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if you don't mind, i have some questions, about your thoughts and experiences with pedals with more than 3-4 knobs.

Does the amount of controls/knobs affect your decision of buying a pedal?
If a pedal with various knobs (are highly interactive one with others), make you feel that you would prefer not having that much control to tweak the sound? or you feel at home once you figure out how each knob interacts?
would you prefer have a simple 3-4 knobs or have a expanded version where you can tweak more to your liking?

if you have other feedback, comments, suggestions or cool stories, please share

Depends on the type of pedal.

Did you have any specific types in mind?

It depends entirely on the effect for me. Reverb pedals don't need 8 pots, but if someone does a dual-phaser, then sure I'll take 8 pots or more (rate, depth, feedback, misc bonus parameters).

I sold a Tracer City, because I felt like many of the adjustments I made were too subtle. For all the controls, I didn't love the way different sections interacted with each other. I also sold a Studio Electronics Modmax Phaser, because after less than 20 minutes, I decided I would never be bothered with manually writing down all 13 pot positions. It had nice sounds, but it was too impractical to retain.

If a pedal has MIDI and recallable presets, then the more controls, the better. If a pedal has more than 5 pots and no way to recall settings, then that can be really unappetizing, depending on the builder. I have a custom VFE phaser with 4 pots and 2 switches. It's incredibly easy to adjust and to dial in desirable sounds. That's an example of a >3 pot pedal done really well. Then you have phasers with 3 or more pots and no blend pot. That kills me. So it works both ways (too much & not enough).

Just eyeballing my shelves, I have a handful of EQD pedals that are really easy to use with little acclimation time, and they have 6 pots (Sea Machine, Organizer, Transmisser, Space Spiral, et cetera). The Generation Loss has 7 pots and I feel that works, although I don't personally need the noise function. I've got Moog pedals with 8 pots, and while they're probably trickier for people with less synth experience, it's not hard to get useful sounds with them. It's really about the builder and their vision for the effect. The designer needs to find balance between giving the user more expressive possibilities, without indulging in excess, which will only serve as a detour.

Despite having some really powerful pedals (Empress, Strymon, Moog, Hologram), I do buy pedals from time-to-time, just because they're stripped-down and I know that I won't have to spend as much time trying to archive certain aspects of them. Yes, they're less powerful and less ambitious, but there is a reduced sense of urgency, when it comes to documenting and mastering them. Mr. Black pedals are a good example of this. I have more feature-laden pedals than the Gilamondo or the Supermoon Chrome, but I like to pull them out from time-to-time, because they're so low-fuss/low-hassle. It can certainly be liberating, if you plug in 5 pedals with 3 pots each, instead of 4 pedals with 6-8 pots each. To me, it's not a matter of either/or, it's a matter of timing/mood. Sometimes I plug in the simple 3-pot phaser, instead of the 8-pot phaser, because I want a basic phaser sound...not the perfect phaser sound. Or I plug in a 3-knob delay, not my MF-104mSD, because I want delay, not some grand undertaking of dialing in the perfect soundscape. It's a bit like owning a Toyota and a supercar. You don't take a $200,000 car to the grocery store. Sometimes you just need steady, simple, and reliable. You want something more practical without having to be concerned about raised expectations or heightened concentration.

For me its all about how much function is in each knob. If more knobs gives you more separate and obvious control over useful things, then sure, bring em on. Once you start burying more than one thing in a knob function it gets slippery and it's more about how intuitive the overall pedal is to use. For me a good example of "lots of functions but fewer knobs" would be the count to five, and a poor example would be something like the dream sequence. Obviously this is just my personal preference but as long as you're actually adding functions that are useful and interesting I say bring on the knobs.

echorec wrote:Despite having some really powerful pedals (Empress, Strymon, Moog, Hologram), I do buy pedals from time-to-time, just because they're stripped-down and I know that I won't have to spend as much time trying to archive certain aspects of them. Yes, they're less powerful and less ambitious, but there is a reduced sense of urgency, when it comes to documenting and mastering them.

