The Guitar and Other Machines

[TheMarlin]

Have ordered a Sonicake Blue Skreamer to try out.

Overdrive sounds straight forward, but is a minefield. There are a tonne of different sound/styles of overdrive. From chimey edge of breakup, through to 70’s rock/punk, to doom metal.

Some work well in one setting, but awful in another. For example, the EHX Big Muff (a fuzzy overdrive) REALLY comes into its own when an amp is running at full pelt and already breaking up. Stomp on the Muff then, and it’s pure magic. At home bedroom volume levels, it’s sounds utterly crap.

One of ny favourite cheap OD pedals is the Joyo Sweet Baby (a rip off over the Mad Professor Sweet Honey), oddly enough, derived from the Tube screamer i absolutely hate. he Tube Screamer, it makes my skin crawl. Horrible sounding thing, only EVH ever got a good sound out of one.

Other great OD include the Tommy (Celine Pure Sky is a good cheap clone), the Wampler Tumnus,

I usually run two OD pedals on my board, plus at least one fuzz. One OD set at ‘edge of breakup’, and another set a little more dirty, then stack the for 70’s rock sounds. It’s a good compromise for tonal flexibility.

You’ll find the sound you’re hunting in your head. If you give us an idea of what you want to achieve, we can help better guide your purchases.

Bit of advice, not all budget pedals are great, and many have lifespans that can be measured minutes, not years.

I had a cheap pedal that shorted, blew my power supply and destroyed my Strymon El Capistan and Blue Sky. So be careful randomly buying cheapies, get advice first, or you may have a very expensive mistake on your hands.


,

[slinger]

I had a cheap pedal that shorted, blew my power supply and destroyed my Strymon El Capistan and Blue Sky...

Fkn OUCH!²

[TheMarlin]

I had a cheap pedal that shorted, blew my power supply and destroyed my Strymon El Capistan and Blue Sky...

Fkn OUCH!²

Yup. Also took out a rare early Nocturne Brain Seltzer pedal. The pedal shorted, blew the power supply, which burned out the power supplies and fried the circuit boards of all three pedals. All knackered way beyond redemption.

All my other pedals survived, but that was a hell of an expensive lesson to learn.

Buying cheap can end up costing you a future.

[Fretless]

Yes, I confess. Guilty as charged. Cheap pedals.

Hopefully, just getting a bit of experience in this way will point me into a sensible upgrade path where I can pick and choose where to place higher-grade components further down the line.

Learning process, beginner level. Like I've had that chorus pedal for about 20 years and this is the first time I've actually used it properly!

I have one expensive pedal, the DL4 and that has its own 12V power supply. The rest of my pedals PLUS the Thinline guitar cost about the same as a new El Capistan.

I do a little research on every unit and am not just going for the absolute cheapest Chinese knock-offs. Brands like Sonicake and Lekato appear to have a reasonable reputation.

Also taking advantage of Amazon's return policy. If it's not what I want, it goes back.

I can compare this process to the Raspberry Pi streamers I was playing about with 10 years ago (FINALLY - a mention of Hifi in this thread!). Started off cheap & cheerful, gradually becoming more sophisticated as I got to grips with them and then attaining a level where I got the performance I was looking for. And I'm still using them.

Think that I will put new strings on the Thinline today.



Edit: the cheap pedal-setup is already giving me a lot of pleasure, with sounds and textures that are really exciting. It is doing what it needs to do and that is - getting me started.

[Fretless]

New set of 10-46 D'Addario's, oiled the fretboard.

Sounds lovely. More crystalline at the top. E-Bow works better. I found the HB strings to be a bit thick and now have the same strings on both guitars.

[Fretless]

The view from the driver's seat:



I'm messing it up a bit now and experimenting with the pedal chain.

Temporary setup awaiting more patch leads. From R=>L:

Behringer Fuzz (going back)
Lekato compressor
TC Phaser
Sonicake overdrive
Quiklok volume
Boss chorus
Sonicake digital delay
Sonicake reverb
DL4 delay

The Fuzz pedal has been replaced by a Sonicake Tube Skreamer Overdrive which is a big improvement as the Fuzz was just too messy. This pedal is tuneable to bring varying degrees of 'dirt' into the sound. It reacts heavily to the compressor but that's just a case of getting to know how things work.

Also new is a Sonicake Digital Delay. Eh? Another delay pedal! Yet again Bill Vencil got me curious with a video about 'Stacking Delays' (he used four!), where the output from an echo unit is fed into the input of another to produce complex delay effects.

This Sonicake pedal is VERY simple: one setting with variable repeats and delay time. The repeats gradually decay away and degrade. A clean sound but, on its own, not very inspiring....

... until you hook the second delay unit up. Ha! Now we're getting into the realm of layered delays. Started messing about and suddenly had this great U2-style sound with the Phaser running. Loads of fun!

This multi-delay idea is very intriguing and I'll be working on it. However the Sonicake delay is so limited that it may be returned so that a more flexible second delay pedal can be sought.

The move up to better / more expensive pedals will, out of budgetary necessity, be a more cautious one. But the cheapies are very educational.

The new strings and a touch of oil to the fretboard have increased the playability of the red Thinline. It's actually astounding me how quickly I am getting accustomed to guitars. Slowly starting to come to terms with chord shapes and progressions.

[TheMarlin]

The usual layout is guitar, fuzz, drive, modulation, delay, and reverb.

I sometimes put modulation (chorus, or tremolo) before the overdrive.

Fuzzes are finickety , they don’t play well with other pedals feeding into them, so they always go first, or your signal will get strangled.

[slinger]

The other view, and I'm not saying it's right, is that with the "dirt" pedal(s) first, everything else is working with a "degraded" signal.

The best bet, especially when targeting a particular type of sound is experimentation. I'd say first or last is your best bet for dirt, and everything else is negotiable.

As you can see from my attempt at an ambient setup I've got all of my dirt pedals on a completely separate input, with the rest of the pedals on the amp's effects loop. It gives me great flexibility, and I can run one board without the other, or a combination of the two.



Experimenting is half the fun.

[slinger]

I've made the above image a bit bigger, so you can actually read it.

[Fretless]

Now I can read it !



It looks to my inexperienced eye that you have an enormous array of tone possibilities there.

And a fondness for TC pedals.



And here's me wondering about a second delay unit. The Sonicake Digital Delay is too limited with a single setting that degrades repeats into an ugly sonic mush. Going to return it.

Will try another as the 'stacking' effect is just wonderful