Slomosa pedal effects challenge.

All 4 Slomosa boards are live and ready for gear. Thank you @Michael !!!!

https://equipboard.com/band/slomosa

@phil_e Any bites from Ben on Insta yet?

...but, I mean, if I was gonna make good on my threats to get back into guitar and start a high desert stoner rock band, a cheap clone of that life pedal wouldn't be a terrible idea.

(this is where Jim will chime in and school me with 2 dozen superior ways to sound like Kyuss)

At first I thought it was a multi fx like a line6 hx stomp or something but given their sound, the knob layout and the lack of screen I'm with you now that it's probably an earthquaker sunn lifepedal clone. The circuit has been available for some time and while it's not a beginner's build, its also nothing complicated.

Could it be a Hillbish? The sol invictus has crazy dinisaur graphics now but his earlier sunn based pedals were pretty basic visually with beta series style white and red lettering on black as I recall. I remember his first run being sold through his ebay shop at first. He's Buzzo's guy. Beta lead all day. There was another small builder doing a beta lead pedal even earlier.

I would say that sunn beta stuff is good for doing melvins and maybe sunn (the band). Kyuss is a jcm900 into an SVT 8×10. I dunno about pedals but it's nothing special, probably off the shelf 90s stuff. I'm sure it's all on Josh's equipboard despite his notorious secrecy. If I were doing doom rock today I would grab a cheap used tech21 xxl, an affordable, old 50 watt tube head (like a sunn 100s, sorado, scepter, any traynor, ampeg v2 etc) and a bass 4×10 without a horn or an oversized 2×12 with a port and have at it. Inevitably you'll be told to turn down these days :(

EDIT: If you wanna do Sleep a trained monkey could build an orange or80 matamp 50 variant. Its 4 lousy tubes. If you omit the Rotary switch for the FAC control that just switches coupling caps the wiring would be incredibly easy apart from twisting the 6v heater lines which us always a pain even using a drill. DON'T LISTEN TO ME, TUBE AMPS CONTAIN LETHAL VOLTAGES EVEN WHEN UNPLUGGED AND SHOULD NOT BE MEDDLED WITH. IF YOU WANT TO BUILD AN AMP, LEARN WITH AN EXPERIENCED TECH. But yeah, the original matamp and orange amps are bog simple tube circuits that can be simplified even further by removing gimmick features. I think the essential components make it the least parts per watt of any old tube amp.

What about a Correct Sound beta lead preamp?

Friends, we were so close: it's the discontinued Pigtronix OFO Disnortion

https://rvb-img.reverb.com/image/upload/s--ZXxB5kNh--/a_0/f_auto,t_large/v1691412520/v2s1oxhhshy0nfg1zfxp.jpg

Just to lock it in, here is a photo of one of their pedal boards from a photo shoot:

https://www.sverrehjornevik.com/media/pages/stories/slomosa-battlingguns/3d1ac4c48c-1714935987/slomosa_frontfilm_sverrehjornevik-06045-1000x.jpg

So it's not Distortion, Octave, Boost (a la Sunn Life), but Octave, Fuzz, Overdrive.

Your knowledge in this area is superb and much appreciated, Jim.

I live in a pretty quiet urban neighborhood, if someone is watching Die Hard or one of those Transformers movies in their living room, the whole block can hear it. So amps... probably not gonna happen. A buddy of mine in a similar neighborhood situation, who still plays shows around town, swears by the UA OX for driving his tubes when he's at home... but I don't own any amps these days, and probably best I keep it that way. I'd have to sell some keyboards to even make room.

If I started with a decent SG-style guitar with hum buckers, what are the pieces in the chain that I MUST keep analog/outboard, and what are the pieces Universal Audio or Neural DSP could handle for me ITB?

The first time I ever heard Kyuss was when they opened for Faith No More in like '92/93. My buddy and I were like "whoever this guitarist is, he's killing it and he needs a better band"... nothing Kyuss ever recorded & released sounds as good as they sounded live that night.

Electric Wizard's Dopethrone is what gets me there in terms of recorded stoner/doomer tone. Dopethrone hits that spot few others dare to try for.

Friends, we were so close: it's the discontinued Pigtronix OFO Disnortion

Wow. I never woulda guessed that because I forgot it existed. Do they even make that anymore? It's a lot like a foxrox Capt Cocunut.

Your knowledge in this area is superb and much appreciated, Jim.

Thanks

If I started with a decent SG-style guitar with hum buckers, what are the pieces in the chain that I MUST keep analog/outboard, and what are the pieces Universal Audio or Neural DSP could handle for me ITB?

Dang. I think 50% or doom rock is elder gen Xers chasing the early sabbath tone without the benefit of equipboard and the other half is guys forging ahead where blue cheer, iron butterfly or the groundhogs left off before punk and thrash, so more proto metal than grunge was... I think a boss superfuzz is a big component of electric wizard's tone. Any octave fuzz in the foxx tone machine and univox superfuzz camp will probably work, but not an octavia. It's hard to really talk about doom without talking 50 watt+ tube heads, apart from the melvins who are doom adjacent, volume is a big part of the idiom even in the studio. The sound you hear recorded is usually the live rig. Modelled amps to try would be the laney supergroup, orange or120, hiwatt dr103, any sound city head, marshall super bass, ampeg v4b, vt40 or even an svt. Let me look at what neural dsp has to offer.

The first time I ever heard Kyuss was when they opened for Faith No More in like '92/93. My buddy and I were like "whoever this guitarist is, he's killing it and he needs a better band"... nothing Kyuss ever recorded & released sounds as good as they sounded live that night.

