borne out of general n00bishness.

In general, though, the resonator is totally cool, and definitely an alternative sort of modulation worth messing around with.

[D.o.S.]

Not to mention they've got a very, uh, distinctive aesthetic.

Like Fischer-Price and Hal-9000 had hate sex. Lots of Hate sex.

[dubkitty]

so ugly that i almost like it. ALMOST.

[DarkAxel]

... this thread however got me thinking about the Mobius

i seriously think i COULD replace my Tremulus Lune, PDS 20/20 and Heliotrope with it... HMMMMPH....

Once my financial situation is better, I'll probably ask A LOT of questions about it it seems to be the shit

[backwardsvoyager]

I sold mine cos I was only using it for the same sounds as the stuff I sold to buy it in the first place. It's a great pedal but I was hoping to find some cool sounds in the destroyer/quadrature modes as well and those didn't really impress me. The modes I liked were just the phaser, trem and chorus.

[univalve]

All my "alternative mod" has been replaced by a Mobius and I'm happier with this current setup.

I LURVE the Mobius's rotary sim and univibe. I haven't played with the modulated filter yet, though.

Yeah, me either, still have a Prometheus DLX I'm using but I know a few people who've given that pedal the boot in favor of the Mobius.

Me.

[moose23]

Been thinking about checking out a Rotary speaker effect recently for psyche freakouts. Have an old school Boss Hi-Band flanger up for trade that gets close. May need to reconsider that now that I think about it!

Keep the Hi-band! I'll have some Univibes next week if you want to try one out. I'm loving Phase 90 type phase into a repeat percussion type trem at the moment, so much so that I've built a few 2in1 boxes with both in there.

[zRobertez]

hey the quasar dlx is a really fun phaser too.