Winston Psmith

February 19

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.

February 18

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 . . .

February 18

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.

February 13

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

February 13

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.

February 12

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

February 11

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.

February 9

@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.

February 6

1 hour ago, Thethirdapple said:

As I suffer from g.a.s. Getting into pedals seems like embarking on an endless mountain trek of new gear.😱

Vintage gear hits home for me, anything good to say about the older Vox, Korg, Roland “floor boards”?

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.

February 4

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?

February 2

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.

February 2

1 hour ago, Larryz said:

Many guitar players not only have more than one pedal, they also have more than one amp and more than one guitar. You can buy amps with a ton of onboard effects already programmed with foot switches instead of stomp boxes and/or multi-effects units. Or, you can run both. Some players have different pedal boards set up for different genres.

. . . 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?

February 2

Something from the 2022 Christmas album . . .

Waking Dream - Winston Psmith Project

February 2

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.

February 2

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.

February 1

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.

January 31

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?

January 30

@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.

January 29

Doing a quick search on those Boulevard Pedals, they only seem to have a presence on Reverb(?), and they only seem to have 4 pedals. I suspect that the Darkship and the smaller Airship are using the same Delay chip, as they both max out at 1300 ms.

January 29

6 hours ago, surfergirl said:

They've just intrigued me. I'm not really sure what the difference between a boost and a treble boost pedal are.

In general, a Boost Pedal should give your signal a boost across all frequency bands; think of it as a "MORE" or even a "LOUDER" pedal. While adding a Boost Pedal to your signal chain might also increase compression or even signal clipping, a Boost Pedal in and of itself shouldn't add any Distortion or tone coloration.

Treble Boosts do pretty much what the name describes, adding a distinctive High Frequency Boost to your Guitar signal. Treble Boosts were very popular among 70's British Prog Guitarists, like Steve Howe, for cutting through dense Synth & KB tones. Since Guitars and Synths occupy much of the same frequency range, they can wind up stepping on one another in the mix. (FWIW, many of those Prog Guitarists were also using Gibson Guitars with HB's, instead of SC's, like your Strats, and some players feel that HB's can 'muddy" your tone.)

January 26

14 years ago today, I found this scruffy mutt lost, strayed, or abandoned. He has turned out to be the smartest and sweetest of all of our dogs, and as of today, he is a very healthy, happy nearly 15-year-old dog.

FWIW, in my landscaping and catering work, I drive all over, and in just under 30 years, I've found somewhere around 50 dogs, running loose. We have gotten ALL of them safely back home, but for Nemo, who was clearly supposed to find his way here, to us.

If I found a bag with $1,000,000 in it tomorrow morning, that bag of money would still only rate as the second best thing I'd ever found by the side of the road: Nemo is #1!

FWIW - I did NOT name him after the little lost fish in the movie. I named him that because he had no name, no backstory when he came to us, and "Nemo" means "no one" in Latin.

January 22

If they didn't want to be seen on camera, they should have moved away from where he was filming as soon as they saw he was filming his performance. By inserting themselves in the process, and starting a confrontation, I'm sure they wound up with a LOT of people recording them, who might not have paid any attention, otherwise.

January 22

I use MFX extensively, both live and for recording, although most of my experience is with Boss' GT-series MFX, so my remarks will reflect that.

Faced with 100 or so User Presets, and maybe a dozen Amp Models to choose among, there's a temptation to try one of everything. Why not, they're all in there for a reason, right?

It's kind of the reverse of "One-Size-Fits-All." In trying to offer something for everybody, almost any MFX is going to include Models or Effects you probably don't need, and won't use.

One approach is to treat the Amp Modeler(s) in the MFX much like a real Amp, which is to say, design an Amp Model (or two, or three) with settings that generally work for you, and build your User Presets around it, by adding effects to the initial Amp Model, just as we would with a real-world rig consisting of an Amp and some effects. Anything with a Level Meter will help you sort out Level Matching, but as Caevan points out above, some effects carry their own psycho-acoustic imprint; Tremolo may seem to produce an overall drop in output levels, while OD/Distortion effects will generally be perceived as "louder," although perversely, I've seen where some OD/Distortion effects result in an overall drop in Output levels!?! One size definitely does NOT fit all . . .

Most of us have one Amp we rely on for whatever sounds we need, supplemented and enhanced by effects pedals, or rack gear. IDK anyone who shows up at a gig with an array of different Amps for different tunes? A Marshall or Soldano for Metal, a Fender Twin for Blues, a Vox for some throwback British Invasion tunes? Great way to alienate your bandmates, and incur the wrath of the FOH sound crew.

Two elements to be wary of, in many MFX - Compression and EQ. My approach to both is "Less Is More." In every Boss MFX I've ever heard, I've found that if a Factory Preset was too noisy, I could cut the noise simply by turning the Compressor Off. That doesn't mean that the Compressor itself was overly noisy, just that the Factory Presets were cranked way up, and the Compressor boosted the Noise level, by treating it as a low-powered signal.

You'll also find some kind of Tone or EQ settings where you might not expect it, like a High Cut and Low Cut in the Mod & Delay effects. Even where expected, there's not a lot of useful info. The OD/Distortion Models will have some kind of Tone settings, so will the Amp Models, and very often the Compressor, and of course, there's usually an onboard Equalizer. All good, except for the fact that most of the Tone controls don't tell you which frequencies they're contouring, or by how much, so you can wind up slicing and dicing your signal at different stages in the signal chain, without being entirely sure what you're doing to it.

January 20

2 hours ago, surfergirl said:

That's what I thought also. For my little 5 pedal board it's to expensive. For a larger board it could be worth a look.

I've looked into them, and even for my boards, but I'm still not sure. The Boss MS-3 tempts me, as much for the added effects as the switching ability, but not enough to have bought one, yet.

January 20

Looking this over carefully, it appears to be a dedicated switching unit, rather than being a full-function MFX. Given that, it's meant to accompany and control a pedalboard full of effects pedals, with the User Presets controlling which pedals are included in the signal chain, and what order they're in. I don't see any indication that there are any onboard effects, otherwise.

AFAIK, the Boss MS-3 is the only Loop Switcher that's also a MFX device?

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