OVERDRIVE- AUDIO SURPLUS EFFECTS Ok Doomer ...higher than high, high gain

$130.00 USD

AUDIO SURPLUS EFFECTS|Ok doomer

A good ol' hardclipper. More specifically a Doom pedal distortion. 

The maker claims it is not a Acapulco Gold or Rat clone. 

The layout has one knob, Volume? Inside you get 2 

trim pots. You can set the your input level and 

a low pass filter to cut the highs. 

CONCLUSION __ 

It is what it is. Killer for that but for most a door stop. 

If you want this kind of Doom thing I still feel the

Earthquaker Acapulco Gold's take on a SUNN 

amp is is still best. It is $120.00 USD. It can 

fit into more genres and I find it can even 

lay behind a vocal. In short you can use 

it in tune not just a sound track thing.

 

 

CHORUS- JHS PEDALS Emperor V.2 Chorus ...ARION Stereo Chorus clone

$175.00 USD

JHS PEDALS EMPEROR V.2 CHORUS

The Arion SCH1 took its bones from the Roland/Boss but was majorly 

re-designed to give it a very excellent leslie Rotary speaker effect. Yes it could do vey excellent conventional Chorus and Vibrato effects. It became Josh Scotts choice for the basis of this pedal. He added the speeding up or slowing down effect of the leslie. He also gave it a tap tempo function.

The layout is  Volume, Speed, EQ and Depth. A toggle switches between Chorus and Vibrato. A second toggle gives you 3 waveforms. A jack at side allows you to use a momentary switch to trigger the the rise or descent effect of the modulation. It uses 3207 chip set so you get that classic tone.  

 

CONCLUSION __   

I can not find any lint to pick. Perhaps adding a sure wave and a triangle wave was bit shoegaze but all the features are usable. It has 'the' sound and the current lower price makes it good value for money.

OVERDRIVE- ELECTRONIC AUDIO EXPERIMENTS Surveyor ...a rack-in-a-box

$250.00 USD

ELECTRONIC AUDIO EXPERIMENT surveyor

This is a take on the IVP Instrument Voice Preamps from 1978. It was at

start of the days of players using a lot of rack mount gear to drive and control a wall of stacks.

Transistors are teamed with a transformer to give  cutting highs and cut 

to capture both IVP and amp combination of the era. The layout is

level, Gain, bass and Treble and toggle to switch in more Gain.

CONCLUSION __

It is damn impressive. Balz and punch to spare and a the cut of razor sharp meat cleaver coming down so hard it could split a butchers block in two,😲, lol.

A pedal to get noticed on its own but perhaps even better 

to stack with other Dirt pedals that are massive but 

inevitably get too dark, or muddy or and when

your pick hits the string the attack is like 

hitting a marshmallow. 

BOOST/EQ- CASCADE PEDALS HARMONIC ENERGIZER ....Systech H. E. clone

$175.00 USD

CASCADE PEDALS

  Harmonic Energizer

This is a clone of the Systech Harmonic Energizer used by Frank Zappa and Adrian Belew. It is a notch filter that can be moved through all the frequencies that can be set narrow with a pin point boost or widened. It is in layman's terms 

a kind of cocked Wah.

The layout is Level, Gain to give it a little dirt, Frequency, to pick where you 

want it to poke and Bandwidth to narrow or widen and the frequencies 

you want to boost. 

CONCLUSION __  

It is what it is and can be a useful noise. I tried another now defunct pedal and found I was better off with a Graphic EQ to create poke  

in a Dirt pedal or Amp.  

...This second video is demo of the original Systech pedal. 

FUZZ- MAK AUDIO ELECTRONICS (MAE) Screws Octave Fuzz... sound great, BUT???

MAE SCREWS

 Octave Fuzz

$210.00 USD

It seems that an octave Fuzz is the fashion of the times. There is an endless stream of candidates.The layout is simply Volume and Gain with a toggle to switch to add levels of boost to the lows.

Conclusion ___ 

It has very nice punchy balzy sound. The old Joyo Voodoo Octave sounds very, very similar and is $35.00 USD.

 

         NOTE: My program has taken a F-off pill and will not let 

               me use any color. I will sort that out ASAP

FUZZ- DIRTY BOY Afro Fuzz ...Blues Saraceno is back!!!

DIRTY BOY |AFRO FUZZ

$335.00 USD

Blues Saraceno played with with Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce for a tour 

to revive the Cream thing. He also did stints with Poison and Kingdom Come between 1993-1996. It is enough to give the guy enough celebrity to make a living. He does not have a catalogue of 'Hits' to make a living from downloads so he does the modern thing of everything from the odd gig to T-shirt sales to get by. He had a small pedal company years ago 

which he has revived. I expect it too is needed to pay the bills.

The layout is Volume, Tone and Gain.

CONCLUSION___

No problems ...it sounds OK. I see it as 95% 

celebrity cool and 5% the sound. 

It is average Fuzz Face.  

thefineprint

....buy a Joyo Tiny-Huge Fuzz. a great sounding Bender 

with more gain and output level than you can use. 

$40.00 USD with free shipping from AliExpress.

