Winston Psmith

@Scott Fraser- Anything that I rely on, particularly for live use, I have at least one backup, and that includes Guitars, Synths, MFX, and yes, power supplies. Yes, I'm overcautious, even somewhat paranoid, but WTH, it works for me. I have at least three or four 1 Spots, and a couple of PA-9 Power All's (basically the same thing, a 1700mA power supply), that aren't dedicated to any one device, so I can always count on having a backup available. I even have a little toolbox designed for first aid gear, where I keep all of my backup power supplies, and adapter cables. At right around $20US, you can't afford NOT to have one!

Well understood, and your response is well appreciated.

I have to agree with @Caevan O’Shite regarding Fuzz & Filter effects in most MFX; they lack something critical, a certain tonal quality that just doesn't come through. I have, however, been able to sculpt some very nice OD & Distortion effects from Digital MFX, even some very . . . dare I say it . . . "warm" sounds. Couple of thoughts here. A Digital Pedal, like the Iridium, wherein all the DSP is dedicated to one type of effect is very likely to outshine a similar effects model within a Digital MFX, because the Digital MFX has to divide the total processing power of the DSP among a legion of different effects models. Many MFX are still configured such that you can only stack effects up to the limits of the DSP, so adding the Stereo Pitch-Shift Effect means you might have to give up the Gated Reverb, or the Ping-Pong Delay? Others are configured so choosing any given effect from within an effects type means that you can't have another effect of that same type; you can have Phaser or Flanger, not both, and forget about redundant effects, like CHO+CHO. OTOH, some Digital MFX also offer more exotic, even bizarre, proprietary effects that you probably won't find in a pedal . . . which is fine, IF you really need or want those sounds. I'm sure I've said it before in this thread somewhere, but there is no ideal "One-Size-Fits-All" rig; either way, there are trade-off's and considerations, flexibility, portability, dependability, affordability, and even repairability, or replaceability. FWIW, I play Mix-&-Match depending on what I need at any given time. My Ambient Pedalboard has a handful of individual pedals feeding into a compact MFX, which doubles as an Amp Modeler. A Voodoo Labs 4X4 power brick powers everything, so I only need one power outlet to plug into, and I can go direct to FOH front the MFX.

Can't argue with that, as it fits exactly with what I've observed. I have no other way to test it, and would learn nothing from dis-assembling it. "Oh, look, I've totally screwed it up!" Something ain't right, that's for sure, and it's not worth risking any of my pedals on it, nor getting upset over it. It has the older Visual Sound logo underneath, instead of the TrueTone logo, so I know I've had it for a good while. Like I said, it's a quandary, not a crisis, I was just curious if anyone else had this happen, as I know a lot of us use the 1 Spot. I have more, and all of them seem to be working well. Thanks, everyone, for responding.

@CEB- I've been using 1 Spots for quite a while, as well, and I've never seen this, either? Even now, I have an older model 1 Spot, with the skinny cord, rated at only 1000mA, and it still works? Hell, I have a couple of old Boss PSA-120's from the late 80's/early 90's, along with an Ibanez 9-volt adapter from the same period, and all of them still function. I try to be good to my gear, so it tends to last. The pedal in question powered right up with another 1 Spot, and with the 500mA Boss AC adapter, as well, so it's definitely not an issue with the pedal. Among my other at-home tests, I tried using the problem 1 Spot with another Delay pedal, and again, no power-up. The truly weird part is that the 1 Spot is clearly putting out some power, and I'd been using it just the day before, with no problems. FWIW, the Tuners only draw around 20mA, and they powered up with no issues. It's a quandary, not a crisis. The pedal is fine, and I have more than enough power supplies to go around. I'll get in touch with TrueTone, see what they say.

