FUZZ- ANIMAL PEDAL In Oct 3 Foxes Talking of Dreamy Fuzz ___NEW___ Octave Fuzz

ANIMAL PEDAL 

In Oct,3 Foxes talking of dreamy FUZZ

$120.00 USD

The company was founded by two students in Japan because that could not afford pedals. They made there own with the idea of using cheaper but robust parts and no decorative frills or extras. Years later they had some pedals designed by Marc Ahlfs from Skeddy. All the pedals have been priced when possible to never be much over $100.00 The layout is Level, Tone, Gain and 

a switch to turn on the octave effect. Is it a Foxx Tone Machine?  

CONCLUSION

This pedal stays into the 'keep it under control' category. 

It is a 70's Octave Silicon Fuzz but with disc brakes.

It is rich, punchy, aggressive and full but not caustic or 

over the top spit, sputter and other excessive nasties.

In short it can be used as a stand in for an Overdrive 

if tuned in for one. Very impressive and priced fairly.

the fine print

Animal Pedal now have 20 pedals. The best I Posted as they came out.  Some I have seen are good but as one could say they are ' 

not as advertised' . Their Tone Bender does not deliver what 99% of what those that heard a reasonably good one sounds like. 

I think it is because it is based short lived V.4 silicon prototype only available for about 4 months for a better one for 

Colorsound that became the standard for this type. 

With the Animal offering you must dime the tone and gain. If so you get a very usable Colorsound vibe to the sound.  

The Colorsound designs used very few knobs and the sound fixed to one WOW sound.

OVERDRIVE- SKREDDY Skunk Drive Model 1606__NEW__Supro/National Amp-in-a-Box

SKEDDY PEDALS 

SKUNK DRIVE MODEL 1606

$215.00 USD

Marc Ahlfs and the Skeddy team have been around for years. Usually

cloning old classic Fuzz pedals. Even specific models only produced over a few month's in a specific year were reproduced until NOS parts were virtually totally unattainable. 

I am sure it has been a few years without something new. In this case we get an Amp-in-a-Box taken from capturing the sound of the 50's small amps. Most of these amps were from several small companies never too far from if not in Chicago. One by one they failed or amalgamated until we pretty much only had National, Valco, & Supro. 

CONCLUSION ____

Used more as boost set low does remind me of my first amp. A National/ Valco 1210. Pushed it gets very Fuzz like gritty but still keeps a tube vibe. How usefull it is for most guys thing is obvious. It does however sound killer and nails a fat, chunky old tube vibe just dying to make some fresh new music with.

____ BEST PEDAL ___ of 2023!!! ___ a MIAB that speaks for itself!!!

 

                                                                               PedalPalFX PAL800 Gold V.4 

 

 

 

     ....<>^ 

The best MIAB on the planet. 

It sounds 99.9% accurate to the real amp.  

I should know I once owned one!

$200.00 USD 

....Need I say more ???  

the fine print 

....this pedal is literally a clone of a JCM 800 amp. It uses the same topography and merely changes the real tubes with FETS. FETS work in the same way a tube does. The BIAS of each FET is made just like an amps tube gets before putting it in a box finished. This is done by matching the pedal to the actual real amp. 

The exact voice of that amp is one of 3 choices. A second choice is a Jose mod that Slash has on his. The third choice is the Joe Bonamassa mod. The fattest is the Joe mod that factors in how the real amp reacts to the vibration of a stack. Those vibrations cause a constant shaking of the amps power transformer creating that fatter sound by giving a flutter to the voltage. I prefer the Joe mod and I set the pedal to a very healthy crunch and never change it. When I want more I add a comp for a boost or switch to a high gain pedal like the Soldano SLO pedal.

 

COMPRESSOR- ISOLATED AUDIO Squash the Jam ___NEW___ is transparent best ???

$220.00 USD

isolateaudio

SQUASH THE JAM OCOMPRESSOR

This new company reminds me of Origin when they started. Just a guy that wanted to make the best Comp possible and only sold that one pedal.

It is a VCA type of Comp. These are indeed the most transparent and good at not coloring the sound. Comps are the clean sound equivalent of an OD pedal. 

The right one adding the right coloration is often preferred or in my case just like an OD having different Comps for different sounds is cool. The layout is ...'Ratio' that goes right up to full out 'Limiting' ultra squash. 'Blend' brings in you balance between comp and not comped. 'Level' out, crank as needed. Lastly 'Threshold' is like a pre-delay on a Reverb pedal. Often having it come in late is great because you can have a near uncompressed signal with it kicking in just when your sustain wants to die. 

CONCLUSION ___

If you tried a Comp and did not like it you might find you had the wrong type. I will not go thru every type but will mention the first guitar Comps the Dyna comp and Ross that are OTA. The best selling OTA Comp ever, and still the best seller is the Keeley Compressor +. Literally thousands sold. I have one and at $150.00 USD for most of us you can not go wrong with it. The Cork Sniffers delight is the $365.00 USD ...Origin FX Cali76 a FET Comp. FETS sound like tubes so that is it's big appeal. Tubes both fatten and warm up your tone.

