the twisted world of guitar pedals III

According to urban legends, the Inuit have more than a dozen words for one and the same thing: snow. But forget that, it’s nothing, really. The ambitious modern guitarist is guaranteed to know a multiple of different words for one and the very same phenomenon: distortion. Seriously, guys, who comes up with terms like “clean distortion” or “transparent overdrive”? The other day, I was searching the online store of my trusted dealer for distortion pedals and got 632 hits.

Anyway, somewhere in the sheer mass of pedals and terminology, the really interesting concepts and devices are lurking. And from my humble explorations in the twisted world of guitar pedals, I mostly found them in the realm of boutique manufacturers. Small companies that have often gained a large following among guitarists and are looking for new approaches and distinctive sounds that cannot be found in the mass-produced products of the big manufacturers.

They not only experiment with new ideas and designs that larger companies may overlook, but also take the risk of being successful with niche products. They skillfully combine analog and digital technology to reinterpret classic effects or bring entirely new concepts to the table. You can literally tell that many of these companies are run by musicians who know the needs and wishes of guitarists or just are willing to work closely with customers to develop very individual or extraordinary pedals.

For me personally, some of these boutique devices and manufacturers are a true source of inspiration, whether as a musician or plugin designer. And I can only hope that they continue on their chosen path, survive difficult economic times, and above all, don’t get swallowed up by the big boys.

 

the twisted world of guitar pedals I

the twisted world of guitar pedals II

the twisted world of guitar pedals II

Meanwhile I had the opportunity to put my hands on some Fairfield Circuitry effect pedal stuff mentioned earlier here and the “Meet Maude” analog BBD delay was right here on my desk for a deeper inspection. My actual experience was a rather mixed one.

Focusing on a rather dark and LoFi sound quality on the one hand plus a rather simplistic feature set concept wise on the other, they do not appear to be very flexible in practise and this at a rather steep price point. They appear to be very noisy featuring all kinds of artifacts even when integrated to the mixing desk via reamping. One may call this the feature itself but at the end it makes it a one-trick pony. If you need exactly that, here you have it but you get nothing beyond that. To me this trade off was too big and so I send it back.

However, I found their nifty low pass gate implementation (very prominently featured within their “Shallow Water”) that much unique and interesting that I replicated it as a low pass filter alternative in software and to have it available e.g. for filtering delay lines in my productions. The “Shallow Water” box made me almost pull the trigger but all in all I think this stuff seems to be a little bit over-hyped thanks to the interwebs. This pretty much sums it up for now, end of this affair.

Timeline & BigSky – The new dust collectors?

Going into the exact opposite direction might be a funny idea and so I grabbed some Strymon stuff which aims to be the jack of all trades at least regarding digital delay and reverb in a tiny stomp box aka desktop package. To be continued …

Further readings about BBD delays:

• the Ibanez AD202 analog delay
• the Dynacord VRS-23 analog delay

the twisted world of guitar pedals I

Quite recently I had a closer look into the vast amount of (guitar) effect pedals out there. Most are already DSP based which surprised me a little bit since I still ecpected more discrete analog designs after all. While looking for some neat real analog BBD delay I finally stumbled across Fairfield Circuitry’s “Meet Maude” which got me intrigued, having a rather rough look&feel at first sight but some very delicate implementation details under the hood.

Their delay modulation circuit has some randomness build in and also there is a compression circuit in the feedback loop – both designs I’ve also choosen for NastyDLA and which makes a big impact on the overall sound for granted. But the real highlight is the VCF in the delay feedback path which actually appears to be a low-pass gate – a quite unique design and soundwise also different but appealing in its very own regard.

They employed very similar concepts to their vibrato/chorus box “Shallow Water” featuring also random delay modulation and a low pass gate but this time a little bit more prominent on the face plate. On top, their JFET op-amp adds some serious grit to any kind of input signal. All in all, I did not expect such a bold but niche product to exist. If I ever will own such a thingy, there will be a much more detailed review here for sure.