ilovefuzz.com

For any DIYers I'd recommend building the not-commercially-available Madbean Rump Roast. It's a JFET version of the Dr Z Carmen Ghia preamp. It's definitely comparable to the Surveyor demos I've seen, at least on its lower gain settings. Does not have a bass control, but the last quarter turn of the RRs cut knob does remove a lot of high end while emphasizing the lows. I use it at the beginning of the chain and it cuts through like a champ without being ice pick-y. More Tom Petty than Steve Albini but in the same ball/action park.

Edit because I tried a Harmonic Percolator (DIY) placed before - and for clarity - the Rump Roast (ew, mine is called Jellybean) is a not an ideal end-of-chain tone shaper unless it's always on. Anything before it needs like a 30% volume increase, or it needs to compensate for volume loss. Plenty of that on tap, but just in case you come across/decide to build one (it's a p simple circuit). Anyway, the combo sounded rad and if you want clang on the cheap, there it is dude. YMMV

Well, thanks to some ILF teamwork (skullservant and worra) I've got a V1 Surveyor. And thanks to Laowiz I've got an Aion Isotope. The Isotope is built with different transistors, and I'm not sure how much that affects the sound. Firstly, they are both immediately recognisable as _that_ sound. Beyond that they are quite different. The Aion is more brash and the Surveyor is smoother. I still haven't tried anything out with my proper rig, just home. The Surveyor is proving to be a handful through the small living room amp. Almost any setting sounds bloody brilliant. The expectation that I had, of that... round... kinda treble, is definitely there. Reading the documentation I'm guessing it's the limited bandwidth of the transformer doing some smoothing. You can get this excellent mid low gain (low gain but sounds pretty fucken hard if you dig in) chunk, and you can really crank the treble. I don't crank the bass a lot because it loses attack (as it should with the eq pre gain, it's just not my favourite sound). On its own almost anything sounds good. I'm finding it a bit more finicky stacking other pedals into it - the treble gets easily out of control, but that could be my living room amp tbh. It's harsh as fuck

Looking forward to experimenting more.

sounds rad goroth. Looking forward to trying them next time we hang out... In 2030?

vidret wrote:

goroth wrote:The EAE Surveyor is based on the Intersound IVP Preamp and it is the sound of my dreams. I dunno how I didn't discover this earlier but you can't always be super smart about gear.

But it seems to be a unicorn in the pedal world. Are there any other pedals based on the IVP, or ignoring the IVP aspect, anything that gets that same sharpness without being icepicky?

I'm not interested in Albini peruolator thing - that's rad and all, but it's not what I'm getting at. There are amazingly few demos of the Surveyor out there, but like this is a good demo of that harsh but not harsh sound - [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhfnI5NYkvg[/youtube] - even though it's often stacked and run at medium gain in that vid.

oh my god a bax EQ in front of the dirt section in a pedal with lots of gain?

why don't you tell me these things i call dibs

Jero is developing a Baxan for me... it’s a haxan with a bax in front...

I bet that'll sound great.

goroth wrote:

vidret wrote:

goroth wrote:The EAE Surveyor is based on the Intersound IVP Preamp and it is the sound of my dreams. I dunno how I didn't discover this earlier but you can't always be super smart about gear.

But it seems to be a unicorn in the pedal world. Are there any other pedals based on the IVP, or ignoring the IVP aspect, anything that gets that same sharpness without being icepicky?

I'm not interested in Albini peruolator thing - that's rad and all, but it's not what I'm getting at. There are amazingly few demos of the Surveyor out there, but like this is a good demo of that harsh but not harsh sound - [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhfnI5NYkvg[/youtube] - even though it's often stacked and run at medium gain in that vid.

oh my god a bax EQ in front of the dirt section in a pedal with lots of gain?

why don't you tell me these things i call dibs

Jero is developing a Baxan for me... it’s a haxan with a bax in front...

You're going buck wild!

this hasn't helped my desire to get a surveyor

What amp do you use? I bet there is a huge difference if you use a big solid state amp as the intergos intended or a normal crunchy guitar amp

goosekevin wrote:this hasn't helped my desire to get a surveyor

^^^

Nice review Dino-man. Totally didn't help the GAS.

goroth wrote: Jero is developing a Baxan for me... it’s a haxan with a bax in front...

:surprise:
I had the dude incredible for a long time. Ditched it for a Lauren Audio Mustang which was glorious, but then ditched that once I tried the Greer Soma. It's a real sleeper

Goin off the rails on the clang-y train.

Sidebar: this is a fucking awesome clip. The Van Halen keyboards are fucking abysmal, Ozzy looks like he's dressed to take over the Capitol, Jake E Lee hasn't tuned his guitar, and Brian May's twin brother is on drums.

Sidebar 2: Tommy Aldridge's playing and tone is fucking enormously good.

this is probably an uncool opinion, but if you want to get Albinized for cheap, a Boss graphic EQ pedal with every other fader all the way up/down will get you close enough for all "intensive porpoises."

vidret wrote:For me it’s about the attack and the cleanup etc, I don’t think an EQ would get me very far towards this.

But I’m not trying to become Albino or whatever, I just like good toanz

My suggestion depends on your amp and source of distortion, but if you have a rig with the right gain then a totally zig-zagged graphic EQ can give you the glass-shattered-with-an-icepick tone that's good enough for doing covers or just fucking around.