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neonblack wrote:I should have the recording from last night's practice to listen back to today. I'll know if I'm just feeling crazy in the moment or if it's really true.

I listened to one of your podcasts the other day and I know you said something about your personal mood changes effecting how you perceive the sound. I'm the same way. Some days a pedal sounds like rubbish and "why the fuck did I buy this?" and another day the pedal makes you go "oooooo ummmmm...that's what I'm fucking talking about!" and rinse and repeat .

neonblack wrote:What is HFS?

The Harmonic Perc, set to low gain is HOLY FUCKING SHIT good

I think unless you have a fantastically treated space, a lot of the nuances of different fuzzes will be lost in a band setting. I've been dealing with this sort of thing, just on a broader scaled with my entire sound in practice. Sounds great at home, sounds like mush at practice. I think it has a lot to do with amp placement (for example, all of them on the floor, often pointing at each other and/or bouncing off weird stuff), standing waves, bad reflections etc.

I am personally not a believer in trying to dial in a perfect sound in practice. In my experience, fuzz sounds like fuzz... some may cut more than others, and certainly eq has tons to do with it, but I personally don't think you're going to hear much if any subtlety between say, different kinds of muffs in a shitty room (out of context that phrase sounds amazing) with loud drums and bass.

I tend to try to approach my sound in two ways: from a perfection standpoint, which I would use for recording or in a live situation with a really great FOH. Secondly, from a more "is this roughly doing what I want it to do" point of view: less subtlety, does this sound loud enough, does it cut when I kick this on, etc. I think the latter is really the impression the audience will always have, and those magical subtleties are only going to be missed by you and/or people with seasoned/discerning ears. I feel like gravitating more towards this leads to a lot less frustration, and it's also a far superior approach for less than ideal sound environments.

I have noticed that subtlety isn't really working in our band context. Same with delay, and I haven't even bothered with reverb yet. There are a couple quieter parts that could stand some verb. And the only delay I can use with any reliability is a short digital delay set to 1 repeat. As far as gain, I'm mostly looking for cleanish, normal dirty, and punch in the teeth. Don't need much besides that.

I think I'm just gonna find a couple cheaper "gets the job done" dirts and be done with it. We're never going to play in a huge room. No point in stressing about nuance when it's all going to be eardrum shredding anyways.

Popvulture makes excellent points. That is kind of why I hoard gear. I told UC a while back pedals are like an expensive hobby for me. When I seldom play out or with people I bring maybe 5 pedals and most of them are from my 'replaceable collection'. Some of my off the cuff modulation pedals would probably sound "really dumb" over a PA.

I'd also question whether your band was playing too loud itself, and for the room(s) you're in.

Things start sounding samey if you're at or beyond fatigue levels fast.

Could it be your ears? Perhaps when all those frequencies are flying around at the same time, your ears are getting confused. I know that shit happens to me and I play alone.

A lot of fuzzes do sound the same.

When I was at the ILFMW meet up recently Drod and Worra were playing together. Both using fuzzes. The only reason I could hear both fuzzes going was because of how differently voiced they were. Well, and I dialed one in for Worra. LOL. So, maybe you need to try a different flavor too. I like pedals that have good blended circuits. The Depth Charge, Bumble Fuzz, OBD 3...etc. They have good bottom and a very distinct tone.

I see a Metal Zone in your future.

Boss DS-1 into FZ-5

HM-2 with unknown chemical spill on through the black paint!

Looks like the metal is showin

Wolf Computer or Glitch Computer?

Regular ol overdrive into Mini at low bias with gain cranked seems to be the true winner. Gated nasty heavy fuzzy OD always wins.

neonblack wrote:Honestly, so far the Mini cranked at minimum bias is my favorite heavy sound. Probably just gonna stick with that.

Well, there's nothing wrong with that

neonblack wrote:Looks like the metal is showin

And the LED was "weak" because the store that had it didn't understand how to make it work or test it on a battery lol!