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So in the near future I want a sweet filter pedal and after an initial search the Iron Ether Xerograph Deluxe and Dwarfcraft Happiness seem to bring the milkshake to the yard.

Which would you pick?

Do you own, or have played, either?

Is there something else that you'd recommend over these two?

Main uses will be to pair with my Industrialectric 4046-M as well as pairing it up with Fuzzzzz.

I play with Humbuckers (Duncan Alnico II and Duncan 59)

I've never heard the Iron Ether Xero, but I've had the Happiness for about 6 months now and it's become a core component in most of my setups. I really love it. It also sounds KILLER between the SDO and MI of the 4046-M

Xerograph is envelope based. Happiness is LFO based. That's a big difference. Depends on what kind of sweeps you want.

If you have a ongoing wall of sound thing with the 4046-m, then Happiness might be a better bet. Xero will trigger based on volume change of the attack - though you can manually sweep it with an expression pedal too.

I like both together if we get to have our cake and eat it too.... but yeah I'd probably go with LFO over envelope

Ooo the Copilot Gyroscope looks cool, too.

So... obviously, I prefer the Happiness, but I'll tell you why.
I don't want to tangle with an envelope detector. That's why the envelope is triggered via footswitch on the ARF. Envelope detection limits my playing so severely when it's onboard. PLay below X amplitude and nothing happens. Play above Y and BWONK goes the filter. Doesn't leave me much room to improvise.

That said, I recall that Xero having a fucking great tone!

Xero DLX doesn't work great with a guitar that have low output pickups. It's better with bass.

Haven't tried the Hapiness yet. But I'm really impressed by the demos online.

aen wrote: BWONK goes the filter

That's the name of our new fucking band.

sylnau wrote:Xero DLX doesn't work great with a guitar that have low output pickups. It's better with bass.

Haven't tried the Hapiness yet. But I'm really impressed by the demos online.

I've tried a friend's and I thought it was cool with guitar. Had to turn the sensitivity up fairly high but the knob had enough range to do it and it's a great sounding pedal.

No experience with the ARP but everything dwarfcraft make seems to be dope and the demos sound great.

I love the Xerograph with guitar as well, of course it's best with some dirt or at least a boost in front of it. Never tried it with low-output pickups, but like monkeydancer said, just turn up the sensitivity. Or turn it off for straight low-pass. Usually I keep the sens. low and set a quite narrow frequency sweep. Overall I'd say it's a pedal that sounds awesome and has many possibilites except for LFO/CV control.

I did consider getting either the ARF or Happiness as well, but never got that far.. had been wanting a Xero for so long I just had to try that first, was not disappointed.

aen wrote:So... obviously, I prefer the Happiness, but I'll tell you why.
I don't want to tangle with an envelope detector. That's why the envelope is triggered via footswitch on the ARF. Envelope detection limits my playing so severely when it's onboard. PLay below X amplitude and nothing happens. Play above Y and BWONK goes the filter. Doesn't leave me much room to improvise.

That said, I recall that Xero having a fucking great tone!

Logical response man. Makes sense.

And to be blunt...your pedals make me soaking wet...

Also every self-respecting sound noodler needs a dedicated LFO CV out on their board. You can make so much beautiful destruction with the CV out of the Happiness*.

*for most things it works better with some kind of attenuator between the LFO out and CV in - the Happiness pushes out a 24V range, and most pedals take 0-5V or even 0-3.3V. Definitely not a requirement to use it, but it reels that sweep back into musical land if you use something like the 8-Step program as a middleman.

baremountain wrote:Also every self-respecting sound noodler needs a dedicated LFO CV out on their board. You can make so much beautiful destruction with the CV out of the Happiness*.

*for most things it works better with some kind of attenuator between the LFO out and CV in - the Happiness pushes out a 24V range, and most pedals take 0-5V or even 0-3.3V. Definitely not a requirement to use it, but it reels that sweep back into musical land if you use something like the 8-Step program as a middleman.

I'm new to the world of cv, so please excuse me if I sound ignorant but are you plugging your happiness into the 8 step then into something else like the pretty years or other cv compatible pedals?

Yeah, exactly! I use the 8-step as an attenuator. Basically if you set the sequence length to 1 (meaning it stays at a single value, which will become the maximum), you can plug an expression or CV into the 8-step and set that input to control "Depth". This basically allows you to use an exp on CV-only pedals (Pretty Years) or dial down the width of the input CV sweep. It's a really handy CV utility tool.

Cool, thanks for explaining that a little more!