Looking for an effects pedal

looking for an effects pedal? when was the last time you saw it?

thanks folks, remember to tip your waittress!

for rizzle, g-money, save the money for a more serious guitar and a legit tube amp.... the 100 to 300 bucks you'll spend on a satisfy stompbox experience could contribute substantially to more important upgrade... like a serious guitar and amp

To answer you, first you could answer me.

What are your musical influences and favourite artists? How do you like to play, are you finding yourself as a rhythm or lead player? Do you use the effects on your little marshall?

How about the Big Muff fuzz? I mean, those are normally used by both artists. There are some cheap fuzz pedals, but EHX Big Muff is a must-have.

its a solid state practice marshall, for real, the order of attack on gear for anyone looking to play rock music should be amplifier, guitar then effects. A lot of people don't want to ehar that ebcause individual effects pedals are relatively cheap and easy to aquire, but people sink down a ton of money into pedalbaords and then find when they play shows their beginner amp isn't cutting it.... then they come abck n equipboard and start asking what the best deal in tube amps is because they sunk all their cash into effects pedals the last few eyars isntead of saving it and buying an amp. Just smoke that over, youngin'. You're probably not getting a lot of legit shows out of the amp you've got, its a bedroom amp. Maybe its got enough power to serve as a backup.

On the amp front, consider the quilter stuff. Its solid state, but the little Quilter 45 watt pedalboard amp I bought a month ago on a lark is blowing my mind with tis power and very tube-amp-like tones. And I am comparing it to my haord of vintage tube amps. 150 dollars brand new. Then get a big muff and some swirly/echoey stuff. Effects are fun, but you cna play a show without them.... but a nice sounding amplifier with plenty of power if needed? well, try playing a show withough an amp or with soemthing not loud enough or that soudns abrasive and gets lost behind the drums when you kick on your distortion pedal and see how happy you are ;-)

and you need an amp too Walrus

WHOA WHOA WHOA

You just recommended a pedalboard amp to someone looking to buy their first pedal. There are NO pedals so there is no pedalboard.

Also suggested a $150 amp HEAD that still requires a speaker cabinet which also does not exist. Let us not buy a new amp quite just yet.. these can be mic'ed up quite successfully...

So pedal choices....

I am going to second the Big Muff call but will take into account the relationship this pedal will have on a 15w solid state marshall with built in effects and suggest it may play to roughly to be enjoyable at this level.

I recommend trying a muff style pedal in a guitar store environment, in your model of amp, or even take your marshall in to try the pedal with it.

I initially asked about effects with your amp because I have played with this exact model in stores, and wasnt sure if the onboard effects were in use and wanting something different, or looking to replace them.

Muff... NOT a fuzz pedal... differences will be evident when playing... muff has a smoothness. An eno bmf fuzz is a suitable entry level copy that wont break the bank.

I will also put forward a tubescreamer clone, the Digitech Bad Monkey will give you some thrills that dont blow the budget.

Big muff AND Tubescreamer (or their clones), dialong in some on amp effects and rock stardom awaits.

my pedalboard ampis not on my pedalboard. Its in a drawer. although if I start playing out again like I hope to I will likely put it in a rack drawer as a backup amp.... with the peals. That's if I don't get the enw Boss looper/multiFX and ditch my TC echoes and Line6 m5

BUT! right now that shit is in the extra-guitar-gear drawer with other utility boxes that don't need to be setup and ready to travel. You could just sit that shit on top of a 2x12 and have at it whenever and wherever, nothing else is needed.

I just think everyone needs a killer amp and their practice ampa s a abckup, a serviceable axe and a backup, and maybe, just maybe some abd reverb.... okay, not really! You don't need the reverb. Play louder and shit will reverberate.

and startingout, putting a bunch of shit in line hurts your development, ti does.... stompboxes are responsible for piss poor touch... I blame them!

