Effect Pedals & Trap doors

Face it, whether you are a boutique amp snob or not, you've probably bought an effect pedal. The cost to performance value is often low and therefore you get more for your money. It would be nice to have a quiver of amplifiers to call on for each song but that is not practical nor inexpensive. The economy changed in 2008 and is slowly recovering, as a consequence of the world financial disaster, we all started buying effect pedals. Why? You can get a refreshing new sound for $150.00 instead of mortgaging your future with the purchase of a $3000.00 amplifier. The primary proof of this phenomenon is the big box Christmas catalogs that grew from 5 pages of effects to a swath of 40 pages of effects. Enough history; where's the cool stuff??

Enter the trap door. Some pedals, though not all pedals, have niffy adjustments under the panel. Some of the adjustments are obvious and others not. Look up the specifications for your specific pedal or look under the hood yourself.

Some things to beware of:

1. You might need to use a plastic screw driver.
2. Using a proper ground lead is prudent.
3. Note the initial settings on something that can be retrieved easily. 
4. Know your home position.
5. Know that each guitar, amp and multi-effect combo will react independently with your adjustments.
6. Keep notes - Amps, guitars, likes, dislikes and yes - indoor temperature and % R.H. (look up germanium transistor gain drift as germanium performance has some temperature dependence compared to silicon transistors).
7. MODIFICATIONS - BEWARE! - Even the most reputable modification house can screw up and the original manufacturer will not warranty a pedal that has been modified - Nor should they warranty a modification. Be smart.
8. See #3 through #7 and due diligence. 

Modified EXH Memory Man

Modified poorly soldered Ground wire

Nice job!

Cool Trap door adjustments!

Insult to injury - The modifier crushed the pot shafts. NEVER TRY TO FIX in the manner depicted. The shaft will fracture when pried open! 

Unmodified Cool Trap door pedals!

MXR Jimi Hendrix 70th Anniversary Fuzz pedal

Front Plate

MXR Carbon Copy Face Plate

Trap door!

J. Rockett Audio Designs - Josh Smith Duel Trem

  Trap Door - Blue square trim pot!

****Take notes and remember that changing guitars, pickups, amps, foot pedal chains will affect your tone. It would be unrealistic to think you can make changes; then swap out pedals like light bulbs without some affect to the end signal. 

! Don't make adjustments with the pedal plugged into the wall because you can be electrocuted and you can die!

Have fun and hope have fun chasing tones!

NEW - MXR Super Badass Distortion custom thru Gibson Traditional Les Paul and Fender Eric Johnson - Two Rock and Carr Impala

Jim Dunlop has just released a new pedal that sounds mighty nice and has a lot of zombie killing range.  In one of the videos below they have couple the pedal to the Carr Impala amp to get a wide range of pedal distortion. The Amp is set to a low volume clean setting and the pedal is run up, down and sideways to mutate the signal from ear love to impending doom. You can hear the classic 80's crunch, scooped out mids, or heavy sustain distortion. Supposedly this pedal is to be the jack of all trades, mulit-trick pony, and as cliche' as it may sound, MXR just may have pulled one out of their hat. The box is a sturdy unit that won't take up too much room on your pedal board and will run on AC/DC. The output is super responsive to the tiniest of tweaks. The unit is very dynamic and allows you to turn down your guitar volume and get slightly distorted bluesy grit and grime while allowing you to spin your guitar volume and feel the burn with it's touch sensitive electronics. Turn down the mids and up the distortion and hello evil vampire runs...... Wha Hooo! This pedal is just in time for summer and once you get it the neighbors are going to reach for the phone to call up the technology police because this thing is going to burn up the electrons and maybe cause a local sonic power outage. It's your turn to burn, check this pedal out and bring a fire extinguisher and some ice. Flame on brothers and sisters!

Here the MXR Super Badass Distortion paired with a Gibson Traditional Les paul and a Carr amp


Here the MXR Super Badass Distortion is paired with a Two Rock Schoefield and a Fender Eric Johnson Stratocaster.


Link to Jim Dunlop MXR Superbad ass Distortion here!

Jim Dunlop USA - link

Some new pedals....... Bogner! Ecstasy Red and Blue

I ran some of the following pedals through a Fender Deluxe 65 reissue and found the Bogner Red to be a very dynamic pedal that give you the heavy metal sound. The pedal is adjustments are very interactive and distinct. The variac was very interesting, yielding tone reminiscent of the famous brown sound. The Variac gave the pedal a very forgiving spongy feel as outlined in the video. The follow video is very accurate as to the tone this pedal is capable of producing. As mentioned above, I was using a very clean amp and the pedal  gave me thick tones and yet cleaned up well. If I had to sum up the tone it is very much like a Supercharged VOX AC30 class A tone. I used a Stratocaster and a Les Paul for my testing which by chance happens to be what they used in the video below. Nevertheless, these guitars are the standard baseline guitars I use for rock regardless of what type of equipment I am using. The Bogner pedals will leave a significant dent in your wallet but they are productive. Try out the Ecstasy Red and see if it is for you!



The Bogner Ecstasy Blue is similar to the red but has a bit less modern tone. True, this is subjective to the listener. To me this pedal yielded a tone similar to class A/B. Afterall, that is they have Plexi modes and such so they are going after what most will associate with the late 60's and early 70"s classic rock overdrive. The Ecstasy Blue is the same price as the Ecstasy Red  but if you think about it this way, as least you don't need to go out and buy a Plexi and a AC30 for arsenal - buy a clean sounding amp and these two pedals and save yourself truckloads of money! Check out the video's and or go to your local dealer and test these for yourself. One of these or both of these models might be the pedals you've been looking for in your quest for the ultimate tone.