I respectfully disagree, as I often use a single 1 Spot, including the one that just failed on me, to power a single high current draw pedal, so long as it's a 9 volt pedal. IIRC, the Deluxe Memory Man and PolyChorus weren't just high current draw, but also much higher voltage than a 9 volt power supply could manage. The Polychorus alone is a 24 volt pedal. The 1 Spot is supposed to put out 1700mA, far more than the 225mA needed for this pedal, and after switching to another 1 Spot (I have five or six?), the pedal powered right up. I've also used a single 1 Spot to power my Line 6 Delay Modeler, which is supposed to draw around 300mA+/-? FWIW, the Boss power supply that's recommended for this pedal only puts out 500mA, more than twice the 225mA current draw of the Delay, but less than one third of the 1700mA output of a fully functioning 1 Spot. I'm used to power supplies just plain giving out, I've never had one suddenly drop in output before.

The other day, plugging one of my Delay pedals into a 1 Spot, I got no power-up, nothing. Swapping out pedals and power supplies, it was clear that the pedal was fine. For experiment's sake, I pulled out a low current draw Guitar Tuner (20mA), hooked it up to the 1 Spot, and it powered up, no problem? I tried another Tuner, again, it powered right up. Going back to the original Delay pedal, rated at 225mA, no luck. I've tried just about every simple A/B comparison you might think of, trying different outlets on a power strip, plugging directly into the wall outlet, trying another high current draw pedal (no luck there, either), you name it, same result. I don't have a way to measure exactly how much power the 1 Spot is putting out, but it's nowhere near 1700mA. Not a tragedy, I have other power supplies, and my Pedalboards all run off of Voodoo Lab power bricks. Still, I would expect that the 1 spot should either work or not, rather than stepping down the power output? FWIW, I've never had any power supply do this before. I've had them wear out and stop working altogether, usually after long use, but not this. Has anyone else run into an issue like this with a 1 Spot?

Keeping the REC/DUB switch separate from the PLAY switch is a bonus. Having your Looper go into DUB Mode when you meant to start Playback is a big PITA, and makes for all manner of unfortunate glitches.

I'd been looking for a Red Panda Particle Delay for quite a while, and found one sitting near the DD-500, so I couldn't resist. The Krell Machine in a compact pedal. This video is as good an explanation as I can find for it . . .