https://youtu.be/Um9W0JS0s8s

that said, I think the most useful thing a guy with a marshall SS practice amp could invest in as a first pedal is a good multiFX just to get an aproximation of all the effects.... the dirt will be screwy, but the modulations, comrpession, delay and verb will really get the OP a feel for thigns if he looks at the aforementioned line6 multi effects or soemthing similar. Iwouldn't go cheaper than a line6 or you're shooting yourself in teh foot. If he ahs 300 bucks he could look at the nova system and get 2 classic analog dirts built in too. All in one. I felt it was the ebst all in 1 box I ever used, though the standalone novas sound ebtter and ind elay the rack units and the flashbacks own all over it... but tis going to sound damned good and give him a tubescreamer, a rat and the full pallette of TC digital effects along with a nice all analog signal apth for the dry signal for everything but the compression.

http://equipboard.com/items/tc-electronic-nova-system

I know my review is ahrsh but Iw as looking for more out of it. Understand I use a multi-amp rig alot and I also was trying to sue it as a amster midi controller for some other gadgets when i got it and it was ahrd to get it working m y setup. I shoudla qualified thigns more. it did sound great in a 1 amp rig if I didn't mind tap dancing or wanted to ignore the other MIDI gear. I needed some apch points between teh analog and digital sections, more outs, maybe a ground lift.... but the OP? might be the ticket for him. Invest in a big muff or a fuzz box and maybe a quilter later and he's got a good baord for gigs that can power a borrowed speaker cab and will be small enough to take on the train/subway. Also, it has good bread and butter effects that can be dialed in to handle whatever type of music he likes with a little patience. The rat and TS can cop a lot of stuff with all of the TC digital crap getting their abcks. He might ened soemthing grimier to do dan auerbach, but tis helps to have some grungy old tube amps for that type of shit too. Just as important as the big muff and the old shin-ei fuzz boxes.

Deny the gear wisdom or bask in it. I care not my Aussie friend, I am chillin' poolside on this too-hot-for-beach day! gotta pack up and go home tonight. Then i will get really into some forum shiznit, man!

My bad! I was thinking of the MG15CFX witj the effects built in! try a cheap multi like James suggested! This will give you a feel for it. Even a cheap old Boss one like a BE-5 ($150AUD on reverb)

I've been exploring the budget pedal path, Certainly some budget options approach the pro originals and I'd consider them good enough for home gratification whilst I'm still learning. So considering the path Overdrive -> Distortion -> Fuzz -> - Delay/Reverb;

A pro might use a Tube Screamer/OCD - Boss DS1/2, Proco Rat or Big Muff Pi - EHX Holy Grail Max reverb all for about £400-£500

I have a Bad Monkey -> Ibanez 60's Fuzz -> and Behringer Echo Machine EM600. (£100 total)

I would Look at: the JOYO JF-02 ultimate drive which is a very highly regarded clone of the Fulltone OCD overdrive at a quarter of the price; - £33

Then there's the Tom'sline BLACK TEETH teeth distortion pedal: Warm smooth wide range vintage distortion sound based on 3 versions of Proco Rat - solo turbo and normal guitar pedal - £25

The Behringer Echomachine is a cheaply constructed 'swiss army knife' of analogue delay effects. It's main strength however is also its weakness; the variety and flexibility of delay styles means it is also complex to operate, too fiddley and fragile for stage work perhaps but a fine tool to explore with; £45 gets you just about very delay style going and it sounds great despite the plastic construction.

(conscious that I've mixed up delay and reverb here; I have a delay pedal but don't feel the need for both (amp's built in reverb does fine))

if you want an OCD you cna get that joyo or even the EHX OD Glove, its a slightly revoiced OCD that i thought played better with a wider variety of guitars and amps than mike fuller's original design (okay, not original, the OCD is just a tweaked up clone of the original voodoo lab OD which is just a fucking distortion+ with the clipping diodes shunted to the bais potential of the 1st stage of the op amp isntead of striaght to ground so the clipping threshold isn't static, its determined by input signal amplitude)... but anyway, as far as store demoing goes I actually preferred the cheaper OD Glove to the OCD

Oh That's interesting Jim. I'd not heard of The Glove OD and from what I read about it, it sounds more my cup of tea. The tonal descriptions: "Mild bluesy breakup" to "Billy Gibbons throaty grind" and "9v gives a saggy compressed crunch"; this all sounds right up my street. John Lee Hooker, Black Keys, Left Lane Cruiser; loose, saggy distortion is what I'd aspire to, rather than Death Metal chug or Prince/Gilmour shimmer. - It could possibly usurp the EHX Soul Food from my wishlist!