TC Electronic Tone print App - Beam it

One of the coolest advancements in technology is now available for you, your guitar and your TC electronics effects. The TC Electronic Tone Print APP allows you to beam new settings to your pedal. It's better that they explain how it works in this video. Be prepared to be impressed!

I doubt I'd play with this on stage but it would certainly put a damper on my practice schedule as I'd be noodling with all the presets.
You will need a smart phone and currently TC only has an APP for iphones. But the Android firmware will be available soon. In addition to the phone, you will need to download the firmware here. 
This new feature is in addition to the tone-pint feature that comes stock with the tone-print pedal. Tone print allows you to download actual "prints" that other people have made and some of these prints are made by extremely popular musicians. Therefore, in addition to selling extremely versatile and dynamic pedals in their own right, the pedals allow you to collaborate with fellow musicians by creating a library for down and up loading tone-prints in the TONE-PRINT section at the TC site.
TC Electronic has a lot to offer.

Dunlop Fuzzface - Joe Bonamassa edition

Here we have a new "old" product. The ascetics are very pleasing and the tone is good. I like the unit but we need to realize that it is a signature reissue and therefore there are design constraints. The functional parameters of this unit are simple, volume and fuzz. Simply stated it works best when you over drive your amp and use the fuzz like an auto uses a nitrous oxide boost.

The design constraints are narrow as Dunlop tries to remain true to the original shape and size of this product. This is the part where I find personal conflict because I love the polished copper finish and the original look but it's a space sucker and has too big of a footprint to fit my over crowded pedal board. To use this I must decide what other pedal I'd like to remove to make space accommodations. lastly, it runs on a 9 volt battery and there isn't an AC option! Ouch!!

It doesn't take a brain surgeon to realize that this is a simple design that is well put together with great pots, switches and components. However, if you view the video you can see that the inside of the Fuzz face compartment doesn't utilize all the available space and a little over built. So there you have it - a conflicted opinion! If you have the space and you want the classic sound or if you are a Joe Bonamassa fan (who isn't?) then this pedal might be for you.

I love the circuit But this device needs the following features to be on my board:

1. AC circuit ability.
2. Smaller foot print to fit smaller space requirements.
3. Lower price.
4. A different model with all this stuff is what I want!?

Yeah, I am a pain - LOL

If you are a collector and have a ton of space - Buy it!

Currently, it seems that only PROGUITAR Shop has this product. This is the link!

DigiDesign Eleven

For more Eleven information - click here!
Digidesigns.com
Will this replace your current rig? This rack mount unit contains numerous effects as well as amplification simulation. I love my tube amps but lets look at it this way; the telephone took almost 50 years to perfect, the cell took roughly phone ten years. As an example of the technology paradigm shift rate; it took almost 40 years for the Telephone to reach significant levels of usage. In comparison it has taken only a decade for the Cell phone to reach the same levels. At this rate; technology doubles every decade and with this trend; 20 years of the 21 century will equate to 200 centuries of progress on a linear scale (at the rate of progress measured in 2000). I derive my rough hypothesis from Moore's law (Intel).

Sorry to say that one day my beloved Tube amp will make an excellent flower pot! Will the Eleven drive your tube amplifier into extinction? Find one and test it out.

Guitar effect pedal testing

Warning! This is a rant!

YouTube provides a wonderful medium for hearing and seeing products that are available. This is very cool as people want to see this type of advertising and they seek the vendor out rather than the vendor bombarding the consumer with commercials. Therefore YouTube has become a excellent marketing tool for people hawking tone enhancements. Everything is available to sample; Amplifiers, instruments, speakers, effects. This rant is about EFFECTS. I don't want to discourage YouTube testing of effect pedals but I would like to offer some suggestions to help the consumer.

As a consumer of electronic products you must realize that not all of these tests are objective but rather they are subjective. I often see tests where the amplifier alone will make the tone you seek if only you could play at full volume. Hint # 1 - The test might have been recorded at full volume and thus make the pedal sound better! So I decided to make a list of a practical test format for testing pedals.

• List the guitar used for testing.
• List the volume setting on the guitar.
• List the tone setting on the guitar.
• Indicate the pickups used (people often make changes while recording and fail to mention the adjustment).
• All of the amplifier parameters should be noted, i.e., type, brand, Eq settings, speaker type etc.
• When doing the pedal "A" vs "B" test - don't use other flipping pedals at all!
• Play the same damn riff and chord set on each device so we all can hear the difference - Sheesh!

At this point in time we have a truly power means of testing and marketing these tools but without containment of the basic parameters, the testing is flawed and pointless. Or the testing isn't pointless - it's deception. Therein lies my rant as I get tired of seeing this post or that post only find I have more questions after viewing than I had before I wasted 5 minutes of hearing someone pull off their best chops. I have always been a KIS fan - Keep it simple! Do you think race car drivers drive about the street at full speed while weaving about the traffic just to show you how great the new fancy car works? Nope. So save your Van Halen promo wannabe licks for your girlfriend and just play a few simple lines and basic chords. Audition the product not your skills. Maybe you will sell more pedals in this manner?