All things pedal related.

[khanyz]

The Sonicake Cloud Chorus and Hotone Grass arrived. Both are good quality and have nice extras like velcro tape and even a decent (stagg quality) patch cable with the Sonicake.

EDIT: The Sonicake Echo Rain did not come with a patch cable.

The Sonicake Chorus sounds very nice in both modes, with the Lush mode seeming to add an extra voice. The sound is warm and full with good flexibility. A total bargain.

The Hotone Grass is even better. It has a throaty overdrive which verges on distortion but is always smooth. It’s now £22 on Amazon UK (Fulfilled by Amazon) so I kinda wished I waited a week to save a fiver, but not really as it’s on my board

The Mosky pedals continue to frustrate. They sound good but are let down by sloppy quality. This could have been easily solved for an extra ~$5 per pedal. I know it’s a crowded market but weird noises and power supply incompatibilities are very annoying.

[cptgone]

Crazy price for the Fender Level Set Buffer at muziker today (€42,6).

[khanyz]

Any recommendations for a mini noise gate pedal? The Sonicake Noise Wiper is £20 or the Hotone is £30. The Sonicake seems to be a Rowin (et al.) in evening wear.

BTW The Fender Level Set is very similar to my Mute DI Pedal + Seymour Duncan Pickup Booster combo. The pickup switch on the Pickup Booster is handier than expected.

[cptgone]

Ordered a Electro-Harmonix Super Pulsar.
I almost got a used ZVex Sonar for a very low price, but that didn't go through.
Terrible for one's GAS. So when a discounted Super Pulsar popped up...
Meant to be an upgrade for my tc electronic Pipeline, I think I'm gonna sell that one (I suspect it's powerful too, but I've no clue what the app's editor screen has in store, AFAIK that requires a USB connection and that is a no-no for me ATM).

[cptgone]

I bought a €17 40*13cm pedalboard new from EBay, delivered from China in less than 2 weeks.
Nice, apart from the paint, which comes off (I hope it's not too toxic).
(Too bad the bargain brandless mini-pedals I ordered haven't arrived yet, I'll be asking Amazon a refund tomorrow)

[cptgone]

The remaining brandless pedals from Amazon.nl arrived (rather late, they made me miss out on all the sunshine).
Turns out they're not brandless either: 2 Rowin and a Twinote, all shiny, with box and manual (and some velcro in the case of the Twinote).
Incredible deal, I don't understand why these were sold as brandless (with pics of brandless pedals), they've doubled-tripled in price since they re-appeared at Amazon.

I bought a €17 40*13cm pedalboard new from EBay, delivered from China in less than 2 weeks.
Nice, apart from the paint, which comes off (I hope it's not too toxic).

OK so most of the paint peeled off, revealing rusty and greasy parts. Smells like that, too. I'll have to look for a way to clean it, and buy new velcro-carpet to stick on it. Bah.

I wish Thomann would expand their range of HB pedalboards with a 40*10.

[khanyz]

^ Twinotes are mostly <£20 +5% off coupon on Amazon UK. Similar pedals are branded as Nux too. That sounds like a good deal if it includes velcro. From my travails ( ) it usually indicates a higher intended price bracket.

I “finished” my lockdown project of a mini pedal board for headphones/demoing. Went a little over budget and could probably have got a good Multi-FX instead (Boss ME-80) but got 2 extra pedals and happy with the setup.

khanyzminiboard.jpeg

[cptgone]

A new arrival, and a comparison of my chorus-like pedals kicked some off my boards.
(The chorus-likes who remain are my Electro-Harmonix Electric Mistress and Fender rotary sim (Pinwheel) - oh and I've a Electro-Harmonix Good Vibes, too)

+ a used Zvex Super Ringtone (step ring mod, I'm fond of that effect)
- tc electronic Thunderstorm (flanger from the Smorgasbord series). Never clicked with it.
- tc electronic Afterglow (chorus from the Smorgasbord series). I prefer other pedals.
- tc electronic Corona (chorus). I prefer other pedals.

Planning to sell the kicked pedals, I might keep one of them for my little bass pedalboard though.

[vurt]

- tc electronic Corona (chorus). I prefer other pedals.

yeah, id avoid that one too

[justin3am]

I've been meaning to do mini reviews of some of the pedals I've been using recently...

Effectrode Phaseomatic 3 - Absolutely gorgeous phaser and vibrato sounds. It's a 4 stage which uses photocells to control a tube based OTA array. There are two very complex LFOs which can run at different rates (or extra parameters are available if you run them in sync), two CV inputs and a tap tempo input. Very different from the Moog 12-stage phaser. Less swooshy, more swirly, if that makes sense. The tube input buffer can get dirty if you drive it hard but it's very clean when run at lower levels. It sounds like high-end studio tube gear, with lots of headroom.

Fairfield Shallow Water K-Field Modulator - Boards of Canada like tones for days. It's like a chorus, except it has a stepped random modulator controlling the delay. You have control over the step rate and the amount of slewing from step to step (Damp). It uses a BBD delay and also features a lowpass gate which is controlled by an envelope follower. It can do subtle tape warble or chaotic pitch modulation. I like to run a really heavy distortion in front of it; I dial back the LPG to get a really dense low-end drone and then dial in some slow drunken modulation. It's also great on synths.

WMD ProtoStar - Flexible multi-mode filter with patchable modulation and a liquid character. It has an effect loop which isn't documented. It can get really aggressive when driven and it really squeals at high resonance. There are lots of control inputs, it's nice that the envelope follower has a side-chain input because I can split my guitar signal before my distortion/fuzz pedal, and feed the clean signal to the envelope follower. The envelope follower is more responsive to clean signals but the distortion give the filter more to bit into. The filter has 12dB and 24dB slopes and LP, HP, BP and Notch filter modes. The cutoff control covers the who spectrum (which doesn't seem to be the case of all filter pedals), so it works well for bass and synths. It responds really nicely to audio rate modulation. I use the Send output on the side to feed the pedal's own signal back to the Cutoff CV input. It can be a bit noisy, especially when using it's built in compressor but it's not unacceptable.

[cptgone]

- tc electronic Corona (chorus). I prefer other pedals.

yeah, id avoid that one too

I'm gonna market it at chorus-curious death metal Swedes looking to improve their pedal hoard immunity.

[cptgone]

A used CopilotFX Antdroid popped up and... now sits on one of my pedalboards
A combined Antenna ("mix of LoFi ring modulation, Sample Reduction and near theremin sounds") and Android (ring mod).
Sounds gorgeous to my ears.

My first CopilotFX purchase, I'll have to further educate my cats so they can copilot my sounds as I play (they already know how to put 5 pedals on in one go).

[cptgone]

Chase Bliss put out the last 100 Ayahuasca pedals (tremolo with uncommon fuzz), by the time I had entered my data they were sold out
I've no luck with tremolo's lately. The ZVex sale didn't go through, my EHX trem should finally arrive this week though.

[revvy]

I got a tuner pedal finally.

I;m sure you're all bored by that but I like the little fella - Korg Pitchblack mini - and the stroboscope thing is pretty mesmerising. I keep 'accidentally' detuning a little so I have to tune again. The scope rocks man.

[vurt]

i tuned at the start of lockdown.
im good for a while yet