Hell yea dude, Alec is a fucking genius. Mask rules. How are you liking it? It sounds absolutely punishing in all the demos I've seen.
The collapse of western society has really spurred me into getting my rig correct before pedal prices get stupid, so recent gets have been rounding out the rig further:
NuX Tape Core: I was in the market for a stereo delay that would take up less board space than my DL4, and ended up in Oakland Guitars to see if Johnny had one of those smaller boss space echo jawns they put out a few months back. Ended up trying the Tape Core on John Johns recommendation and it fucking kicks ass.
Its feels pretty sturdy, about the same as a typical Boss pedal so I'm not worried about breaking it. There is software NuX has for it that lets you editing things like how degraded the "tape" is and such, but it sounds great as it is. Haven't dived into that too much yet, but I'll experiment when I have the chance. So far tho, sounds awesome. Exactly the sort of psych rock, Thee Oh Sees ass, washy delay that I've been looking for. It also has a switch on the front that locks in your settings once you have it dialed in, which is great if you have big dumb feet like mine that kick the shit outta everything.
Def can recommend it if your looking for a space echo option without having to spend crazy money. Sleeper hit.
Eventide x Third Man Hardware Knife Drop (Yellow Version): Had my eye (
) on this since it was first announced. My mom ended up surprising me with it for Christmas, cause shes cool as fuck and has always been a big support of my music so, yay! Thanks mom.
The Synth sound is super cool if your trying to make single lines sound super big. It also weirdly nails the same sonic vibe as the synths Black Moth Super Rainbow uses for leads and such, so it was fun pretending to be Tobacco for a sec with that. I have it dialed in pretty conservatively at the moment. Just a little of the auto wah to make my pick attack hyper percussive + the octaves. Battles vibes. Kind of like a POG, but angrier. Its almost t o o fun really, I've been using it on a lot of new music. Its also so fucking brutal going into another distortion. The upper and sub octave modes into a black russian big muff damn near shook my fillings loose. Tracking is damn near perfect too.
Its definitely not for everyone, and it takes a little doing to dial it in. But its perfect for me.
MXR Rockman X100: First heard of the original unit cause of mk.gee. I was curious about using one cause I liked the sort of "queen" sound it gave guitars direct into a board, so I figured using it in tandem with some other preamp pedals on my board could be interesting. Then I saw how much the original units were going for and promptly moved on from the idea.
Then MXR announced the reissue and I ordered it immediately.
Really excited for it to get here. Plan is to run it on one of the clean settings as an always on "tone enhancer" type situation with my micro amp clone going into it. I really liked the "plinky" sort of attack the compressor circuit was giving the sound in demos, and I want to see how that would apply in my rig. Failing that, It'll ether be a really solid chorus pedal or possibly replace my q zone depending on how I'm feeling. We'll see!