The famous Ross compressor
  much loved but I am waiting for the mini

OVERDRIVE- THIS HEAVY EARTH Slaughter ___NEW___ Peavey 3120-Amp-in-a-Box

THIS HEAVY EARTH 

   SLAUGHTER 

$200.00 USD

This pedal is a take on the Peavey 3120 amp which is based like many Peavey amps from Marshall amp topology of using an 6L6 pre and EL34  power amp tubes. 

The obvious first generation 6505/6550 Metal amps were eventually, followed by the Triple X and the Triple X2 before becoming the 3120. After 2000 Metal splintered into endless genres and subgenres with

amp makers trying hopelessly to please all with one amp.

The layout is Treble, Bass, Gain, Level input and out and out plus Saturation/Compression. A button scoops the mids and another is a boost for highs. Two internal switches provide more highs and gain.

 

CONCLUSION ___ 

A damn lot to work with! 6 knobs and 4 switches! The sound is balzy, aggressive, huge and surgically tweakable. There is 

always room in the spice rack for one more flavor.

This one could be quite tasty. 

 

  

the fine print

In the late 60's players did not give a damn about rules they made their own  They were teaming older even discontinued Gibson and Fender guitars with 

a new thing ...the Brit Stacks. They had the right idea. These days just by using pedals we can have the sounds of any era. Why not???  

Lets break the rules and do just that. Why be stuck with one sound. Why let gear manufacturers decide what sounds are cool. 

That is not a manufactures job. It is ours. Why let the tail wag the dog???

FUZZ- PALMER CUSTOM FX The Solarist Green ___NEW___ the tweakers Fuzz Face

Palmer Custom FX 

THE  SOLARIST 

GREEN

$200.00 USD

The Fuzz Face is a simple perhaps even crude circuit. It is to a great degree problematic if you want a nice smooth even reliable electronic road from the guitar to your amp without

flying off that road and having the signal bounce and shake on the shoulders and maybe even go into the ditch. 

Fuzz fanatics love learning to control these Fuzz pedals by their touch and by changing the level of output from their guitars volume to deliberately create near catastrophes yet not total crash and burn.

Many builders design problems out, others believe it or not add to them for more excitement. Palmer let you dial in or out that control. In short you can stabilize or destabilize the sound. 

You may love for example the sound you get by turning down 

your guitars volume. Getting that right on the fly is an art. 

With this pedal you can dial it in on Fuzz itself so 

it is in the sweet spot the second you turn on the pedal.  

...The layout is easiest explained in broad strokes 

-Switches let you choose the type of transistors used. Germanium for a 

warm grainy sound or Silicon for a tight dense sound. 

-The Input Knobs act like your guitars volume control allowing you to preset how loud the signal going in is.

-BIAS knobs set how much juice the circuit gets, less makes the sound growl, or spit or sputter. 

-Bass/EQ controls are tone.

-The Pickup Simulator controls other pedals in your chain that may be sending low impedance signals from messing with a circuit that is high impedance and unlike most pedals can not ignore them. 

  ....<>^

   CONCLUSION

If you were confused with all that blah, blah I just wrote, ...cheer up it took me years to understand it and at times I had it wrong for long periods of time. One reason there are so many different Fuzz pedals is each maker decides if he was his Fuzz so in control that it can pass as a Metal style Overdrive or does he want some crazy sh@t left alone or perhaps fixed to not go overboard. 

I have the Solid Gold FX if 6 was 9 that is similar to this pedal. I have it dialed into a fairly 

tight sound and never change it. I get my perfect personal sound but if one knob was 

bumped out of place I would have to go to a chart of my settings to find and fix.

So my final word is it is an admirable unit priced fairly. 

 

 

 

___ IN 20 DAYS WE MAY SEE A MIRCLE PRODUCT ___ or at least a Must Have!!!

 SHOW TIME 2024     

NAMM      

Covid closed down NAMM and since then its importance has dwindled. The thing is did it become irrelevant over a slow change in the buying culture? Maybe it had more to do with Covid, drastic political and social shifts and world economic collapse. Sometimes it this small stuff adding up, LOL 😐

NAMM this year is different because as bad as things are they have majorly stabilized economically and show every sign of at least inching positively in a forward and promising tomorrow.

Rumors come from everywhere. Dean putting itself back on the map and a re-birth of Guild now that Yamaha own them are indeed highly probable.

We are all still spinning over bad economics and although we can still buy a thing or two we need to be blown away if not by price but value. In short we might buy a Ferrari kind of product but at a third of the price even if that third exceeds the common sense we have so far shown with our spending.

CONCLUSION    .....<>^                  

I think it we may see many things that really are dead cool and priced right. 

