FX Pedals Thread: News, Views, Etc.

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Just checked and my Booster Shot is UK built but my Black Death isn't. The in/out jacks are correct on the new version.

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I miss MindPrint. My TRIO needs a big brother.

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I don't know if you guys have ever seen that Egnator did some pedals. Having gone through his amp building class, I was really curious how he would do with the classic circuit stuff from pedals. He looks to have taken his "tweaker" amp approach. He has 3 versions of this pedal, Silver, Gold, Black ... progressively upping the Gain. I'm not a metal head, so the Silver was more my speed. We were talking Boost pedals and I forgot to mention how good the Boost on this guy is. But I tend to just run the boost on this after the Distortion path. It works wonders on a high headroom amp. I didn't care much for it on the actual Egnator amp I built (quite Marshallish). But, there is so much dialing you can do, I probably just didn't give enough effort for that setup. It was perfectly simple to get great stuff out of my Morgan.

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If you have to ask, you can't afford the answer

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Very cool! I have an old TOL100 and I like the Tweaker amps a lot for what they are.

Morgans are excellent.

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Uncle E wrote:Very cool! I have an old TOL100 and I like the Tweaker amps a lot for what they are.

Morgans are excellent.
sweet, the TOLs are nice amps. The pedal is just like the tweaker amp. Fiddly to get right, but once you do they are amazing.
If you have to ask, you can't afford the answer

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got the Mario pedal. It's a lot like the Mooer Lo-Fi Machine, except that the Mario (Tomsline) has 'LP/Normal/HP' where the Mooer is 'Bass/Guitar/Synth' on their respective 3-way toggles. The Tomsline has an interesting feature in the 'upside-down-u-bar' near the middle of the pedal, so as to protect against 'overstomp' i would guess. Pretty good pedal for $40-some bucks. The Mooer was more like $70 if memory serves. I'll have to do a shoot-out with the Hotone Krush, Mooer Lo-Fi Machine, and the Tomsline Mario.

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^How's build quality (switch, knobs, sockets etc.)?
I miss MindPrint. My TRIO needs a big brother.

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i'm not a 'metallurgist' so don't know what the metals are, but the two pedals -- mooer lo-fi machine and tomsline mario -- are definitely constructed differently.

the lo-fi machine has a one-piece body, with removable screws on the rear plate. the mario on the other hand has a face plate, and a rear plate, and the hex screws are on the front of the unit. it looks like it's not intended to be opened by the user. the hex holes just don't look very well defined, so as to allow for a wrench to remove them.

i'd say the mario has a larger (more robust?) 3-way toggle switch, but that the two small knobs, the large knob, and the on/off switch are roughly the same for both units. overall, the mario is slightly larger. their footprints appear to be identical, but the lo-fi machine tapers ever-slow-slightly 'inward' as its walls rise toward its face. even with rounded corners, the mario is more 'boxy' and its walls appear perpendicular to the base.

mario gets a bonus for the 'overstomp protection bar', but aside from that, the lo-fi machine's easy dis-assembly is probably better for modding. it's really not clear as to whether the mario is meant to be taken apart. at all. but with its well-defined 'phillips' screw heads, it's fairly clear that the lo-fi machine would come apart easily, should the user want to take a gander inside.

if i had to guess metals, the mario appears to be some kind of 'fancy aluminum', while the lo-fi machine appears to be something else -- either a 'different grade of aluminum', or 'steel' or somesuch. my guess would be 'steel'.

both pedals have the obligatory 'rubber thingie' affixed to their respective baseplates.

if memory serves, the mario is ~$42, the lo-fi machine $68, and the hotone krush is $99. so even for its possible physical faults, the mario is a great entry into bit-crushing fx for a relatively low price.

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did a 3-way comparison vid of tomsline mario, mooer lo-fi machine, and hotone krush. will have to edit/upload.

that hotone pp10 seems like vaporware at the moment. did they already have a production run and sell it out, or have they not sold any yet? either way, it appears to be out of stock.

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Xiangqi wrote:that hotone pp10 seems like vaporware at the moment. did they already have a production run and sell it out, or have they not sold any yet? either way, it appears to be out of stock.
They sent me the most recent price sheet and it's not on there. I'm guessing it hasn't started shipping yet.

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@Xiangqi thanks for the info. I checked around and prices vary quite a bit (as low as £15 for some models). You also need to be careful about more expensive rebrands. If the model # isn't similar, then build is the only way to check. Most are on effectsdatabase.com but not cross-referenced.

Going through videos and sound demos, the Mario seems to have a lot of noise.
I miss MindPrint. My TRIO needs a big brother.

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15 pounds? so that's like $22. wow.

Yes, the Mario is noisy. The Mario can get a person into the 'sonic vicinity' for a good entry-level price point, but the more-expensive Mooer Lo-Fi Machine and Hotone Krush both sound 'better'.

To be honest, it seems as though the Mario is a 'rush job' to compete with the likes of the Lo-Fi Machine or Krush. Lo-Fi Machine and Krush are different enough from one another that i would recommend both to the 'bitcrush mavens' out there.

...made a 3-pedal comparison playlist on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... RfKdt2k8G5

...moving right along, just ordered 4 Danelectros -- All Fab: Fuzz, Metal Effects, Slap Echo, and Chorus -- and a 'First Line Chorus'. plus a '12AX7' alternate tube for the Behringer VT99.

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I had a bunch of the original Danelectro pedals, including the ones that ripped off the Timmy, OCD, and Peachfuzz. All of them were just alright, not as good as the originals and they robbed tone like crazy. I had to use a buffered pedal in front of them to make them usable. I had the cool Danelectro pedal board and everything, I really wanted to love them!

The Peachfuzz was the one I liked the least. I didn't like the real thing, either.

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I really like the Cool Cat Chorus and it's a mainstay on my recording pedalboard. It can have this phasey doubler sound which reminds me of Flesh for Lulu.
I miss MindPrint. My TRIO needs a big brother.

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i don't have high expectations for the danelectros, but they're low-priced enough that they seemed to warrant some experimentation. i already have the fab distortion, and at first it was one of my least favorite distortions. but i tried it weeks later, and it was somewhat ok.

the 'really interesting' one in this batch might be the 'first act chorus', because; between the reviews of it and the product description, it might actually be a delay; but there's definitely a picture of a chorus.

it seems like sometimes amazon takes an entire product line, and gathers _all_ of the reviews for _every_ product in that line; and lists them for _each_ of the products in the line. so, you could be looking at reviews 'for a given pedal', and there are like 100 reviews, and only 1:5 or 1:10 actually speak to the pedal in the product description. that's what was happening with the 'first act chorus'... there were a bunch of reviews for a 'delay pedal' (a pedal which i couldn't find anywhere) mixed in.

anyway, i was toying with the idea of being able to put together different pedal chains, by brand: danelectro, behringer, monoprice, donner, joyo, etc.

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say, how can you tell if a pedal is really 'true bypass'? is that when the signal flows through, even when the pedal has no juice -- no battery or adapter connection? one day, i was getting these massive 'pops' from the on/off on a caline time space echo. days later, the pop wasn't there at all. now i'm reading reviews where lower quality pedals can 'mess with true bypass pedals later in the chain' by causing these pops. it makes me wonder if the huge pops on the caline that one day were actually from a pedal earlier in the chain.

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