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theavondon wrote:The Elements is the only pedal my bass player has ever used in my gaze band. And, that's the only reason it's not on my board in that band.

Dunno if that helps, but really, it can do so, so much.

vidret wrote:HA WE GOT YOU IT SUCKS!!!!!

vidret wrote:HA WE GOT YOU IT SUCKS!!!!!

goroth wrote:A note about the EQ on the Elements.

You can cut or boost each band (bass, mid, treble) by a dickload. Can't remember exactly, but it's at least 15 db. All knobs at noon is neutral, add or subtract to taste. Bass is around 100hz, mid is controlled by the mid switch and treble around 3000 hz. If you can't hear a 15db boost then it's got to do with your overall setup, rather than the boost not being present or disappearing in some manner.

Here's how you can think about the Elements. It's a really deceptively simple pedal.

Pre gain, you've got a bass cut switch. Lots, a bit, or none. Lots tightens up the distortion a lot, none flubs the distortion out in an old school loosey goosey manner and feels more fuzz like. So the bass cut sets the character of the distortion. You then compensate by adjusting the bass knob (which comes after the distortion).

The mid knob is pre gain, so it affects the gain structure of the pedal. If you boost it, it's basically like goosing your distortion with a tubescreamer or something. It's fucking awesome. Slam the mids and you may need to cut back on the overall gain (to compensate), cut them and get all Cannibal Corpse anno 1991 and you'll need to crank the gain a bit to even things out.

Treble is treble!

There are two gain stages - the first goes from totally clean to fairly fucking heavy. The second goes from relatively tame distortion to "how the hell am I ever going to use this much gain". The first gain stage cleans up well and has in my ears less saturation for a given level of distortion. The second doesn't clean up so well (but still does a bit), but given that the gain stages are stacked the distortion is a little more saturated and complex. Both settings work well live.

The clipping selector - you've got symmetrical, asymmetrical and no clipping diodes. If you like the sound of op amps being slammed, you can go with no clipping. If you like the sound of diodes clipping, you can roll with that. Bear in mind that this thing has so much gain, that if even though no diodes is way cleaner (and louder, of course), you can still get pretty brutal with it. I like to think about this as choosing a flavour of distortion, then using gain to get the right distortion level (LEDs are the most distorted, Si less so, none even less so) then use the volume control to sort out your overall output level.

As long as you think of it in terms of flavours and compensating for the peculiarities of that flavour, then you're fine. If you start thinking "oh rad, this song needs LED clipping to be a hit, and this next song needs a bit less clipping, I'll flip it over to no diodes" then you're in a world of hurt because you have to set up the pedal differently for different selections. Same thing with the bass toggle, and the mids switch.

The mids switch gets you around 400, 800 and 1200 hz. The way I hear it, 800hz is kinda classic rock, Marshally, 400hz gives you a modern low-mid punch, 1200 is great for the cleaner stuff.

The Elements was designed to replace to the Cleanness, so if you want to use it as a clean boost, or an EQ you can do that.

Oh yeah, then you have the mix knob. I have found no use for this on higher gain settings (it just sounds stupid on guitar) but low-mid gain it's awesome. You could even use it as a why of dialing in a pretty drastic eq, then using an expression pedal to control how much eq you feed into your signal. That could be rad. Theoretically the mix knob should also allow some good stacking possibilities, but I haven't really gotten around to stacking anything with it.

So whatever you choose, you can pretty much find a way to get that sound to a certain end point by understanding how the pedal is constructed and where to "compensate".

The Elements is pretty much the reason I joined ILF and started buying pedals from the dudes here.

DOSS BS-1 wrote:I've never understood why people think of the Elements as a gain pedal. It's a full 2 channel amp in a box. I wonder what would happen if they marketed it that way?

backwardsvoyager wrote:Could really benefit from a channel footswitch (or presets), though. It's been like 11(?) years now, Elements DLX when

Jero wrote:I think it's about time I had an Elements in my life again. Foolishly sold my birthday one years ago...for like $100

DOSS BS-1 wrote:I've never understood why people think of the Elements as a gain pedal. It's a full 2 channel amp in a box. I wonder what would happen if they marketed it that way?

Jero wrote:I think it's about time I had an Elements in my life again. Foolishly sold my birthday one years ago...for like $100