I also think other companies will be watching very closely to see if a few products become a "MUST HAVE". 

If they do things could indeed get better very rapidly. 

If not? ....Ouch 😧!!!!

 

MODELER- Kemper Player ($700 USD) vs. ToneX Pedal ($400 USD)

     eKemper Player vs. ToneX  Pedal  

DELAY- ELECTRO HARMONIX Slap-Back Echo .... all you need & cheap? or? even cheaper

ECHO-HARMONIX 

SLAP-BACK ECHO 

$81.00 USD

The first effect used on recordings was Reverb. It was done on the cheap. They put an amp in a small room with hard surfaces, like concrete often a basement or a bathroom with tiled walls to protect from slashing water and then mic the room. You could then blend that in the studio with another mic on the guys amp. These rooms were virtually small and the sounds would decay very quickly and one could easily hang some curtains to suck up any extra decay. The results were effective and because you did not get any multi repeats or long sustain you couldn't muddy the sound. 

In the 70's a very simple analog chip came along where you could record 45 mili-seconds and then play it back as one repeat.

With a knob to blend the clean guitar signal with the delayed one you now had this same effect in a pedal.

So E-H brought back a mini pedal version. The unit is simple with a wet and dry knob and a switch for the delay times of 45, 60 or 100ms. In general short times work best with fast tempos and long times with slower tempos. 

 

CONCLUSION ___

$23.00 USD 

Yes there is the obvious. Pretty much any modern digital or analog delay can do a slap-back. 

The big BUT! Besides the convenience a separate pedal for the effect, it is ideal as go to from your all purpose delay. If you have huge sound for a lead and click it off to go back the verse on a tune it is better to have something less drastic and unpleasant as a dead dry sound. 

It works so well that many guys for decades have used it as their always on sound just like a guy with a spring reverb in his amp. Analog sounds very warm and can rival a pricey reverb for a pleasing always on, and for dead cheap.  

For dead cheaper the Rowin LEF-314 is a Mooer Analog Delay re-branded. Zero difference but paint, logo and price. Other brands boldly write analog on their cheap pedals but it is total BS ..they are digital inside. This is a full on Analog delay that can of course be set to a single repeat on the F.back knob and the Time cut back to very little.

the fine print

With a delay the devil is in the details. Many delays are thin sounding or will fight for attention instead of lay back behind your guitars like a frame around a picture. In otherwards they want to be the painting not your guitar so move over, lol. With Electro-Harmonix they have a rep of making pedals that simply do the jobs even with warts and all. 

Mooer/Rowin are sometimes very good but others squeakers who barely sneak by. I have an old Mighty Sound M5 mini Analog delay with a nice fat sound used as a slap-back. If you push it into multiple repeats it is pretty trashy.  But I ONLY use it for slap-back. The Rowin could well be similar ?? 

DELAY- MXR M309JOSHUA Ambient Echo ___NEW___ first new pedal for 2024

MXR| M309 

 joshua 

ambient echo

$240.00 USD

I have a really big pet hate about these units. It is simple. I believe a guy should be able to plug in a pedal and pick a few tunes he knows how to play and instantly hear something  bordering on usable on at least one out of every few tunes. What the guy gets is red and yellow stripped beer farts swamping his dry guitar sound. WTF. 

Yes I am being facetious but there is literally a new ambient Delay on offer every week. Disney only needs a new Star Wars soundtrack every year or two. What are they needed for ...I underline ...NEEDED.

So what is this one all about. Well I am hopeful. The sounds are from the best of those from the last century. The Joshua does no have the word tree added but we all get the hint. As such they tend to be, dare I say it? Usable. 

CONCLUSION ___

Well for a start MXR have had the go to analog Delay for years although reissues and gourmet builders using NOS parts have 

grabbed much of that. MXR do as a rule just like Boss make a 

usable pedal. This appears to be one. It does for one thing a 

few basic very good vanilla sounds. So after a  week of 

making Sci Fi sounds in your bedroom and the novelty 

wore off you will still have a usable pedal. 

the fine print

Back when Noah got off the Ark and most of the EchoPlex pedals got water damage he invented the  

Electro Harmonix Deluxe Memory Man.

There are now 4 variations on offer. The big but is  Movall just brought out a very impressive

clone. So for $32.00 USD with free shiping on AliExpress you getcha-self an ambience delay.

No, like the original there there isn't any tap tempo.

I will not digress into why but in my opinion I never use one even if it comes on a unit. 

 I have one on order so if you can wait. I will do a 'Hands On' when I get it. 

 

UPDATE 

It arrived!!! If  instead of Movall it said JHS, Wampler or Gourmet Pedal U.S.A. etc. 

and cost me a couple of hundred and a bit I would not be more impressed!!!!  

The pedal is beautifully made and sounds killer. The damn thing 

is a total steal!!!!