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This is a thread where we discuss pedals that surprised us. Pedals that you expected to not like, or only kinda like, that turned out to be way more useful than you ever imagined. It may not be the most original of threads but, well it's here now

Mine:

Zvex Box Of Metal: got it in a trade recently as I'm actually quite a fan of the Zvex stuff and have managed to pick up some of their pedals for reasonable prices. I'm more of am overdrive and fuzz kinda guy so wasn't expecting to have much use for a high gain distortion. Well, it turns out this thing is a shoegaze monster!! The EQ is perfect for sitting the guitar in the mix and the noise gate is way more useful than I ever imagined it would be. Glad it's on a footswitch too so it can be turned off for feedback or just letting the notes ring out. Given the sheer amount of gain on tap, I usually have the gain set to minimum, but it's plenty!

everyone will probably say, 'well, duh' to this post but

for me it was the TC hall of fame
I also traded for it and it wasn't super important to me, since I already had a massive sounding footswitchable spring reverb on my amp
but I actually really like its versatility and it sounds very texturally rich
I have tried to use it more often lately

Recently offered a Proteus for trade bait within the last couple months. Took it and this thing is wacky and super fun and slightly useful. Never had any sort of envelope pedal before. Also semi related, got a wah in January. Way more fun than I remember from my early pedal days.

The Goodbye 24 was the first pedal that successfully foiled my attempts to learn it without knowing what the controls did. That was surprising.

BOSS HM-3 - at first I wasn't overwhelmed, but it turned out to be a pretty good sounding distortion and it works great on stage, too. It doesn't get drowned in the mix and it's the best pedal I know for downtuned stuff (although I don't do that normally).
Hotone TREM - by far the best sounding tremolo I have ever played.
KORG KAD-301 - an analog delay module for the PME-40X pedal system. Really cool sounding. In my opinion it is a lot better than the Ibanez AD9. I have two of these for true stereo stuff.
KORG KOD-101 - an overdrive module for the same pedal system. It produces a very warm and nice sound and remains clarity. A lovely sound IMO.

This is going to sound dumb but I traded for a Rat thinking "what the hell may as well try it"....and it rocks. For all the hype around it (frequently being modeled and stuff) It really deserves it. I feel stupid for just ignoring it as a possibility

The_Active_Conundrum wrote:This is going to sound dumb but I traded for a Rat thinking "what the hell may as well try it"....and it rocks. For all the hype around it (frequently being modeled and stuff) It really deserves it. I feel stupid for just ignoring it as a possibility

same, i never paid any attention to it cos it seemed so 'normal' but 90s reissue big box is my favourite dirt nowadays

i really wanna try a Box of Metal too, that one seems to be way overlooked but on paper it sounds really cool.

Boss Xtortion XT-2...got it just to try out because, well, I just do that sort of thing when I'm bored. Expected it to sound nasty, as everyone else online seems to describe it. Maybe it was just my rig or my ears or whatever, but I thought it sounded epic. WIth the highs turned up it absolutely screamed but didn't sound shrill. With the lows maxed it was heavy without getting muddy. Seemed like the perfect pedal for hard rock stuff, but I flipped it, because, well, I just play fuzzy noise stuff and I was on to the next thing, because you know, boredom.

Still wonder if that pedal was just some kind of fluke or a ninja mod deal or something.

Infanem STEP. It didn't seem all that interesting to me before, but I borrowed one last week and it's surprisingly useful. All my dirt is currently away from me so I've been using this as my main dirty sound on bass vi and it kills! The fuzz itself is really meaty and thick and then the octave up switch is a nice bonus. I haven't really missed my other dirt all that bad with this thing on board.

Actually the XT-2 has no equalizer for bass or treble. It's some kind of a parametric mid eq. I also love this pedal.

When the Count to Five came out I thought it looked really cool but that I'd never find a practical use for it. Got given one in SS and I'm so glad I was wrong! I use it aaaaaaall the time for all sorts of stuff, it's incredibly useful and not just a novelty/noise pedal like I thought at first.

Pepe wrote:Actually the XT-2 has no equalizer for bass or treble. It's some kind of a parametric mid eq. I also love this pedal.

I love it too.

It does a really great crumbly tweedy low gain overdrive as well.

Pepe wrote:Actually the XT-2 has no equalizer for bass or treble. It's some kind of a parametric mid eq. I also love this pedal.

Yeah, I know. But I couldn't remember whether turning "contour" down maxed the high frequency content or turning it up did. Same with "punch". So, since I couldn't be exact, I had to be a bit vague. What I do remember is making it as bassy as possible and as trebly as possible and liking both of those sounds alot. It never sounded thin or nasally or nasty to me, which are the descriptions of it I read alot.

goroth wrote:It does a really great crumbly tweedy low gain overdrive as well.

The XT-2 is capable of sounding very clean when you turn the DIST knob to the minimum. This way it serves as a somewhat lo-fi amp simulation. I wanted to do a new XT-2 demo anyway and then I'm going to show this function as well.

After being aware of the Fuzz Factory for like 15 years (but never playing one, or even investigating due to the high prices) I finally got a clone - "Hey, this is really good!!"

Durr...