I'm in this boat. Over time I'm starting to prefer one-trick-pony type pedals, the kind of stuff I can set and forget. Fuzz on or off, reverb on or off, etc. Delay pedals seem to always be the exception though, every song requiring a different setting. I look at a Lexicon reverb pedal now and think "all those settings are wasted on me, I'll just get something else."

really I wish more builders would use trims vs knobs

I like the knobs, but I also don't really play live. In a live situation, I'd want simple and to the point. However studio stuff, I want as much control as possible.

I like simple. It doesn't always have to be the "pedal crush enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women!" Although I do love them and they have a purpose. I like when it does one thing really well with the least amount of ability for me to screw the pooch. In my living room I usually play my tele through an eqd erupter and a hotrod deluxe... 1 knob with two channels and a foot switch. Live I have my board and I tape over the knobs or take them off because I don't want to mess with stuff. Set and forget. I have a friend who fiddles with every little thing and you can hear it recorded but in a venue all the subtlety gets lost... I guess in the end I just want 1-4 on most things. If it's a preamp in pedal form 6-8. Delays I never mastered so I just yell at them and write so I don't need one.

number of knobs doesn't matter to me one way or another as long as turning them leads to cool sounds

dandy13 wrote:number of knobs doesn't matter to me one way or another as long as turning them leads to cool sounds

I like you

Reverb pedals don't need 8 pots

"pfft"
anything other than fuzz, give me more knobs on that...in-fact give me more fuckin knobs on everything and less latching, unless its a latching knob.
what about switches that are unreasonably close to pots! give me less little prick chode switches and more wide gauged flippers like on HEXEs gear.
trim pots and dip switches can bite it & take a hike....

yall ever buy a custom job and its the coolest deal ever, only outa all the physical & mental power achieved threw the circuit/enclosure art...they couldnt put the knobs on correctly! by either screwing/pushing down too hard/much, allowing it to fully break off during shipping or is impossible to turn!

or ever have a scratchy pot and you at first go "egh gives the effect some flavour" then "egh this gravel sound sucks" ..then to turning the knob back in forth in a semi aggressive like ''il show you corrosion, f"kin dust!'' way...

one thing that gets me is, I once I had a synthdrone plugged in and ready to go, yet turned off, amp was on.. next to my bed...i pulled the bottom sheet off my bed and the amount of static was so intense that it powered the oscillator to sound off, go up in pitch, then silence..the red indicator light never came on.

..lends a mind to take a spin off the one hand clapping joke or bruce lees quote "the art of fighting without fighting'' to ''how does a knob turn itself'' riddle....ughh static cling? GOODNIGHT! ladies n gents. ba'd'ump bumm'cha!

DRodriguez wrote:I like the knobs, but I also don't really play live. In a live situation, I'd want simple and to the point. However studio stuff, I want as much control as possible.

I do play live and the amount of knobs is irrelevant.
Any knobs that are very sensitive I will put a rubber gasket under to make the travel of
the pot stiffer.
But I much prefer being able to dial in a pedal how I like with more knobs than having to flip a three knob pedal because it is almost perfect but not quite.

Echoing mudfuzz, for "tuning" i think those smaller 9mm knobs can be cool, but knob layout and knob size is probably more relevant. Larger knobs for fine adjustment smaller for more coarse adjustment. Set and forget parameters grouped.

I dunno. I like everything. I have flipped one and two knob pedals because I can't get sounds right, I've never flipped a pedal for having too many knobs.

Depends on the pedal, for me. I like simple delays, complex fuzzes, simple ring mods, and overly complicated glitch machines. Function before form, etc.

Wrong. Form over function.

More knobs. More knobs.

I have four pedals on my board...5, 11, 4, and 10 knobs. 7.5 knobs- per-pedal is too low.

At my knobbiest, my setup had over 150 knobs: I've scaled down and now mostly have pedals/gear with fewer knobs. The old setup was doable, but required way more planning for live gigs. I even had a sheet of paper to remember what to do between songs.