STOMP BOX SEARCH- looking for the very best...the Dummies guide of how to do it. lol

SEARCHING FOR THE VERY BEST!!!

Well my first way of doing this was to scour YOU TUBE and find all the good reviewers... even the infomercial reviewers were helpful.

-I soon learned that infomercials had lots of facts and detail ....they also had mind boggling post Production!!! They can make a Snails Fart sound good!

-The better vids were balanced but you had to read between the lines. "this is going straight on my board" means BUY IT!!!

-Amateur vids can be so bad you can miss a great pedal.
for example the Greer BURNING GOAT set to a low gain ...with the tone set very low (which on any other OD would sound bass heavy) gives you a near clean sound that sounds like you are actually switch to your clean channel but without ANY OD.
It is an instant $6000.00 USD ....DUMBLE amp CLEAN sound. But there are vids with it set with the knobs pushed to positions only fit for a Fuzz.
The result is the sound is so frighteningly terrible that my $22.00 USD  Ammoon nano pedal would blow it out the water!!! WHAT IS REALLY SCARY...I AM NOT EXAGGERATING!!!

 BUT the best amateur videos can give you the sound of what it will sound like when you hear it for the first time in your home or at practice.... Plus all the good ...and the bad news of how it works for them within their band at the club or the studio.

SO AS MANY OF EACH I CAN HEAR IS THE ONLY WAY TO KNOW!

If it passes all the smell tests . I buy one!

-I went from Oh my god ...NO  ...NO ...NO!

-to... great but zero dynamics...but OK
        I guess...
        I wonder what they are going for
        used on Reverb? I have to dump this turkey.

-to... just OH MY GOD!!!! YES!!!!!! FINALLY!!!

Fortunately I learnt how to play the game with the China cheapies.
Since they gave you a clone at least the basic sound was proven.
After going thru about 300 'made in China pedals...I ran out. I had caught up.
If a pedal is half decent and sells well it will made to infinity. lol
So only a pedal or 2 would come along each month.
Especially since the Chinese makers are only interested in
making the most popular pedals from the west.

Ah I thought..why not find the best...?

Readers will not buy these but it could be fun to compare them against our cheap loot!!!
Besides who wouldn't want to kick the tires on the Ferrari and Lamborghini pedals.

BUT THEN I GOT HOOKED ON THE BEST.
FIRST ON A WAMPLER AT HALF PRICE...(oddly as it turns out I just sold it yesterday  LOL 6/2/2017) BEFORE LONG IT BECAME PEDALS OVER $300.00 USD..and never less then...
$200.00 USD
THEN...EVEN $400.00 USD mistakes!!! and a diet of 2 pedals a month.
...would I end up sleeping on a park bench panhandling for 9v battery money ...since I would no longer have access to a wall socket???

OK...back to the basics..

Once I got a lot of the specific pedals to further research.  I also then had the Brands names that I could then go to their sites and check out a vid on every product.

Online sellers often stock at least a few obscure brands. That is the way they got into business.
A great way to find hidden gems.

There are easily 200 brands of pedals maybe even a lot more. A lot of very high end and very low end are one guy...who designs ...builds and sells the pedals. A few like Paul Cochrane only makes one pedal ...the TIMMY.

Then there is the issue of county's beside the American and some European that you may know about.

THE INTERNATIONAL TREASURE HUNT

There are two well known makers in Canada Empress and Diamond.
But there are some serious other makers too
like Radial Engineering,  Dr. Scientist, Solid Gold and Fairfield.
Tone Hungry make point to point hand made
duplicate's of classic pedals with new old stock...
they even sell it for low prices. About half of what is demanded by some European equivalents.
Retro Sonic , Toe Tag and Dingo Tone are
others worth checking out.
6 Degress FX take classic pedals and not just improve them they virtually reinvent them. One fuzz they did offers not only the original transistors used in a pedal but also 2 other types. For most brands this would constitute making 3 different pedals ...because the difference is anything but subtle. This requires  3 separate circuits with a pair of transistors in each circuit.
Alex K Production make state of the art pedals with military spec parts...and 'only' after they design with a tone that is second to none.