I love Delay effects . . . probably my favorite thing right after Distortion effects, and I'm more than set for Distortion effects. A while back, I got a nice used Boss DD-200 Delay. I like it very much, but it made me curious about how much more I'd get out of the DD-500? I kept on eye on my FLUMS' Reverb site, and a used DD-500 turned up, at a more than reasonable price. The short take: If you don't want to dive headfirst into a Rabbits' Warren of menus and submenus, just back away. The DD-500 is NOT a Plug-&-Play effect, by any means; there is much more going on than the front panel controls can address. This thing is set up much more like a complex MFX device than a Digital Delay pedal, and it would really benefit from being connected to a MFX device with extensive MIDI Control, a MIDI Synth, or even a dedicated MIDI Footswitch Controller. Before you even begin editing the Delay effects themselves, there are a lot of choices to make, and a lot of menus to navigate. Just deciding what the TAP/CTL switch does requires menu-diving, for example. Let's get to the fun stuff . . . Of course, most of the sounds are very good, which is no surprise; Boss has been making Digital Delay pedals for around 40 years. There are some very cool unconventional effects (Pattern Delay, Slow Attack, and Tera Echo), the usual suspects (Analog, Tape, Reverse, Dual, and Digital), a couple of head-scratchers (Filter, SFX, Shimmer), and a Vintage Digital category, which is sort of a "best of Boss/Roland", featuring an SDE-2000 model, an SDE-3000, and a DD-2. The Filter Delay includes a variable Filter effect (LPF/BPF/HPF), that can be placed before or after the Delay line, and driven by an LFO, for Auto-Wah sounds. Placed before the Delay line, you can try for a Jerry Garcia-inspired "Mutron" tone; placed after the Delay line, each successive repeat re-triggers the Filter. Driven by the LFO, it can sound a lot like a Phaser or Flanger, but you get extensive control over the tonality of the effect. Analog Synth users will be right at home with this one. SFX adds a Bit Crushing effect, not everyone's first choice, but an interesting addition. Think of tossing your Repeats into a sonic wood chipper. Shimmer adds Pitch-Shifting to the Delay. Small (Fine, on the menu) amounts of Pitch-shift can add a nice detuning, "thickening" effect; larger amounts of Pitch-shift benefit from a light touch. I've tried getting a Bell Tree or Barber-Pole Flanger effect with it, but no luck, as yet. The Analog Delay is built around virtual BBD's, which are called "Stages" in the Analog menu. Each "stage" allows for up to 300ms of Delay Time, and you can stack up to four virtual BBD's, allowing for a total of up to 1200ms of Delay Time. Carries the idea of "modeling" to a logical extreme, I suppose, but it seems more like something you'd encounter in a virtual plug-in effect? The Pattern Delay is DEEP; Enter At Your Own Risk. Imagine Ping-Pong Delay with 16 Delay lines, in rhythmic patterns, as if synced to a Sequencer. Some of the Patterns are fairly simplistic, almost like having a straightforward Ping-Pong Delay, while others are dense and complex. Very interesting accompaniment for Chord Melody work, or even simple strumming. There's a USER setting for the Pattern Delay, where you can set the main Delay Time, how many and which of the 16 Delay Lines you want ON, where they appear in the stereo field, and their percentage, or ratio, in relation to the main Delay Time. Oh, yes, you can create more than one Preset with different USER settings. Brew up a pot of coffee, or your fuel of choice, and prepare for a very long session. Slow Attack is pretty much self-descriptive; it adds an Attack Delay to the Repeats, or to both the Repeats and your initial Input, acting like a "Slow Gear" effect. This can a very beautiful, even haunting effect. Tera Echo is odd, in a fun way. Boss describes it as somewhere between Echo and Reverb. Maybe if your Reverb Tank was full of Space Gelatin, or something? It's a very textured sound, like a thick, chewy Synth sound with heavy Filtering. Some general things . . . There's an onboard Looper, which requires you to press the A and B switches together to engage it, at which point the A, B, and TAP/CTL serve as REC/DUB, PLAY, and STOP controls for the Loop, in that order. It seems very like the Looper function built into most recent Boss MFX. Treat it as an add-on, rather than a full-function Looper. It's possible to set the Maximum Delay Time to 10 seconds, but that requires diving into yet another menu, and not all of the Delay Types are capable of the 10 second limit, or even the factory-set 5 second limit. The more DSP-intensive effects, like Shimmer, Analog, and Reverse, have shorter Delay Times, and Tera Echo is limited to 700ms, period. 10 seconds is not a lot of Delay time, considering the old DD-20 offered 23 seconds of Delay Time, and that was 20 years ago?!? You can add Modulation to any of the Delay Types, and you get a choice of a Single Phaser, or a Bi-Phase-style effect. While the MOD Depth is controlled by a knob on the top, like the DD-200, you can set the MOD Rate within each Preset by going into the Patch Menu, which is your main editing Menu. There are others, and they also get reedy deep, which leads me to a couple of issues with the DD-500. First off, much of the DD-500's processing power, and potential, lies within the multi-layered menus and sub-menus. Just turning the knobs and pressing the switches isn't going to get you very far, at all. I've seen more than one reviewer complaining that the DD-500 was too complicated, and some of them went back to the DD-200, for ease of use. (FWIW, the DD-200 also has a handful of Control Menus to navigate, but they're all for setting Control Assign or MIDI Parameters, not for editing the effects. All of the DD-200's effects editing can be accessed from the knobs and switches on the top.) There's a TRS jack for either one outboard EXP Pedal, or two more CTL Pedals, which will give you access to more functions, for more $$$, and with a slightly larger footprint. Boss/Roland really loves selling us those add-on's; at $400+/-, a new DD-500 doesn't include the AC adapter you're going to want for it. OTOH, if Boss had tried to include control knobs, switches, or sliders for most of the functions within the DD-500, it would be the size of a MFX Pedalboard, and probably cost more like $600-700. Even at $400, it should at least come with the AC adapter. I'm already wondering what I can get it to do sync'ed with a MIDI Sequencer, or hooked up with my GT-10, which also sends MIDI PC (Patch Change) and CC (Continuous Controller) commands, and there I am, back to viewing it as a versatile MIDI device, more than a Guitar effects pedal. To me, that's a good thing; YEMV.