I was unaware of them until Dave Grohl mentioned them on MTV,maybe 93 or 94?

EDIT: apart from their Morgan suite, the amps listed on Neural DSP's site seem too metal, neural seems pretty wrong for doom, although Matt Pike is a slo100 man now so you could do high on fire tones... most of these amps have post-jcm800 gain staging with a cold biased clipping stage in the gain channel and if there's a clean channel it's an afterthought... the mesa model is probably not going to get you there either being a highly modified fender showman topology, although I used to doom out with a marshall and a showman so whatever. Just go big. Big amp models that have huge chunks of iron on the output. I e been fiddling around with a tube recording preamp design with a balanced output from a small push pull poweramp lately but I'm too cheap to buy the parts I don't have which are pricey in this awful economy. I'm suspicious of dsp amp sims.

Unless you're shooting for monster magnet, then it's just an 800, maybe a 2303, and a raspy futher for the leads... I think the fuzzrite hits a good spot for early MM and you can also cover inagaddadavida with it.

Here's the other mystery pedal. Black one, 4 knobs, bottom/center.

https://imgur.com/a/qm9Cxax

Thanks for mailing the pic, Phil.

https://imgur.com/HPCI4Vo

And yet the photo looks solid black. Why don't you just DM this viking? He's just some dangus who is getting lucky on spotify, what's he so busy doing? Ask him!

And yet the photo looks solid black.

It's one of these situations:

https://media.wired.com/photos/59327b99a3126458449954cf/master/w_2240,c_limit/Untitled-12.jpg

Sh!t I see it now. Let me do some photoshopping later. For the submission. Gotta 2 man gods gig Saturday so I need to prepare for that after work... so maybe Sunday I can clean it up

Sh!t I see it now. Let me do some photoshopping later. For the submission. Gotta 2 man gods gig Saturday so I need to prepare for that after work... so maybe Sunday I can clean it up

Thanks, Jim. I don't currently have easy access to the color processing tools needed to pump the contrast and better-reveal the hoof graphics that are kinda obscured by glare. Also, it would be more convincing if such forensics came from a second person, rather than it just being me working too hard to try to prove myself right.

How'd the gigs go?

[...] I think a boss superfuzz is a big component of electric wizard's tone. Any octave fuzz in the foxx tone machine and univox superfuzz camp will probably work, but not an octavia. It's hard to really talk about doom without talking 50 watt+ tube heads, apart from the melvins who are doom adjacent, volume is a big part of the idiom even in the studio. The sound you hear recorded is usually the live rig. Modelled amps to try would be the laney supergroup, orange or120, hiwatt dr103, any sound city head, marshall super bass, ampeg v4b, vt40 or even an svt. Let me look at what neural dsp has to offer.

OK, based on your great guidance here (thank you), I did some more digging.

Apparently there are a ton of dudes trying to get that EW Dopethrone-era tone. Lots of good YT vids. Also, I sifted through more doom/stoner/sludge tracks to find other players who had that on-record tone I crave, and Monolord's first two records jumped out at me... and what I'm hearing there is (no surprise) nearly the exact same recipe as EW: 24.75" scale guitar tuned all the way down to B (or even Bb or A in some cases... jxsus...), humbuckers that aren't super hot/high-output, Boss FZ-2 Hyper Fuzz, various genre-staple amps and mic'd cabs (lots of Orange) cranked up loud. As for bass, it's various 4-string Rick and P-bass derivatives tuned town to match the guitar, passed through their own FZ-2, Big Muff Bass, or similar, and a mic'd up SVT-based rig.

So this makes things pretty clear for me.

My current outlook re: options for Electric Wizard doom tone:

#1 The real deal studio doom:

• Humbucker-equipped guitar properly setup to handle tuning down to B, Bb/A# or A.
• Boss FZ-2 Hyper Fuzz or clone equivalent (Behringer SF300 or one of many boutique options)
• An amp with the power to get loud AF without screwing up the FZ-2's natural dominance over everything else in the chain. (Sound Studio B120 bass/PA amp was used on Dopethrone).
• mic'd cabinet in a studio space that allows for deafening volume.

#2 Deluxe bedroom doom:

• same guitar
• same pedal
• same amp
• amp attenuator and cab sim. Cab sim could be hardware or software based... but hardware cab sim means not having to worry about latency.

#3 Mid-tier bedroom doom:

• same guitar
• same pedal
• amp AND cab sim, either as hardware (a la Walrus Audio Mako series) or software suite.

#4 Totally ITB doom:

• same guitar
• octave-fuzz, amp and cab sim all in software

EDIT: apart from their Morgan suite, the amps listed on Neural DSP's site seem too metal, neural seems pretty wrong for doom, although Matt Pike is a slo100 man now so you could do high on fire tones...

I started diving into Neural and I see what you mean. I'd demo everything that's demo-able before making the final call, but YT and forum-going doomers seem big on various options from STL, Line 6's native stuff or just a bunch of free options.

As for how I'd go, option #1 just isn't possible for me, but I'd probably pick up a cheap-but-decent SG-style guitar, work on getting it to play well down at B standard (find the right beefy strings, action & truss setup, etc), then add a Behringer SF300 (because why not? it's so cheap). and then start working through my free options for amp and cab sim to see if any of them get me there. If the latency became a drag, I'd start looking to option 3, but with external amp & cab sim.

For bass, I'd just use this as an excuse to add a 5-string to my collection, and live with the fact that it won't have the exact same flabby tone as a 4-string Rick tuned down to B.