There are two South America makers...In Chile it is and PedalPalFX  in Venezuela there is the Fire Custom Shop. Both make world class pedals. Both use high end parts
,
In Europe the French, Greek, Italian, Belgium, Denmark, Turkey and Spanish makers are not well known.

One of the outstanding makers is in the Ukraine.  Piod a one man show making analog state of the art Overdrives that can be used alone or thru a computer. Doing the PC thing is one challenge in itself ...but doing the analog OD thing and getting that dead on right is another,,, and the pedal's sound is a total mind blower,

WHY ARE SOME INTERNATIONAL PEDALS PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES OF WHAT'S POSSIBLE

They quite simply have a different mind set.

The perfect example is the U.S. mind set vs. the British

An American player traditionally works hard on an arsenal of hot licks.

When he joins a band he uses these licks as ornamentation in the tunes.

A Brit joins a band...and he will compose a specific hot lick to put in a tune that he will not ever use but in that tune and in the spot it was written for.

To over simplify listen to Stevie Ray Vaughn then listen to Brian May. 

Stevie might change his parts nightly ...Brian will always play that specific lick in a tune in the same spot every night.

Both produce great results.. but the thinking is quite different.

HOW TO FIND THEM???

It is not well known to most that many countries have their own tailor made version of GOOGLE...and ebay I am not just talking about language.... they are set up to only easily access X amount of content with Google USA. Some of this will seem obvious..if you type in WAMPLER...in France you may not see anywhere on the screen that is not related to Wampler France etc.
Most of the country's in Europe speak some English. So you can for example from the U.S.Google type in ...Google Germany then from there google ebay and up pops the German version of ebay...then ferret around finding maker after maker. True many pedals you find no matter what country they reside in are the average fuzz...just 2 resister shy of being a Big Muff or the 10,000th version of a Tube Screamer.

So ...try this google GOOGLE UK then type in ebay...or even just type in guitar pedals. Or British guitar pedals etc.It is a lot of fun.

There are small exceptional makers too. Guys that are both engineers,  players and geniuses. but you can not count out some little guys who may be amateurs or TV repair guys who play
guitar etc. With a little knowledge but a good imagination they sometimes come up with something special.
Crazy Tube Circuits in Greece...their Ziggy is just such a pedal.They did not start out to make the closest pedal to a Vox AC 30...Top Boost as possible. But nothing that set out to sound Vox like is closer.
Lots of these cool accidents happen all over the world.
Right now I am exploring the pedal makers of the southern USA the middle states not the coasts.
My latest discovery is....Greer Amps.

A year ago if someone told me perhaps one of the best OD's ever is made by a maker from Turkey
I would have laughed.
I STOPPED LAUGHING!!!
ONE IS.

A Tale of 2 Compressors

Greer Amps Fish Press 

....a simple yet exceptional compressor ...a very nice repro of the Dan Armstrong Orange Squeezer Compressor




Dan's very basic little preset box brought out with several others in the 60's








I will let Mark give you a demo. Mark is not a bad player and he will ...do his best on his T style guitar. No not a Strat...he couldn't afford one when he recorded this. Hell what could he ask for! He had a nice little 4 track studio to record in. Why I recorded there myself.       (I actually did. The studio was terible.  LOL)

 Anyhow ...Greer does a nice job of letting you add or subtract a little bit of sustain.
Otherwise it was a case of
...if it is not broken don't fix it


T-REX Tone Bug Sustainer   

...Denmark

A nice cheap enough  ($100.00 USD ) comp.
BUT...as in all comps when you push up the sustain you also have to turn up the level. Oh my ...no level???

So this is an overview of the process 

 from searching to finding to presenting or rejecting.

So which pedal made it onto SDS?    and which one would waste your time?  

WHAT MAKES A GREAT PEDAL

Many things! but the most important is detail in the sound!!!
overtones  ...harmonics ...light and shade 
...and in dirt pedals...dynamic ...sensitivity to your touch.

BUT ALL THAT IS ANOTHER POST!