OVERDRIVE- OCTOBER AUDIO Robotic Celebrity Head... Electra cartridge clone

$182.64 USD

OCTOBER AUDIO 

robotic celebrity head 

In 1976 St. Louis music brought out the ELECTRA MPC LP clone guitar that you could plug a cartridge in and each cartridge was a single effect. The OD was a single transistor boost that pushed it has a acidic biting treble that dimed goes in a square wave or in effect a Fuzz. This OD is called a Common Emitter Circuit . Dozens of OD's over the years use it as their starting point and 

then add to it. You can buy a bag of parts from Copper sound Kits for 

$12 to make the circuit,😕. Needless to say this pedal is such a circuit. 

The layout is Volume and a toggle switch from a fixed medium gain 

to a high gain near Fuzz thing. 

 

CONCLUSION __

It does sound cool, 😎 The price is reasonable at $18.26 USD. 

No the price under the pedal is not a typo. I copied it off the 

site. You can check. I think it was October Audio that made the 

typo tagging it with $182.64 ??? Could I be wrong??? 😕

thefineprint

...Earthquaker Devices make the Special Cranker. V.2 has come out which adds treble and bass and a toggle gives you an option of Silicon or Germanium voices. I have one and use it backed off to a near clean sound with near ice pick highs stacked on a Chorus for flatpicking to get both the body and definition of an acoustic. 

The price is a reasonable $100.00 USD

FUZZ- INTERSTELLAR AUDIO MACHINES Marsland OctaFuzzDrive ...impressive!

INTERSTELLAR|||AUDIO MACHINES

MARSLING OCTAFUZZ

$280.00 USD

DRIVE  

I reviewed their Muff pedal and found it just OK but overall just not impressive.

This is their take on a Foxx Tone Machine.

Outside of being an Octave Fuzz I can not see the similarity. 

The layout is Volume, Tone, Gain a toggle switches in a 

mid boost and footswitch brings in the Octave effect.  

 

CONCLUSION___

The has excellent headroom, breadth and 

is fat and very dense. Best of all the damn 

thing has some serious balz.

 

FUZZ- INTERSTELLAR AUDIO MACHINES Fuzzsquatch Fuzzdrive... Muff??? Yes

$278.00 USD

INTERSTELLAR AUDIOOMACHINES 

FUZZSQUATCH FUZZDRIVE

Yes folks a Muff. An OpAmp Muff at that. Not much to add. The layout is Volume, Tone, and Gain. A toggle switch bypasses the clipping diodes as another voice. 

A fat and unruly voice but a useful noise.

CONCLUSION ___

It sounds great but there are countless better Fuzz pedals that sound equal to better to cover the same ground. After all it is just a bog standard Muff without any extras. All Fuzz pedals. literally all but totally mask what guitar is driving them. Subtleties in OD's make noticeable differences. Especially an Amp-in-a-box that can sound dead accurate to passable but pleasing. Or worse still  total crap.

In short a very good cheap Chinese Fuzz can sound as good. Keep in mind that the original Tone Bender had only 7 parts on its circuit board. A basic Muff is hardly a rocket science effort so prices 

should not cost the price of a moon landing. 

Todays' price is a sale price. 

The regular price is a "please bend over" $348.00 USD.  

 

COMPRESSOR- MOOER AUDIO Yellow Comp... 10 years old with no end in site?

MOOER AUDIO YELLOW COMP

$45.00 USD
 ship incl/AliExpress

There are literally 30 brands of mini pedals that are only a brand by name as they are Mooer mini pedals that the ONLY thing they change is the paint color, graphics and plastic knobs. They have done this since day one. The very best selling Mooer pedals are not on offer to these brands. Eventually all pedals become poor sellers 

for Mooer and they too are on offer. One very big BUT is the Yellow Comp that 

they have never re-branded for anyone.

It is a one for one clone of the Diamond Compressor. It is an Optic Compressor 

that literal works from light. Nothing is more organic than real light. There are two hassles with this method though. It does not transfer highs well and there is lag going from light to the circuit. The highs can be fixed with EQ and fortunately the 

lag thing is simply not that bad. The big deal is that its tone is simply sweet, sweet, sweet and the pumping squishing sound that other Comps have is simply NOT there.

The layout is Volume, EQ and Compression. 

CONCLUSION __ 

Ideal for guys like what a comp can do but hate its side effects. 

It sounds 100% Pro for an entry level price. A really excellent 

addition as a second comp for a different sound or for Comp stacking. 

 

 

OD/DIST/FUZZ- FUZZROCIOUS BIG FELLA ___NEW___ 2 in 1 that are 3 in one?

$180.00 USD

FUZZROCIOUS  BIG FELLA   

A heavy OpAmp hardclipper. A sort of son of Mr. Rat and Ms. Fuzz. 

It is derived from their Demon OD and Lil Fella both boast to be OD/Dist/Fuzz pedal.

The layout is Volume, Tone, Gain, a second Drive/Gain, Feedback 

which is a BIAS & GATE control. A footswitch for on/Off another 

for gate and 3rd, momentary for overload effects not unlike 

an octave Fuzz. 

CONCLUSION ___

A hardclipper Ratish OD with a octave Fuzz circuit thrown in. How can I describe it better than organized chaos. 

Great for a bit of theater in a live show.