FWIW, just now looking for Thorpy Tacit Blue on Reverb, that listing isn't showing up.

There is no way they're offering a new Thorpy pedal for less than it would have cost them at dealer/wholesale prices. My FLUMS has had a few Thorpy pedals over time, and even used, they sell for around $200US.

Detroit gave us a lot of great Music, but nothing sounded like the MC5. Rest in power, Brother.

I recall a perfectly absurd photo of the 1st President Bush pretending to play a cheap Epiphone Guitar, with "The Prez" badly painted on the front. To correct a misimpression, which was my own fault, "Pop" isn't exactly the right word for what I meant, although "mainstream" or "accessible" aren't much better? While Blues, Folk, Country, and Gospel aren't "Pop" in the most simplistic, reductionist sense, any one of them is likely to be more popular, and have a wider level of general acceptance than Prog Rock, or even Jazz Guitar. Those lists aren't made for Musicians, by Musicians, they're made for people who will feel good about recognizing most of the names on the list, and having their choices re-affirmed. Name recognition counts for a great deal, in the public's perception of success.

@Synthaholic- These lists are generally the subjects of derision or very dark humor among Guitarists. They're driven by popularity and name recognition, at best, at worst, they're complete BS. A lot of truly great Musicians are left off of these lists because their work isn't the kind of thing you're going to hear in a commercial, or as the title theme to some action movie; it's not "Pop," however loose that category or definition.

Pedals Proliferate, Period. Once you start collecting them, well, you'll see . . . At one point, I had well over 100, and no, there was no reasonable way that I was going to use them ALL at one time. As far as some of the older floor units,I have a LOT of experience with the Boss GT-series MFX. Feel free to PM me, if you like. In the meantime, I'm going to take a big step back, for a moment, just to give some perspective. Think of your "sound" as a structure, of a sort. The Foundation of that structure is your Guitar tone, the next part of that structure is going to be your Amp tone, and for many of us, the next critical step is finding the right OD or Distortion sound. Everything else comes afterwards, AND should complement, or enhance, the rest of the structure. Whatever effects you choose, and whether you choose individual pedals, or an All-In-One MFX, your main consideration should be your sound, and what works for you.

Lest anyone get the wrong idea, I don't advocate sound effects for everybody, and everything; one size most definitely does not fit all, when it comes to Music, and sound. I can not imagine the beautiful French Horn that opens the last movement of Stravinsky's "Firebird" being in any way improved by a Phaser or Flanger, nor would I care to hear Barber's "Adagio For Strings" with Ring Modulation as a feature. OTOH, the Music that called to me required a very different set of tools, for a very different set of sounds. I knew, very early on, that I was not an Acoustic Musician, and luckily, I've been able to assemble a very nice toolkit, for whatever it is that I do?

I feel like he really gets it, in terms of that initial excitement, that "OH, WOW, it does THIS!" factor you should get when plugging into a new pedal.

. . . and even different pedals of the same effects group, for slightly different "flavors" of Overdrive or Distortion. Try the "All Knobs At Noon" comparison between a TS9 Tube Screamer and a BD-2 Blues Driver, for example. Respectfully, with regard to @Larryz's observation that most other Instruments don't sound their best when run through Guitar pedals - dynamics, gain structure, and frequency response have a lot to do with it - Jean-Luc Ponty was able to conjure heavenly sounds, running an Electric Violin through a Phaser, and Eddie Harris did some beautiful things running his Sax through an Echoplex. Exceptions that prove the rule, perhaps?