its definitely more amp like n the dynamic breakup camp than the soul food. The soul food is a Klon clone. ia hd one, decent pedal, didn't work for my rig though i wish I had kept it for the studio. When i traded it I wasn't thinking straight. I am really sensitive to bandwidth changes when I engage a device in-line with my amps. I have really nice amps and I know what they all do across the freequency spectrum and I am not content jacking the volume on my OD to compensate for a really audible abss drop out. I understand that to get the circuit clipping right it can't have all the bandwidth of a poweful tube amp, but still, tis a problem, there are ways to remedy it. Anyway, the Glove is an OCD. Both are riffs on the classic Distortion+/Ross/OD250 type diodes-to-ground distortion. But they each ahve a twist. The Klon splits the signal up into no clipping, mids clipping and treble clipping. The gain control is actually a dual pot, the first aprt is gain into the circuit and the 2nd part is a clean blend basically balancing the clean and main midrangey clipping to ground (so when you are getting elss clipping you are also getting mroe of your bypassed tone blended) while the tone control is the gain for the treble-only clipping to ground and its all mixed back together at the 2nd op-amp stage. It also borrows the rat's charge pump to run at a more dynamic 18 volts without needing a larger pwoer supply. It stores the voltage up and doubles what the ccircuit sees.... the OCD circuit is absed on the voodoo lab OD. Its a basic od250 type circuit with a basic tone cotnrol and a voicing switch to change the inut capacitor to allow more bass thru in 'low peak' mode which chagnges the frequencies that clip the most, basically goes from growl to crunch, small tweed to 100 watt brit? That's the idea. But its extremely dynamic because the diodes aren't shunting to ground clipping away a fixed amount of signal making a uniformly squared wave at a certain threshold. In the OCD and voodoo lab design the diodes go to the bias potential of the first gains tage so thatyour playing dynamics have an impact on the amount of clipping not just because the clipping will be less when you play lighter but the diodes clipping threshold will also change based on how that op amp gain stage is being hit. Its even more dynamic on an 18 volt supply because the slew rate of the opamp will be better at higher voltage (soemthing the Klon circuit does internally) and in a circuit where the dynamics of the opamp effect the clipping characteristics this can be a big deal. Some prefer 18, some rpefer the more compressed 9 volt. You have the option. Confused yet? Botha re VERY VERY clever designs to make a lively overdrive out of pretty archaic ideas. Botha re good pedals and the EHX copies are pretty damn solid, For the coin they are ahrd to deny and to me the OD Glove actually soudns better than any version OCD I've tried or heard. You would have to A/B them with your rig. Theya re cheap enough that you could buy both sued and thenr esell the one you don't like or go to a store with a no-questions return policy, buy both, and then return one within that return window.

Thanks for that comprehensive breakdown Jim - a lot to take in but all good to know! I think you've sold me on the glove, but I like your idea to get them all.

Furthermore I've now fallen for the Blackstone Appliances MOSFET OD if only, mainly, for the fact it sounds filthy and looks like it's been pulled right out of a spitfire cockpit - It was aparently used extensively on ZZ Top's La Futura, (not especially a fan of the band but I do like that dirt)

Arrgh! - I really must force myself to make do with my Bad Monkey for a while yet. I'm putting myself on a GAS recovery program for a while before someone arranges an intervention.

the blackstone has a unique sound even amongst simialr overdrives... like a lot of amp-in-a-box pedals its cascaded discrete fets... in tone its between a zvex box of rock (2 SHOs in a row with a tone control and some voicing inbetween) and a red llama (CMOS logic inverter chip with the mini mosfet stages cascaded as little gain stages)... I enver liked it enough to emet the buy in

I thought SHO is a boost, Box of Rock is a JTM 45 voiced drive and a SHO channel and the DOUBLE ROCK was 2 x Box of Rock cascading, designed for J mascis and bearing his image in the artwork .

the box of rock is 2 cascaded SHOs dude, just ahs a tone control and some shaping inbetween versus the double sho that ahs no tone control and is JUST 2 SHOs cascading. Take a box of rock or the cheper distortron apart and eat your hat, Terr. The double rock is 4 SHOS with 2 tonestackone for each pair

Go to the store and try them all out