Something from the 2022 Christmas album . . . Waking Dream - Winston Psmith Project

Greetings, @Thethirdapple I use both individual pedals, and MFX, for different reasons, so let me see if I can come up with a good answer. You're right, to a degree, about the "depth" or feel of individual pedals. While it's not as simple as Analog vs Digital, I have yet to craft a 4-stage Phaser sound in any of my MFX that has quite the tone and feel of a simple Phase 90; I can get really close, but . . . Pedals are also very user-friendly. You turn the knobs until you find a sound that you like, and you're set. Some players really dislike programming MFX, and scrolling through parameters trying to create a sound. It's a very different process, and for a lot of players, it's not as much fun. The flip side is that MFX are very cost-effective. For the price of four or five pedals, you can probably find a MFX that has all or most of the sounds in those pedals, plus a lot more. It also makes it very easy to have different sounds set up for different tunes. Depending on which MFX device you choose, you'll get 20, or 60, or 100, or even 200 User Presets, which is like having 200 different Amp+Effects rigs in one box. You may not use them all, but you may also find some effects you hadn't tried before. One last point. In a loud, live club, with people dancing, and drinking, and possibly singing along, no one is going to hear the subtleties of a carefully-chosen boutique pedal array, and if some drunken dancer spills their drink on your pedalboard . . . well, That's All, Folks. A decent MFX will more than do the job, with a minimum of cables, connections, and AC adapters, and if you've backed up your User Patches (which you should), even if your MFX gets drowned, you can quickly restore your sounds into another of the same model.

Helios Creed offered one of the best, and most pertinent, pieces of advice for Space-Rock Guitarists: "Tune up before the hallucinogens kick in." I'll be very interested to see how other Guitarists integrate their Guitars and effects into the signal paths of Modular Synths. Many Analog, and Virtual Analog Synths have an Audio In jack, that allows you to use your Guitar, or just about anything else, as an Oscillator. It does not, however, quite turn your Guitar into a Synth. In a very real sense, you're using much of the Synth as a Signal Processor. Unlike patching together a chain of effects pedals, which are then in a fixed order, "patching" as an active verb is a large part of playing and using a Modular system. You can change the order of the various Modules, and how one or more Modules influence the others, depending on where they are in the signal path, and how they're patched into one another. Think about trying to switch the order of your effects pedals IRT, while playing live: even with one of those Loop Switchers on your board, you probably can't change the order of your effects pedals themselves, and unless you have an Expression Pedal controlling some of the parameters, you probably can't change any of the settings on your pedals IRT, without turning knobs. OTOH, Modular systems are a knob-twirlers paradise . . . @Dannyalcatraz- At one point, you'd shown me a video of a Guitarist with his Guitar plugged into a Neutron Semi-Modular Synth, and that's what he'd done, plugged his Guitar into the Synth's Audio In.

Dynamics-driven effects are not an entirely new concept, but I haven't seen it taken to this level with Guitar effects, until now. Part of the beauty, and insanity, of a Modular Synth system is the interactivity of all the various Modules, or components. Guitar effects chains are linear; the signal starts with your Compressor, or OD, goes through your Mod effects, into your Delay/Reverb effects, then out to your Amp. Turning a knob on your Phaser may change your overall sound, but it won't change any of the settings on your other pedals. Modular systems reach forwards and backwards. In a Modular Synth rig, turning a knob on any given Module can also have an influence on other Modules, depending on how you've arranged all those Patch Cables: turning up the Rate on a Phaser might also increase the Density of your Reverb, or decrease the Gain on your OD, and this are just some straight-forward examples. A dear friend once warned me that a Modular Synth wasn't merely an Instrument, it was a way of life. While I'm not sure how many Guitarists will embrace this, it seems to me to be a logical extension of what's happening with Guitar effects, and the resurgence of Modular Synths. I'd be very interested in patching the Chorus or Delay pedals to my Semi-Modular Synth, and turning some knobs.

Interesting . . . I have to wonder if they're compatible with the voltage of Modular Synth rigs, or other pedals with patch connections, like Konami's pedals?

@surfergirl- I have two concerns with cheap import pedals. One is that I don't really want to support a nationalized industry ripping off designs by independent makers. This is also why a lot of people aren't fond of Behringer, either, but that's another subject . . . The second part is dependability. Cheap is as cheap does: If something doesn't last, it's not really a bargain, and the real cost is greater than the money you threw away on it. At risk of ranting here, but . . . If someone buys a $25 pedal because it's just $25, and then it doesn't last, it's not just their $25 that's been wasted. It's all the time, and human labor, and materials dug out of the Earth, so someone could send a piece of disposable crap halfway around the world, just to have it wind up as toxic waste in a landfill somewhere.